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 folks get really upset when we explore LGBTQIA issues in popular texts!
In celebration of the final week of Noirvember, now we’re covering Val Lewton‘s 1942 Film Noir-informed psychosexual thriller Cat People. In the Jacques Tourneur-directed film, Irena (Simone Simon) is a Serbian immigrant living in New York with no friends or family. She is wooed by All-American Oliver (Kent Smith), but can’t consummate their marriage for fear of activating a killer curse that she believes will transform her into a panther and kill. Challenged by terrible therapist Dr. Judd (Tom Conway, who also appeared in Lewton’s The Seventh Victim) and enraged by her husband’s interest in co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph), Irena begins to spiral, putting everyone, including herself, in mortal danger.
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Episode 206 – Cat People (1942) feat. Dr. Heather Petrocelli
Get ready for Big Cat action because we’re tackling another Val Lewton film: 1942’s Cat People. Joining us with incredible insights courtesy of her (forthcoming) book Queer For Fear is Dr. Heather Petrocelli.
We’re talking about the power and legacy of subtextual queer horror, how Otherness intermingles with queerness, why you shouldn’t hate Alice too much (but Oliver needs to die), and the infamous Lewton bus and pool scenes.
Plus: film noir lighting, the return of The Seventh Victim‘s predatory Dr. Judd, and comparisons to the 80s remake (Tits! Incest! Malcolm McDowell!)
Cross out Cat People!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re starting the first of two weeks of campy Winter titles with gay director Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin (1997)!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 211 hours of additional content! We’re wrapping up the year with episodes on supersized slasher Terrifier 2, Into The Dark’s holiday-themed New Year, New You, Joe Begos’ killer robot Santa film Christmas Bloody Christmas, Luca Guadagnino’s cannibal love story Bones and All, Rian Johnson’s whodunnit sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, and an audio commentary on the best horror sequel of all-time: Scream 2, just in time for its 25th anniversary!
The post Repressed Lesbianism and Otherness in Val Lewton’s ‘Cat People’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.