Rope-a-dope.
After queering up the castle in James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein, we got cosmic with Adam Egypt Mortimer’s outstanding imaginary friend tale Daniel Isn’t Real before getting hot in the 1981 parody Student Bodies. Now we’re going back in time again to check in with the sociopathic (and possibly definitely queer) duo in Alfred Hitchcock‘s technical marvel Rope!
In the film, friends (or lovers?) Philip Morgan (Farley Granger) and Brandon Shaw (John Dall) strangle a mutual friend to death with a piece of rope, purely as a Nietzsche-inspired philosophical exercise. Hiding the body in a chest upon which they then arrange a buffet dinner, the pair welcome their guests, including the victim’s oblivious fiancée (Joan Chandler) and the college professor (James Stewart) whose lectures inadvertently inspired the killing.
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Episode 138 – Rope (1948)
Shut the antique wooden chest and choke your chicken because we’re heading to a posh Manhattan penthouse for a classy dinner party in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 technical marvel (and uber-queer film) Rope!
Join us as we kick off the episode discussing Leopold & Loeb, the real-life “perfect murder” case that serves as the inspiration for the film (among many others) before delving into just how queer this movie is. We’ve got a queer screenwriter and multiple queer actors and some truly bitchy 1940s dialogue.
Plus, stigmatizing tops and bottoms (boo!), a murder set piece doubling as a sex scene, a Jason Sudeikis/Hugo Weaving hybrid, a 50 Shades of Grey tangent and, of course, minding our p’s and q’s.
Cross out Rope!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re getting bugged out with an analysis of David Cronenberg’s seminal body horror film (and possible AIDS allegory) in The Fly!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for tons of additional content! This month, we’ll have episodes on The Boy Behind the Door, Old, The Night House, Don’t Breathe and Don’t Breathe 2.