Chillerama, 2011

Here we are at number 15 in my queer horror marathon. Excitement! For those who have been following along with me, you’ve likely noticed a transformation in my approach to writing about these films. As the marathon unfolds, I’ve focused increasingly more on the content of the films and less on the actual craft. I am going to continue in this way for the remainder of the marathon and for any future marathons I do going forward. It’s not particularly insightful for me to tell you that Chillerama is shaky when it comes to craft. What’s more interesting is what’s going on with the queerness of the film. That being said, I’ll still give you my honest recommendation, and with Chillerama I’d suggest a hard pass.

Chillerama is an anthology film with a lot of penis jokes and a drive-in cinema premise that ties the segments together. One of the segments of the anthology, titled “I Was a Teenage Werebear,” is unquestionably queer. This segment is musical, set in the 1960s, and features a closeted gay teen who wrestles with his sexuality after meeting a group of leather-daddy werebears. Richard Scheib of the Moria film review blog is more enthused about it than me. He describes the segment thusly:

“Tim Sullivan’s I Was a Teenage Werebear is his take on I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and the various Gidget and Beach Party movies of the early 1960s – all with an amusingly gay spin. (Sullivan, who can be spotted in the segment as the phys ed coach, is a gay filmmaker himself. It is not that queer filmmakers have not taken to all the homoerotic undertones in the Beach Party film before as witness Psycho Beach Party (2000). The rather amusing joke that I Was a Teenage Werebear offers up is that when the young hero is bitten by a werewolf, he turns into is a ‘bear’ – a hairy macho gay man dressed in studded leather briefs. The episode comes with songs that have hilarious lyrics “I’ve got a feeling I’m going to explode/How much longer do I have to hold my load?” We even get a gay-themed parody of the famous “even a man who is pure in heart …” speech from The Wolf Man (1941).”

To be fair, the type of frat-boy humor throughout Chillerama is not my style. My robot, lady brain can’t even register it, so perhaps I am being a bit harsh. Some people may enjoy this tongue-in-cheek penis bonanza (Is that a gay joke? Can’t compute). Let me recommend some other queer horror comedies, so ya’ll have some variety in your life: Seed of Chucky, Jennifer’s Body, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.