A Matter of Life and Death: Externalizing Internal Struggles in ‘The Seventh Victim’

One of the unique aspects of the horror films produced by Val Lewton at RKO in the 1940s is the seriousness with which they discuss matters of mental illness. Even today, mental health issues are often tiptoed around, but in the forties, they were practically taboo. As discussed in previous entries in this column, Cat […]

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Fear of the Dark: ‘Cat People’ and the Horrors of Repression

Two films made in 1941 led directly to the making of Cat People the following year, The Wolf Man and Citizen Kane. Kane had become a fiasco for RKO when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst condemned the film as a thinly veiled attack against him. Ultimately it led to the ousting of studio head George […]

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Repressed Lesbianism and Otherness in Val Lewton’s ‘Cat People’ [Horror Queers Podcast]

Get Fucked Oliver It was a busy November as Trace and I bounced from Jennifer Reeder’s female-centric text Knives and Skin to Paul Verhoeven’s anti-war satire Starship Troopers. Then we dipped over to Japan for Satoshi Kon’s gorgeously animated Perfect Blue before tackling Thanksgiving queerness in Addams Family Values, which proved, yet again, that straight […]

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Embracing Lesbianism and Satanism in ‘The Seventh Victim’ [Horror Queers Podcast]

She only did her…hair After a wild month that has included gay panic in Creep, a TV musical in Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s ‘Once More, With Feeling’ and our 150th episode extravaganza with The Lost Boys, we’re closing out the month with a slam dunk 1940s film noir. That’s right: it’s finally time for a […]

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