Waiting on the Worms

For some incomprehensible reason, my local Pride celebration was held this year on the first weekend of October. The organizers and the local LGBTQ+ community center partner with our local art house to show queer-themed films in the run-up to the event. This year's slate includes a pioneering lesbian rom com (Saving Face), a key film of the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s (My Own Private Idaho), and the recent trans horror film, T-Blockers (2023, directed by Alice Maio Mackay). This last film kills three birds with one stone for me: I get to support art made by trans people, I get to support my local art house, and I get to add it to the pile of horror movies for this year's spooky season. Of the three, the first two are more important than the last, particularly in the present political moment. T-Blockers is in a tradition of DIY filmmaking that exists at the fringes of the horror genre and on the fringes of cinema itself, a swamp previously inhabited by the likes of John Waters, Russ Meyer, Kenneth Anger, Joe Christ, Maya Deren, Ed Wood, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, and The Blair Witch Project. This is not a commercial cinema, though some movies and filmmakers do sometimes escape into a capitalist marketplace. There are so few resources available to filmmakers in this sector that it's a miracle anyone makes any films at all here, so it is with some admiration that I note that Alice Maio Mackay has made six films before she turned 21, all while transitioning. That she is trans is an extra pair of concrete shoes to wear during the process. Maybe things are different in Australia, but the obstacles in her path have defeated more talented directors than her. T-Blockers is a bit of a mess, but it exists outside the demands of what constitutes a well-made movie. That it exists at all is a feat of will that most filmmakers could not muster. It goes to show that if you really want to make a movie, nothing can stop you.

Nota bene: you may find this post overly political. What can I say? I am a trans person living in 2025 America writing about trans art. If you don't want the politics that entails, you might be more interested in my posts on classic Hollywood films. Or engaging somewhere else entirely.

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Hand in Hand

There's a deep mythological undercurrent in Talk to Me (2022, directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou). When I described the film to my partner, she immediately suggested that the film's Maguffin is a hand of glory, a magical artifact made from the left hand of a hanged man which has powerful magic abilities. You may remember the hand of glory's appearance in The Wicker Man, among other places. The thought that it was a hand of glory occurred to me, too, while I was watching the movie. The severed hand in Talk to Me isn't exactly that, but bears a strong enough resemblance nonetheless, even down to the related use of a candle to invoke its power. It reminds me a little of the monkey's paw in the W. W. Jacob's story of the same name, as well, which itself seems descended from the hand of glory and its other mythological relatives. In Talk to Me, the severed hand of a medium is preserved inside a ceramic shell. It enables someone holding the hand, as if shaking it, to see and talk to the dead. If the holder invites the ghost, the ghost can possess them. Like the hand in "The Monkey's Paw," the hand in this film promises answers and wishes. Sort of. In the film, it's the center of teenage shenanigans so it all ends badly, as it must. These kids could have prevented a lot of heartache if they had all watched The Ring or Witchboard or some other tale of teens dabbling in the supernatural. But then you wouldn't have a movie.

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Any Landing You Can Walk Away From

It's October again. That means it's time for the October Horror Movie Challenge, in which I try to watch 31 horror movies during the month, including at least 16 that are new to me. Given that I've been away from blogging for a while, this also means I'm going to try to write about all of them. Wish me luck.

The Survivor (1981, directed by David Hemmings) is a film I remember seeing on HBO way back in the early 1980s. While I say that I remember seeing it, I only remember seeing it because the plane crash that opens the film is spectacular and legitimately terrifying. It sticks in the memory. The rest? I vaguely remembered some of the film's ghostly shenanigans (the dude lured onto the train tracks for instance), and I remembered Jenny Agutter, but only in fragments. It turns out that there's a reason for that. It's a slow, meandering film that has none of the pulp vitality you would expect from a film based on a James Herbert novel. And yet, here it is.

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Mere Anarchy

I was in the wrong headspace for The Rover (2014, directed by David Michôd), a bleak, more naturalistic version of a Mad Max movie. The movie turns out to be a shaggy dog story, but the punchline of the film had a particular meaning to me when I saw it. I sat in my car for a few minutes after the film trying to process what I'd just seen. Films affect people differently, depending on all sorts of personal factors that vary from viewer to viewer. Some films are more personally relevant than others. For me, this was such a film. Your mileage, of course, will vary. The why of this requires me to reveal elements of the plot that likely should be surprises, so go watch the movie and come back later. I'll still be here.

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Another Roadside Massacre

100 Bloody Acres (2012, directed by Cameron and Colin Cairns) is one of those rural massacre movies that grew up in the American South, only to take root worldwide. This one is set in Australia, where the bush is prone to drive folks a bit looney. The Cairns are completely aware of the cinematic tradition in which they're working, and they're certainly not above throwing in references to other movies, but they don't do it in a lazy, self-referential manner. Instead, they weave it into a running thread of black comedy. There has always been a strain of ghoulish humor in this kind of movie, and this one embraces that with a gusto.

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And the Colored Girls Sing...

 The Sapphires (2012, directed by Wayne Blair) is a surprisingly serious film given that it's ostensibly a musical comedy biopic. Given that most of the film is set in Vietnam in 1968, it's also a surprise that the film's seriousness doesn't necessarily derive from the Vietnam war. But that's what you get when you look at the various cultural contexts surrounding soul music in the 1960s. It was an artform that was inextricably tied to the civil rights movements of the time. And, apparently, not just in America.

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