Queer Horror Nights: Re-animating the undead with David Freyne’s THE CURED (15 May at The Castle Cinema, Hackney, London).
As any film club organiser will tell you, there’s one immortal enemy that we do battle with on a regular basis: the film rights holder. It’s easy to rattle off a list of ‘must-see’ or ‘hard-to-see’ movies, but if you can’t secure the legal rights to show a film in a cinema, it might as well not exist. Running a film club is very different to being a podcaster or blogger, where every film that has ever been made is at your disposal for discussion. We’ve got to compile a great long-list, reject almost everything we can’t find the rights for, build a screening programme we’re proud of from the ones we can, find a cinema that wants to show them, and then ‘market the arse off it’ (an industry term…).
People normally describe this job as ‘film programming’ – or ‘curating’ if you’re high-minded – but with my friends at Last Frame Club we like to see ourselves as re-animating an (un)dead format, the ‘horror-movie host’. Once a staple feature of late night syndication and cable TV screenings in the States, horror hosts became familiar to audiences in the UK through such camp, big screen cross-overs as “the original glamour ghoul”, Vampira, and Elvira, “the mistress of the dark”. Hosts were often local characters dressed as ghouls, vampires or mad scientists to boost ratings by turning weekly late night horror film screenings into an event. Whilst we don’t dress up (yet ;), we see it as our job to not just put the film on but to make the whole event work for everyone in our audience.
So far, things have gone well. We almost sold out for our launch screening of FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and enjoyed seeing CARRIE (2013) with an engaged if smaller crowd. What really worked with that event was the opportunity to hang out with our audience in the bar afterwards. We’re big horror fans, and love talking about the films we’ve just seen and the wider horror genre we love, without making the process a pompous, sand-kicking affair. Everyone is welcome in our house of horror and everyone gets equal billing. We were also once shy, queer kids (and, on occasion, socially awkward queer adults…), so it’s our job to spot cliques forming and stake them in the heart before they re-spawn. Here’s what one audience member said after CARRIE:
“I hadn’t realised that a cinema club meant being like any other club whereby you get to meet & hang with like minded people. What’s not to like about connecting with other queers &/or obsessives? Excellent hosting too! It can only build from here.”
Inevitably, there will be car crash moments when a particular title fails to sell or some other spanner gets dropped in our collective works. But we’re settling in for the ride. We’re also delighted to announce that our Queer Horror Nights launch programme has been backed with National Lottery funding by Film Hub London, part of Film London and a partner in the BFI Film Audience Network (www.filmlondon.org.uk/filmhub). That means we will definitely be lingering in your nightmares for a while longer and have got some great shows planned for the rest of 2022.
Having re-animated the job of horror host, our next task is to revive one of the hoariest of horror’s sub-genres, ‘the zombie movie’ (aka ‘the living dead’ aka ‘the infected’). Of course, not all sub-genres are created – or treated – equally, and the humble zombie has taken more of a bloody battering than most. George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) stands as both the rebirth and the high water mark of these films. His radical zombies weren’t just a break from past traditions – where the zombie was more of a creature of the occult – but his micro-budget masterpiece from the fields of Pennsylvania also gave us the seemingly casual revolution of a central Black character with a mind of his own, a visceral rawness to its gut-munching horror, and a progressive political subtext that literally redefined horror cinema overnight.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD became one of the most profitable films of all time, spinning a massive return on its meagre shooting budget (although Romero and co saw nothing of this). Ever since, cinema’s graveyards have been swarming with increasingly tepid cadavers. There have been British, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Venezuelan, Korean, Cuban, African and Scandinavian outbreaks (to name just a few…), multiple remakes and remixes, as well as some explicitly queerer works like Bruce LaBruce’s L.A. ZOMBIE: HARDCORE (2010), and David DeCoteau’s PRISON OF THE DEAD (2000, filmed under one of his several pseudonyms, Victoria Sloan).
However, too many low budget cash-ins have left audiences feeling like The Asylum (direct-to-video producers of z-grade, derivative horror on the SyFy channel), have also taken over The Mortuary. Even the great maestro himself took three too many stumbling missteps, Romero’s spiralling production woes putting a bullet in the brain of his once precious creation. Whilst DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) is rightly acclaimed as a masterpiece – although I prefer original trilogy topper DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) – LAND OF THE DEAD (2005) is patchy, whilst both DIARY… (2007) and SURVIVAL… (2009) make for uncomfortable viewing, and not for the best of reasons.
It probably doesn’t help that the zombie itself has mutated, changing beyond recognition from the ‘all it can eat’ shambolic corpse brought back to life by a trick of the cosmos, to an overheated victim of viral plague, prone to sprinting, snarling, and acts of seemingly superhuman strength. Whilst the unstoppable conveyor belt of the undead may seem a little improbable in our fast-moving age, the swarms of the infected have become equally ludicrous (case in point the CGI ‘meat pyramid’ assaulting the walled city of Jerusalem in WORLD WAR Z, 2013). As Jamie Russell puts it in his seminal work on zombie cinema, Book Of The Dead, “few horror movie monsters are as maligned as the zombie… the great unwashed of horror cinema” (Titan Books, 2014).
Which all makes our next film, David Freyne’s 2017 feature debut THE CURED, even more of a standout gem. THE CURED premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before getting a turn at the BFI London Film Festival and winning ‘Best Horror Feature’ at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It offers a fresh if not unique take on the zombie apocalypse. Set in Ireland after a partial cure has been found for a recent zombie virus, the film explores what happens after we’ve been at each other’s throats, exposing the guilt and hostility manifested on either side of the meat-munching divide. After all, what would happen when you re-introduce previously infected weapons of mass destruction back into the community? And what do you do with those that can’t be treated…?
Starring Sam Keeley, Elliot Page (one of the few trans actors working in the mainstream!) and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Freyne’s film is brought into fresh new light as we ‘learn to live with COVID-19’, serving as both a troubling parable of human behaviour in the aftermath of a global pandemic and a terrifying analysis of how fear and marginalisation are themselves diseases of the mind.
Freyne, an out, gay, Irish filmmaker, told a more direct tale of growing up queer in his second film, DATING AMBER (2020). In THE CURED, his queer perspective gives us haunting memories of HIV/AIDS, homoerotic bonding amongst the pack animals of the infected, and a touching lesbian relationship that may, or may not…, find a further resolution to the troubles triggered by the Maze virus.
We’re proud to present David Freyne’s THE CURED in partnership with Irish Film London as a celebration of Irish queer horror. See you there?
TOKEN HOMO
@tokenhomo / tokenhomo.com
Token Homo & Last Frame Club continue their Queer Horror Nights with David Freyne’s THE CURED (2017) at The Castle Cinema on Sunday 15 May at 2pm. First floor, 64-66 Brooksby’s Walk, Hackney, London E9 6DA.
Booking now: https://thecastlecinema.com/programme/39170/queer-horror-nights-presents-the-cured/
Why we’re launching Queer Horror Nights! by Token Homo, Castle Cinema 27 Feb.
