All language subtitles for Triiii

- Horror is
traditionally the lane

where you can go to do anything.

- People who make horror,
they're taking this real emotion

that affects people's lives
and like bend it to their will.

- But movies are not just for
the person who's making them,

they're for the audience
too, and the things

that we bring to those movies.

- I'm asking you to set me free.

Don't confuse me any
longer with this talk

of a big experiment.

I know who you are, and I
know what you've done to me.

- When you don't really
see yourself anywhere,

you look for the thing
that feels closest.

- I feel terrible for people
who can't see themselves

in the monster.

The monster was actually
the most human one,

the most feeling one, the one
that I related to the most,

because there wasn't a
denial of who the monster is.

- Get away, get away!

- Please.

Go away.

- Don't look at me!

- I love to see monsters,
because there's a power

in being a monster.

- What is the matter, Alice?

- In the great melting
pot of creative endeavor

and the creative
endeavor of queer people,

so many fascinating things
come to the surface.

You present that
to your audience,

and they go away clutching
this little still-beating heart

of something other.

- I love you, David.

And that's why we we
hold our monsters close.

- From the day we're born,
there is a battle we must fight.

A struggle between what is kind
and peaceful in our natures

and what is cruel and violent.

- What the hell is
this, an editorial?

- That choice...

- Repression.

Repression is the father of
neurosis, of self-hatred.

We should never try to deny the
beast, the animal within us.

- Horror films that
utilize a transformation.

- I will kill all of you!

- This is all about
fear, our own fear,

of losing our identity.

That there's something inside
of us that we cannot control,

that will ultimately
take over who we are.

- Any story that is about
transformation and links

transformation with sexuality...

Has to be read as a queer story.

- Do you remember how you
felt when you first realized

that you were a homosexual?

- Frightened.

Terribly frightened.

- The thing about
transformative horror

is that it is so tied
to a fear of the other,

but the other usually
exists within yourself.

- I was terribly fighting
by the homosexual feelings,

the guilt associated
with having feelings

of attraction
towards other males.

- Queer folks, we have
to kind of be strangers

to even ourselves at
times, about what it is

that we really desire and what
it is that we really want.

That repression creates
a great deal of fear

about what it is exactly
that's down there,

and what's gonna happen
if and when it bursts out.

- You have a need and
of course a tension.

- I can't continue to to
keep this thing undercover.

- I was always afraid
of being found out.

As soon as the impulses
came, I was terrified.

This impulse in you that
is so dark and abhorrent

that needs to be let loose.

- For any queer person,
unless you're very lucky

and just very confident
from from the get-go,

it's like living a dual life.

- Transformation dates back to

"The Strange Case
of Jekyll and Hyde."

The idea that we're
trying to be one thing,

but we're really another,
and which one's gonna win?

- Jekyll and Hyde
hands itself to sort of

Freudian interpretations,
because it's all about

this idea of the
the multiple selves

that are contained
within someone...

And what allows that
to become unleashed.

- When I was younger,
I thought that puberty

meant that I would become a boy.

That didn't happen.

For me, the binary
never made sense.

I never thought I was going
to be a woman or a man,

and I was always kind of
both of them at the same time

and everything in between.

And so I've come to
understand that I'm living

in the the ever-changing middle.

There's so many things
about Jekyll and Hyde

that I love and identify with.

He isn't discreetly one
person or the other,

he's often going back
and forth and occupying

both of those positions
at the same time.

- Man is not truly
one, but truly two,

they are chained together.

That chain spells repression.

- You have a normal kind
of everyday human character

that then something
happens that unleashes

this kind of bestial sexuality,
an appetite from within.

Most gay men and lesbians
in the thirties and forties

and fifties had to pass, wasn't
really an option to be out,

so they were kind of
playing Dr. Jekyll

all through their lives.

- What you are about
to see is a secret

you are sworn not to reveal.

- And then maybe once
a week, if they got to

a secret club meeting at a
gay bar in the urban area,

they could let
their Mr. Hyde out.

- It has conquered you.

- No, no, no.

I'll fight it.

I know it will not happen again.

Oh, help me.

- You see those same
conflicts emerge

in the werewolf narrative,
where the protagonist

has this side of him
that is gonna come out

whether or not the sort
of lead personality

wants to allow it to happen.

- Tomorrow night's
the full moon.

You're gonna change.

You'll become-
- I know.

I know.

A monster.

- The werewolf is the perfect
allegory for coming of age,

for coming out in the closet.

- Whether we're trans or
lesbian or gay or whatever,

we have to come to this
period of secretly knowing

that we have almost like
this like wolf-like curse

to where one day it's
gonna be unleashed.

- It's starting.

- So it is.

- The eruption is physical,
and it's happening

from within, and it's
happening through the body.

So you're not just
like in the thing,

but the thing is inside of you.

- Why are you doing?

- People are afraid of it,
and you're afraid of it.

It's like you are
the haunted house.

- The first like really
great werewolf movie

is "The Wolf Man."

And "The Wolf Man" is so sad.

- I was caught in
a trap tonight.

I don't know how I got there.

I can't help myself.

- Then I'll see to it that
you can't go out to them.

Come on, Larry.

- In "The Wolf Man,"
becoming a more powerful,

more beautiful, more
animalistic creature

in touch with your
aggression and in touch

with your sexuality
is considered a curse.

- The way you walk is turning,

through not fault of your own.

- The classic interpretation
of that monster

is it's a metaphor
for an erection.

You know, it's this
transformation into this beast

that is like
masculinity unbridled.

But there is a shamefulness
that character felt

when he transforms into
his normal, nice self.

I mean, he's just
cowering in shame.

- Oh my god, what have I become?

Who am I, what have I done?

How many sexual experiences
I've ended like that

for queer people?

Quite a few, I would bet.

- I was wondering if you think
that there are any, quotes,

happy homosexuals?

- They may be gay, but they
certainly are not happy.

They know how miserable they are

and they know how
they got that way.

- The wolf man doesn't
really accept who he is,

and he fights it at all
costs, and I think that's

pretty much what's
happening, you know,

when you first think you're gay,

and particularly for me growing
up in a small southern town,

you know, gay was, I ran
from it, I hid from it,

I tried not to be gay, I
did everything I could,

I prayed it away.

- Doctor, can these
sick people be cured?

- Not they.

An asylum's the only
safe place for them.

- It was still
there inside of me,

just begging to come out,
very much like the wolf man.

"The Curse of the Werewolf"

that was laid on a baby
who grew into a man

possessed by a monster.

- Films like "Curse
of the Werewolf,"

where it is not even the
traditional werewolf story,

it is a story about someone
who is cursed from birth.

The holy water boils
before the baptism.

There is a self-loathing we
experience as queer human beings

because we're told
that we are monsters.

We are told that we belong
in the fringes of society.

So of course we're
gonna be attracted to

monstrous characters
and we're going to have

great empathy for them.

- Oliver's bride seems
to be a very nice girl,

and a very pretty one, too.

Carla tells me she's a bit odd.

- 1940S horror movies
like "Cat People"

make more complex what
it means to be a monster.

Part of this is due
to the rising interest

in psychoanalysis.

- You told me about
your childhood.

Perhaps we will find
this trouble stems

from some early experience.

- Freud I think introduced
into popular culture

this idea that there are
certain processes in our heads

that are kind of pathological,
and that could be fixed.

- What do you think caused
your sexual orientation?

- I know that inside
now, I am sick.

I'm not sick just sexually,
I'm sick in a lot of ways.

- Suddenly we had
these monster movies

where the monsters
were suffering

and then they wanted
to heal themselves,

and they figured that
they could actually

work themselves out
of their monstrosity.

- I can't help you, you're
not truthful with me.

- But I am, I've
told you everything,

I have not lied to you.

- "Cat People" is a movie about

the dangers of queer
female sexuality.

It's the lesbian horror
franchise, in a weird way.

- Twice I've been followed by
something that was not human.

Something that attempted
to take my life.

- It's a horror movie from
a female point of view,

and that doesn't
happen very often.

- The main character
becomes a cat monster

when she is sexually aroused.

- Never in my life
have I seen a film

that allows women
to be as horny.

You will actually
transform into this hungry,

thirsty panther that cannot
hide who it is or its desires.

- You could use the word
lesbian instead of cat people

and and it would
play out logically,

because the movie is really
this kind of metaphor

for hiding your sexuality.

- To the bride.
- The bride.

- When Irina is approached
in the restaurant...

She gets clocked.

This other woman sees her
and immediately knows,

like her gaydar is like ding
ding ding, this is my sister.

She says-
- My sister.

My sister?

- Irina is mortified.

She wasn't even really out
to herself all of the way,

but she was out
enough to get scared.

- It's such a strong gay moment.

It's so erotic.

The exchange between them.

- So when you realize
that "Cat People"

is written by a queer
screenwriter, DeWitt Bodeen,

you get to find all of
those themes of like,

I have this thing inside
of me and if I let it out,

it's gonna be very bad
news for everyone involved.

- In the name of God,
leave us in peace.

- It's very sexy, it's very
smart, it's very emotional,

it's very spooky.

- The story is so much
about her trying to grapple

with this difference and
with this other part of her

that she can't quite make work.

You see her want it, and you
see her try to get there,

and she just cannot.

- You were saying the cats?

- Torment me.

I awake in the night and
the tread of their feet

whispers in my brain.

- Queer people have a
long and strange history

with psychotherapy.

- Do you sincerely believe
that if your husband

were to kiss you, you
would change into a cat

and rend him to bits?

- I don't know, I'm only afraid.

- Dr. Judd is this
figure that you see

a lot in these movies,
which is like the older

straight white man who
is going to fix her

with psychotherapy.

- And if I were to kiss you.

- I only know that I should
not like to be kissed by you.

- You have to throw off
the structures of society

that are trying to bind
you to be in some fashion.

And within that film
it is psychotherapy

that is trying to bind her.

Ultimately, like, therapy's
not gonna help her.

So she like kills him.

She eats him.

When I was a teenager, I went
to a fundamentalist church.

There was just a thing
about finding a way

to suppress these desires,
to push them down so far

that you never actually
looked at them.

You can't tamp it down,
you can't get rid of it.

And that's presented within
the films as kind of a tragedy

and like the monster
has to be stopped.

"Cat People" is right in
the thick of adhering to

the Hayes code, where
queerness had to be coded.

- For a lot of these films,
once the deeply dark secret side

becomes public, you pretty
much have to be destroyed.

- Do you want your son enticed

into the world of homosexuals?

- Remember, my boy, it's
in your best interests.

Do exactly as I instruct you.

- Or your daughter
lured into lesbianism.

- What happens in this room
must not go beyond this room.

- You can depend on me.

What do you want me to do?

- You must think
of this as a trip.

On the way, we'll find out many

fascinating things about you.

- What am I doing?

A horrible urge comes over me.

- You don't really
believe that your son is-

- No, no, I can't believe.

- Remember how wonderful it
was when you sprang suddenly,

dug in with your
fangs, the soft throat,

the gush of warm blood?

- No, no!

- The fifties is a decade of
conformity and containment.

- Then it's all right
to feel the way I do?

- Yes, under certain conditions.

- But at the same time, there
was a fear of that pop culture

was turning kids into
juvenile delinquents.

- Come on, Jimmy, hit him
again, he's been beggin' for it!

- Teenagers, both cars loaded,
back from a party I guess.

- And it set off a cycle
of teenage monster movies.

- Look!

- In this big wave of
"I was a teenage" films,

an older scientist of the same
gender as the younger person

turns them into something
completely monstrous.

- Through hypnosis, I'm
gonna regress this boy back

and unleash the savage instincts
that lie hidden within.

- You'll, remember that it's
important to obey me, always.

- In the older
transformation horror,

science is the thing that
can keep the monsters at bay.

But in this slew of "I
was a teenage" films,

science draws the monster out.

There's this fear of adults
turning America's youth

into these just unhinged,
sexual, prowling beings.

- What were perceived as films
to cash in on a teen audience

now can be clearly viewed
as something that is

addressing a fear of gay people.

- I feel as though
I'd been drugged.

- But it did you
a world of good.

How pretty you are
after the night.

- It feels remarkably like
those after school specials

that they showed to
kids in the fifties.

- What Jimmy didn't know
is that Ralph was sick.

A sickness of the mind.

You see, Ralph was a homosexual.

- Queers, we have been
perceived sometimes

as people who could, who
could destroy children,

who could create
immorality in them

that otherwise isn't there.

- I remember my dad showed
me "I Was a Teenage Werewolf"

when I was about six years old.

He looked back
fondly on the movie.

- Dr. Brandon.

There's something
I have to tell you.

I don't know if it
really happened.

It's more like a nightmare.

- It was his connection to
horror, that he played a monster,

you know, was something
that he was really proud of,

'cause he loved the genre.

I imagine he was aware
of the subtext of it all,

but I was never
old enough to have

those conversations with him.

You know, my dad passed
away when I was 16.

When I watched "I Was
a Teenage Werewolf,"

I felt so sad for for Tony.

And how lost and confused
and lonely he felt.

- Help me, Doctor, please!

I know they're gonna kiss
me, but don't let anyone

see me like that,
please, Doctor, help me!

- I was aware at
a very young age

that I had these weird feelings

that I couldn't
quite figure out.

I felt different.

Especially different
from other boys my age.

There was an immediate
connection, you know,

but it was just something
that I emotionally

wasn't involved enough
to understand yet.

- You'll only feel a
scratch, believe me.

And in the end, you will
no longer be disturbed

or troubled, because
you will be you.

- Mad science in
the monster movies

was not that far off from
the kind of mad science

that people were actually
using to cure homosexuality.

- Homosexuality at the
time was being classified

as a mental illness, and
something that through

certain revertive therapies,
literally surgeries,

I mean, they were maiming
people at the time.

- Aversion therapy
had been proven

really successful
with alcoholics,

so they got it in their
minds that if we wanted

to rid people of
their queerness,

of what made them
monstrous, we should

try aversion therapy with them.

- Everything from lobotomy in
the most sort of extreme cases

to you know, experiments
with hormones,

experiments with
glands, castration.

These are pretty barbaric,
but they were considered

medical science in the
forties and fifties.

- Quite, quite tense.

- In these movies,
the fantasy was

you could be that thing
and then be cured.

- I'll begin with 50,000 votes.

- And a lot of people
wanted to be cured.

I didn't.

I wanted to get worse,
and I succeeded.

- A flood tide of filth
is engulfing our country

in the form of news
stand obscenity,

and is threatening to
pervert an entire generation

of our American children.

- Another thing that
changes in the 1950s

was a new awareness
of the male body

as something that
can be on display.

- 14.

- 13.

- 13.

- 12.

- 12.

- 11.

- 11.

- Where are you now, Tony?

- We see that in a lot of
the teenage monster movies.

In the case of
Teenage Frankenstein,

there is a Dr.
Frankenstein figure

trying to create a
beautiful young man.

- Our main concern is
with your physique.

- Sews him together
from various body parts

and buys some barbells,
and he gets him

to start working out.

- You know with your
remarkable mental

and physical progress, and of
course your obedience to me,

you've made me very happy.

- The teenage Frankenstein
monster is played by Gary Conway,

who was an aspiring actor.

He had a appeared in the
physique magazines of the era.

- These models that
are in these movies,

they're posing for
LA photographers,

who are selling
pictures of them clothed

and later unclothed for this
whole underground market.

Pre-pornography.

- The nakedness, the
nudity of these magazines

is defended and foisted
upon the people.

The vast majority
of this material

is too obscene to show
or to quote to you.

- The fifties is full of the
contradictions, ain't it?

'Cause it's very domestic.

Everything is sort
of gray and the same.

But on the other side you've got

the rise of the beefcake models.

It's expressing this real
desire to objectify men,

which I am all four.

As the models become
actors and then appear

in all these movies,
the aesthetic spreads.

You start to see it in popular
culture in all kinds of ways.

- In a lot of these
fifties films,

there's all these muscle
boys and these gorgeous women

in very revealing bathing suits.

- In "The Creature
From the Black Lagoon,"

who I really wanted to be
was Kay in that skintight

white latex bathing suit
being hunted by this like,

very muscular monster.

- "The Creature From
the Black Lagoon" films

are just filled with beefcake.

- Mark.

All we're interested
in right now is getting

the entrance to
this lagoon cleared.

- I'll be the bait for him.

- Oh, Mark, get outta my way.

- You kind of feel the
sexual repression of the era

slowly kind of reaching
this boiling point

as our appetite for it becomes
more and more normalized.

- Through this
salacious material,

these abnormalities are
corrupting the minds

and the hearts of our children.

Oh God, deliver us,
Americans, from evil.

- Queerness is
kind of like that.

No matter how you put it down,
it finds a way to bubble up.

What's really going on
underneath the surface

at some point always
has to be known.

- Your new bodies
are growing in there.

They're taking you over,
cell for cell, atom for atom.

Suddenly while you're
asleep, they'll absorb

your minds, your memories.

- You'll be born again
into an untroubled world,

free of anxiety, fear, hate.

- One aspect of horror
films that is used

over and over again is the
concept of an invisible monster.

Something that you
can't see that's always

imitating its host.

- Don't be afraid.

- Transformation stories are
about the monster within it,

but in the body snatcher genre,

the monster isn't erasing
and suppressing and denying

that part of our self
which is authentic.

- These stories dark
based in the invasion

of the normal by the abnormal.

- Can't you see?!

They're after you!

They're after all of us!

Our lives, our
children, everyone!

They're here already.

You're next!

- In the fifties,
there was this fear

that the homosexual threat,
like the communist threat,

was all around us.

- And maybe as I'm here
today that will be homosexual

in the future, and maybe some
girls that'll turn lesbian,

we don't know.

They can be anywhere.

They can be judges, lawyers.

We ought to know, we've
arrested all of them.

- American attitudes
about sex and gender

really changed a
lot at that time.

The Kinsey reports
talked about the fact

that homosexuality
in men and women

was a much higher rate than
anybody had previously thought.

This gave rise to the
notion that there's

homosexuals out there who are
passing, they're invisible.

This sort of evil force that's
lurking in your small town.

You could be at a supermarket
and there might be

one amongst you.

Your child could be going
to school with one of them.

They could be plotting
to take over the world.

- You say there's
no way of telling

whether any given man in
town is a monster or not.

- Homosexuality is in
fact a mental illness

which has reached
epidemiological proportions.

- That realization
was really terrifying

for a lot of people,
'cause America

wanted to be the wholesome,
put-together country,

and anything that undercuts
your American dream,

you immediately have
to kind of squash it,

and that's exactly what they did

over the next course of
the next five to six years.

McCarthyism.

- Question is have
you ever been a member

of the Communist Party?

- What a shit show that was.

- Anything that remotely
smacked of communism

or socialism was immediately
flushed out and demonized.

- This moral decay
weakens our are resistance

to the onslaught of the
communist masters of deceit.

- The subversive
culture of homosexuality

was very directly tied
to communism at the time.

- Policy of the department
is that we do not employ

homosexuals knowingly, and
that if we discover homosexuals

in our department,
we discharge them.

- There was this idea
that both communists

and queer folks would
be living double lives,

and therefore would
be security risks.

- Subversives, homosexuals,
in the Air Force

and in the Navy.

- There also was
purge in Hollywood

of anybody on the left, and
a lot of people on the left

were gay, a lot of
them were Jewish also.

- Suddenly they're trying
to route all of the queers

from Hollywood, which
would've been impossible,

but still they were
trying to do it.

- Listen to me,
there's still a way.

- Is there?

With a mob after us?

- I'll try and hold off the mob.

- No.

We'd rather have it end here
than fall into their hands.

- It was a legendarily
conservative time in the US.

- Tonight's program
will deal mainly

with the male homosexual.

The scenes were photographs
from a hidden vantage point.

- At the same time there,
was also vibrant subculture,

and there were gay bars, and
queers being gay together.

- So much culture
was being made,

and it was out of the
eye of the mainstream.

The bar culture became
the way that gay people

actually found each other.

There's one bar, there was
like a postage size dance floor

somewhere in the back.

And you were fine for a while
until the red light went on.

- Back in the fifties,
everybody was a total closet.

It was frightening.

- And why don't they
come out in the open?

- Because they don't trust us.

Because what we don't
understand, we want to destroy.

- We went to this
club in Chicago,

and there were
all guys in there.

So what?

I didn't even know
it was a gay club.

Suddenly, the police
came in and screaming,

"Okay, you bunch
of fucking faggots.

This is a raid."

We went to jail that night.

The newspaper would
publish lists of people

who were arrested
in gay bar raids.

Is there any
other charge that would destroy

a person's reputation as quickly

as the charge of homosexuality?

- No, I can't think
of any other charge.

The stigma of such an arrest,
whether true or untrue,

continues with the individual
throughout his whole life,

I'm sure.

- It was terrifying to be
identified as a gay person.

- "Invasion of the
Body Snatchers"

becomes this fascinating
Rorschach blot

for whatever period
that they made one in.

- I've been wandering
among 'em for hours.

They can be fooled.

- How?

- Don't show any emotions.

Hide your feelings.

- Just don't show any emotion.

They can be fooled.

- Keep your eyes a
little wide and blank.

Show no interest or excitement.

- The fifties body
snatcher sort of comes up

in a time where the
idea of being outed

really could end your life
in a kind of literal way.

- Everybody's terrified
of being branded

as a communist and
also as a gay person.

- It's downtown.

And all the towns around us.

It's a malignant
disease spreading

through the whole country.

- You can either
read it as a metaphor

about the encroachment
of communism

and the group think
that that instills.

- There's nothing
to be afraid of.

We're not gonna hurt you.

- Remember how Teddy
and I fought against it?

Well, we were wrong.

- Or as a critique of the
red scare and the conformity

being championed by
people who were, you know,

finding communists and
queer people and beatniks

under every rock.

- Look out!
- Oh my god.

Lock the door.

Lock the door.
- They're coming.

Help, they're coming,
they're coming, listen to me!

You're next, you're the other!

They're already here!

Come, you're next!

- The Philip Kaufman version
of the late seventies

was about neo conservatism.

At that point in time,
people were kind of

forgetting about the
sixties and the seventies

and saying like, let's
all act straight,

be preppy, and make money.

- Please, come on.

I just wanted to be nice.

- What's matter with you?

- Nothing.

- The bodies who
were to get snatched

and replaced by the pod people,

they are a specific late-seventies
west coast archetype

of eccentrics, and when they
lose those eccentricities,

it hits you a little bit harder.

- Jack.

Jack, Jack.

Jack, wake up.

His eyes.

Oh, Jack, it opened its eyes.

- For queer audiences,
we respond to that movie

as like the this
terror of conforming

to the straight agenda.

What society tells
us we're going to be.

- There's something
really relatable for me

in "Invasion of
the Body Snatcher,"

like someone walking around
amongst the pod people

and trying to present
and pass as a pod person.

- Conformity is
particularly threatening

for trans people who aren't
out even to themselves yet,

and maybe don't yet
understand why they might feel

like the world is
trying to force them

into a prison of their own body.

- There is a sense that
passing is integral to survival

as a trans person
that is really present

in "Invasion of the
Body Snatchers."

- We gotta go, we
gotta get outta here,

we gotta go right now!

- Where you gonna go?

Where you gonna run?

Where you gonna hide?

Nowhere.

'Cause there's no
one like you left.

- We return to this
material with Abel Ferrara

in the early nineties.

He's setting it all
on a military base.

Coincidentally or not,
the film comes out

the same year that Don't Ask,
Don't Tell is implemented.

- When all things are conformed,

there'll be no more
disputes, no conflicts.

- There's just a sense
of fear and danger

and sneaking just inherent
in the queer experience.

From the time when you
got your first crush

all the way until you're
an adult, it's just there,

it's just baked
into the experience.

- Six-10 proceeding
south to airport.

Carrying two passengers.

Type H.

Repeat, type H.

So when those themes
come up in horror movies,

they hit us differently.

- It's such a cruel
game to convince people

that assimilation
will save their life.

- There's nothing
to be afraid of.

They were right.

It's painless.

Come.

Sleep.

- But at the end of the
day, you aren't ever able

to actually assimilate.

It only takes one person
for you to not pass,

and that one person
could mean your life.

- The pointing out
and the scream...

Alerting all the normies that
there's a pervert among us.

There's a real alive human
among us, we gotta crush it.

That just feels
like being outed.

- Wait right there, Mr. Bennell.

- How do you know my name?

- Hang up Matthew.

- I didn't tell you my name.
- Hang up.

- I didn't tell him my name.

- You're all a part of it.

They're all pods, all of them.

- "Invasion of the Body
Snatchers," the 1950s version,

the 1970s version, is
particularly terrifying

to queer people, 'cause I
feel, speaking for myself,

that we had just gotten okay
with our own freakishness,

and I was just like,
don't take it away.

- Nothing changes, you
can have the same life,

the same clothes, the same car.

- But what happens to us?

- As a gay man, I'm
looking at that like

what is the thing
that makes me me?

I don't want that
part of me that is so

ineffably me to be snuffed out.

- "Body Snatchers"
of course deals with

the pressures of
conformity and sort of

hiding out in plain
sight and all that.

Back in the fifties, "I Married
a Monster From Outer Space"

is so much more
blunt and ridiculous.

A beautiful,
innocent girl of her honeymoon,

her passionate dreams
of perfect romance

turned into a living nightmare.

- It's about a man who
commits to the lifelong bond

of heterosexual marriage.

- Bill.

- I'm sorry I'm late.

- And then starts
acting different.

- Well, you big idiot,
you say something,

I'm running out of small talk.

- Why do we have to talk?

- The night before the marriage,

the husband is replaced
by an alien lookalike.

- You see him with his wife,
and he's just very stiff,

he's very uptight.

She's clearly more in love
with him than he is with her.

But then the first time
you sort of see him

with another man alone...

- How about a drink?

- He just feels like he's
just swinging with it

in a different way
than he was before.

- Well.

Congratulations.

- The actor who played
the husband was Tom Tryon,

who was a gay actor in
Hollywood at that time.

- Here you've got a film with
a closeted gay leading man

that's about an alien
creature that isn't interested

in sex in the traditional
way that we know.

- Maybe you've guessed,
but I've never been

on a honeymoon before.

- Neither have I.

- These aliens had
to pass as humans

in much the way that gay
people and queer people

in the fifties were
forced to conform

and pass as straight.

- Even in times when
there has been pressure

or there has been direct
danger and you aren't able

to be honest about who you are,

you can feel your desire
popping up in unexpected places.

So he sneaks out of the house
in the middle of the night.

He meets other men in the woods.

- The exteriors where the men
go off to meet one another

were filmed around
Griffith Park,

which, you know, for
decades was known

as a sort of gay
male cruising area.

These seemingly
average-looking dads

were congregating in
the woods for community.

- Plot-wise it's
certainly a close cousin

to "The Invasion of
the Body Snatchers."

In some ways almost kind of
a send up of that concept.

- Bill.

- These movies kind of
captured something that was

really happening
and at that time,

which was this fear of queers.

- I saw them, man.

I saw them as they really are.

Horrible.

Fear of anything that challenged

the systems of power.

- He's in here!

Get him!

Get him!

- There is a danger to
intimacy for queer people.

- Thing about queerness
is that it shows itself

no matter what.

Even society trying
to put all of it,

sort of force us to
keep it repressed,

can't keep it from
exploding out of us.

So there is something
quite dangerous about it,

especially when you realize it

and acknowledge it
within yourself.

That's a source of power.

- Hello, Karen.
- Eddie.

- You said on the phone then
you wanted to get to know me.

Well, here I am,
Karen, look at me.

- In the eighties, we
see a series of monsters

who accept their monstrosity.

- When I was first bitten,
I fought against it, q

and so did Jerry, and
then we found the doctor.

He helped us.

He helped us to adjust.

- In Joe Dante's "The Howling,"

the werewolves are are
this like little club,

they live in this colony.

- If you fellas don't
mind, I think I'm gonna

borrow Karen and just give
her the rundown on the colony.

- Don't leave out
the juicy stuff.

- These characters revel
in their transformation.

And relish the sexuality
that they experience

when they're transformed.

- The tensions in "The Howling"

are built around the
slow understanding

that queerness has always
existed and has always been

on the edges of, you know,
society, whatever society means.

- We should have stuck
with the old ways,

raising cattle for our feed.

Where's the life in that?

- It's a group of
werewolves who find

a place with one another
in order to be safe,

which is completely
analogous to ultimately

what happened with queer people

figuring out where
other queer people were.

- A secret society exists and
is living among all of us.

They're neither
people nor animals,

but something in between.

- And they can
express themselves,

their true queer
identities, outside of

any persecution from society.

- You can't tame what's
meant to be a wild dog.

It ain't natural.

- I was never
particularly interested

in werewolf films because
they're so masculine.

But in "The Howling 2," we
get more fluid representation.

We get this really
sexy werewolf queen

in resplendent kink gear.

The werewolves
transform to have sex,

so they're celebrating
their wolfen form.

- "The Howling 2"
has a very specific

Eastern European
kind of horniness.

Where women are hairy and horny
and men are hairy and horny.

- There's a real lust
for rolling around,

howling, salivating.

They are just proud and
loud about exploring

their like true animalistic
sexual feelings.

- Cat people films have always
been associated with women.

But in the Paul Schrader
film from the 1980s,

Nastassja Kinski
and Malcolm McDowell

are kind of like
both really feminine.

And the entire focus...

Is on the inherent
sexuality of the large cat.

- Oliver doesn't love
you, he loves the panther.

He wants you because
he fears you.

- Malcolm McDowell
takes it upon himself

to liberate the cat people,
to sort of lead them

to what they should be and
to be their true selves,

which is a complete 180
from the original story.

- Free me.

I want to live with my own.

- They're seeking to embrace
that part of themselves

instead of rejecting
or trying to fit in.

- If I had to change
into a panther

every time I was horny...

Would it have taken me
as long to come out?

- Oh, fuck.

Fuck!

You like it.

- It feels so good.

- "Ginger Snaps," oh, she's
a horny werewolf girl.

Like that happens, like
surprise, it happens for girls too.

- It's like touching yourself.

See fucking fireworks.

Super Novas.

I'm a goddamn force of nature.

- "Ginger Snaps" might have been

the first werewolf
movie I ever saw.

Was like 14 so I
was like, you know,

beginning the processes
of my own body

like, getting away
from me, as bodies do.

There was something really like,

campy and fun and violent
and weird about it.

- My best case
scenario, Eleanor,

is hair everywhere
but my eyeballs,

elongation of my spine
till my skin splits,

teets, and a growing tolerance,
may be even affection,

for the smell and taste
of feces, not just my own.

- When I started
taking hormones,

I totally turned into a monster.

I became this
horrible, beautiful,

overly sexualized goddess
as a 14 year old girl.

I really related
to "Ginger Snaps."

As a trans woman, I tried
my hardest to make sure

that I had the most non-looking
dick ever in the world.

You know, 'cause girls'
clothes is really tight.

My mom unknowingly treated
me like I was a bad person

for exploring my identity
and being comfortable

with who I am as a woman.

- You don't have anything
I haven't seen before.

- That's what you think.

- I personally took it
as if I'm the problem,

when in reality it
was always society

for not knowing how to
handle just a normal woman

growing up in blossoming
with tits and shit.

- Werewolves transform under
the light of a full moon.

I always considered that
to be like the disco ball.

You know, that they
come alive at night.

- Once that shadow
self comes out,

there's suddenly a new
understanding of who you are.

There's actually a
lot of really good,

valuable, fascinating,
vital life force in there

that you just tucked away
because society told you

it wasn't appropriate.

- I think that those
transformation stories

are superhero stories
for gay people.

They allow us to see that
this thing inside of us,

our sexual preference,
our gender identity,

that bubbles up and
is natural and has

all this power and
is super exciting,

is okay, because
nature created it.

- Eventually it's
gonna work its way out,

and if you don't come
to terms with it,

it will destroy everything
in its path, mainly you.