"The Final Girls": Psycho-slasher parody with two queer characters and Adam Devine's bulge

In The Final Girls (2015), not to be confused with Final Girl (2015), actress Amanda and her daughter Max are driving home from an audition that she bombed.  She complains that she is typecast as a "scream queen" due to a role in the famous psycho-slasher movie, Camp Bloodbath, back in the 1980s.  She was the Final Girl, the one who didn't have sex, and therefore got to live.  

But not in real life: at that moment, they get into a car crash.  Mom dies!  

 Three years later, Max is in college, studying with her Love Interest Chris (Alexander Ludwig) and a couple of female friends, when horror fan Duncan (Thomas Middleditch, below) talks them into going to a midnight showing of the movie and its sequel.

Remember, Max is still mourning her mother.  Why go to a movie where a psycho-slasher is trying to kill a younger version of her?  But she goes.  Otherwise be lousy story.

Suddenly, zap!  They are trapped in the movie...and the psycho-slasher is stalking them, too!  They have to use their wits and knowledge of the genre to defeat him.

The first character they meet is Kurt (Adam Devine), an obnoxious jock with the inflated ego and braggadochio of Adam's usual characters, but much more mean-spirited.  He is also apparently bisexual -- he hits on boys and girls both, and thinks that gays "have a cool lifestyle."  Interestingly, instead of a homophobic slur, he tells Chris to "suck a turd." 

Like most psycho-slashers in the movies of the 1980s, Billy (Daniel Norris) targets teenagers having sex, so so when Kurt strips down to his bulge while his girlfriend waits in the next room, Chris the Love Interest rushes in to distract him.  Try showing him your dick -- oh, wait, the killer is attracted to gay sex, too.

The other queer character is Blake (Tory N. Thompson), who also black.  You know what happens to the black guy in psycho-slasher movies, right? Gulp! 

Next the visitors from our universe try warning the characters about the psycho-slasher.  Remember, Max is interacting with the movie version of her own mother, so she'd rather not see her skewered.

The plan backfires: everyone runs away screaming.  

Kurt and his girlfriend try to drive away, but they hit a totem pole and die (Kurt is pretzeled).   But in the original movie, they survived!  The intruders have tampered with the plot, and now all the rules are off.  No one will survive.

Well, some survive.  You'll have to watch the movie to find out who. 

Beefcake: Quite a lot of Adam.

Heterosexism: No one actually has sex, for obvious reasons. Some girl boobs.

Queer Characters: Kurt and Blake,  through queer codes instead of self-identification.  But this is supposed to be the 1980s, when you were lucky to get that much representation.  Writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller are a gay couple, and speaking to their own experiences as horror fans.  

My grade: A-

Underground Railroad: a gay slave rides a real railroad in a surrealistic South, with a Gemstone alum and nude actors

 

The Underground Railroad was a network of safe houses and allies that helped enslaved African-Americans escape to the North, or after the Fugitive Slave Act, to Canada.  

The 2023 tv miniseries suggests that it was a real railroad, a series of trains and tunnels run by an intricate bureaucracy. As Cora and her friends and love interests head north, pursued by slave-catcher Arnold Ridgeway, they encounter bizarre communities and have adventures that comment on the racism in the pre-Civil War South and the contemporary U.S.

I reviewed Chapter 1, "Georgia."

Scene 1: Surreal montage of people running backwards, falling into a chasm, being all bloody, and finally Cora telling us: "The first and last thing my mama gave me was apologies."  Cut to Caesar (Aaron Pierre, left) asking Cora to head north with him, for "good luck."  She refuses.  The way they keep pushing their heads at each other, they appear to be a romantic couple. 

Scene 2: Whooping and dancing in the slave compound.  Cora brings the older Jockey some food.  Their owners appear: Terrence (Benjamin Walker, left), who runs the other half of the plantation, disapproves of the "lenient" way that James treats his slaves. So they ask a kid to recite the Declaration of Independence.   They mean the Declaration of Secession, so the Civil War is on.  How is anyone heading North?   He can't do it right, and he accidentally touches them, so Terrence has him beaten to death. And Cora, for intervening. They are left chained to the whipping post all night.

Scene 3: In the morning, the ladies tend to Cora's wounds, and Caesar takes her home. Later, his wife Frances says "I know about men like you. You sneak off in the night and roll around in the swamp with other mens on your back."  Ok, so Caesar is gay.  She's fine with it, but master brought them together to reproduce, and if they don't, Master Randall will cut off his dick, so get with your husbandly duties!  

Scene 4: Prideful (Lucius Baston), the black overseer, tells Cora that she's being moved.  She resists (I can't imagine why -- her new owner can't be much worse). 

Cut to James walking through the woods.  He's nice to a little boy named Hezekiah  then coughs and collapses. 

Cut to Terrence in the fields, telling the slaves that his brother James has died, so now he owns the whole plantation, and will stop being "lenient": no more parties, no more outside work, and he'll be overseeing the "breeding,"  Perv just wants to watch couples doing it.  He also wants to have sex with Cora.

Scene 5: Slave catcher Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton, left and below and his assistant, a young black kid named Homer (Chase W. Dillon), have a very muscular escaped slave, Big Anthony (Elijah Everett), in a cage. They return him to Terrence's plantation. 

Ridgeway advises Terrence to place some moles in the fields to rat out talk of escape.  An underground railroad has appeared to abet runaways. Terrence doesn't believe it, but Ridgeway asks him why some escaped slaves disappear forever, as if they've gone to a new world. An alternative reality with no slave trade?

 They discuss his biggest failure -- he couldn't capture Mabel who escaped long ago, when Terrence's father was alive.  Terrence avers that Mabel was evil -- even her daughter Cora is evil -- so his failure to find her is understandable.

Wait -- her daughter?  Maybe she knows something!  Ridgeway interrogates/ sexually assaults her. 

More after the break

Christopher Atkins: Nude photos of my West Hollywood friend and 1980s gay icon (who never played a gay role)

 

I met Christopher Atkins a few times when I lived in California: my friend was starring with him in a Smokey and the Bandits rip-off.  

Recently we became facebook friends. Well, me and 3,800 other people.  But I'm one of the few who responds to his posts.

"Come on, Christopher, it's big, but not big enough to write your entire name and a heart on." (I didn't really say that.)

Christopher was one of the first actors to go full frontal on the big screen.  Several times.Here he shows off in his iconic but immensely heterosexist Blue Lagoon (1980).  At the time, he hated performing nude.

In A Night in Heaven (1983), he played a male stripper at a ladies-only club. 

In real life Christopher has been a gay ally since the start of his career.  While other actors were insisting that only women enjoyed looking at their physique, he was happily discussing his appeal to gay fans in magazines like The Advocate.

More after the break

The boy on the Prospect List

 

When I was growing up in Rock Island,  anyone who set foot inside the Nazarene Church for any reason, but didn't "get saved" and become a member, was placed on the Prospect List.

Even if they just came for Vacation Bible School, or to cheer for a friend at a Jump Quiz Tournament.

They stayed on that list forever, unless they asked to be removed or the Church Board decided to purge the list of names from many years ago.

(All models are over 18)

Every August, about a month before the fall revival, our Sunday school teacher gave each of us the contact information for 10 age- and -gender appropriate Prospects.  We were supposed to make it our business to "win them for the Lord," or at least invite them to church.

During the next month, we received 1 point for each Prospect that we prayed for, 2 points for each letter or post card, 5 points for each telephone call, and 10 points for each in-person visit, plus an extra 10 point if they actually came to church.

You might think that the Prospects would be buried in letters or harassed by constantly-ringing telephones, but in fact most people settled for prayer. It's a daunting prospect to cold-call someone you don't know, who has been to your church just once.

During the fall revival, the kid, teenager, and adult with the most points received awards, usually Bibles, while the whole congregation clapped and yelled "Amen!"

During the summer after 5th grade, the first year I was eligible, I wimped out with "prayer only."

In 6th grade,  I sent a few post cards.

In 7th grade, I tried phone calls, only to get two "wrong numbers" (which didn't count) and one "You made a mistake -- I never went to that church."

During the summer after 8th grade, I decided to go all the way with a personal visit.

I was fascinated by a name that appeared on the Prospect List every year: Francis DePew, who came to Vacation Bible School one summer, but never appeared again. He was in the same grade as me, and he lived on the Hill, but he didn't go to Washington Junior High.

That meant he went to Jordan Catholic School!

The Preacher told us all about Catholics!  When they weren't worshipping idols and being brainwashed by evil priests, they were laughing in the face of God, drinking, smoking, dancing, playing cards, going to movies.  But their favorite form of sin was the sex orgy, men cavorting with other men's wives, teenagers having sex without being married, all manner of abominations, as in the days before the Flood!

All manner of abominations?  I had to meet this Francis DePew!  Maybe I could get him to the altar, where he would cry and apologize to God, and I could wrap my arm around his waist and hug him.

Besides, Catholics were as difficult to win for Christ as Muslims!  He would be good practice for when Dan and I became missionaries to Saudi Arabia.

During the August before 9th grade, Dan and I rode our bikes past Francis DePew's house nearly every day.

He lived a few blocks from the church, nearly across the street from the Saukie Golf Course that the Preacher was always complaining about.

A nice house, big but nothing special.  I got  a little frisson of dread imagining the Satanic orgies going on inside every night.

Then one Saturday afternoon, we hit the jackpot: a cute, muscular teenage boy, washing a car, with his shirt off!

We stopped. "Hey, cool car," I said.

"Thanks.  It's my brother's. He pays me a dollar to wash it, and when I get my driver's license, I can have it."


"Are you Francis DePew?"

"Frank."  He eyed me suspiciously.  "Do you go to Jordan?"

"No way!"  I exclaimed, offended.  "We go to Washington. I..um...I'm on the wrestling team, and I thought I recognized you from a tournament."

"No, we we don't have wrestling.  I was on the football team last year, though."

"Oh, that's it! From a football game...I thought you had the build for wrestling."  Dan nudged me, signifiying that I had said too much.  Or maybe he wanted to be included in the conversation.  Why should I hog the cute guy?  "Um...I'm Boomer, and this is Dan."

"Hi."  Frank shook hands with us both.  "Do you play football?"


How was I going to get the conversation away from sports and onto church?  "Um...no, I'm too busy with Jump Quiz."

"What's that?"

"It's a great sport," Dan offered.  "You have to use your brain and your muscles.  Especially your legs.  We could teach you..."

And then invite him to come to a tournament, and get him saved!  I thought excitedly.  But the Jump Quiz was about the Bible.  The Preacher said that Catholics couldn't read or even touch Bibles -- the holiness zapped them like an electric shock.

"Do you...do you know anything about the Bible?" I asked tentatively.

"Oh, I know a little bit."

A few days later, Frank invited us to his house -- my first time ever in a Catholic house. It wasn't scary at all, except for the "evil" crucifix in the living room.

We set up folding chairs on the patio, and took turns reading the questions and competing one-on-one, with breaks to throw a frisbee to his dog. Frank knew about as much about the Bible as I did, and his muscular legs made him a jump quiz natural.

After an hour, we declared the game a tie, and Frank's mother invited us into the kitchen for sodas and ice cream sandwiches.

"That was fun," Frank said.  "And it really gives your legs a workout.  We should use it for football training."


"It's a big deal at my church.  We have the local eliminations in October, and then the district, and you can go all the way to the Internationals, and get a college scholarship. You should...."  But Frank was being so nice that I felt guilty about the mercenary goal of winning him for Christ.  "You should start a team at your church."

So I didn't win the Prospect. Instead, he won me.

I met a nice guy, and I realized that Catholics weren't as scary and evil as the Preacher kept saying.   In fact, the first person I spent the night with, two years later, was a Maronite Catholic boy from Lebanon.

The Nazarene Teen Idol

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, twice a year, in the fall and the spring, we had a "revival": a full week of screeching, foot-stomping, Bible-thumping sermons by an evangelist who made his living going from revival to revival, getting people saved and sanctified.

You were encouraged to bring your friends who went to other churches, and thus might not be amenable to visiting on a Sunday morning.  But on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night, they were free, right?

We did get a few converts during every revival, but not nearly enough for the evangelist, who stomped and shouted with more and more urgency as the week wore on and nearly everyone who needed to get saved was already saved and only a few people went down. Or no one.

The only bright spot of the whole ordeal was the gospel group that accompanied the evangelist. During the fall revival in my junior year in high school, the evangelist was the young, muscular but bellowing Brother Jonathan, and the musical group was the Smith Family (not to be confused with the punk rock group the Smiths, which I have several times).

They sang fast, upbeat songs which I assumed they wrote -- there were records for sale in the lobby.  Church oldsters used to old Salvation Army-style ballads like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" were scandalized by their country-inflected lyrics, not to mention their guitars, drums, and tambourines.  One of their songs goes through my head intermittently to this day:

I've got confidence, God is going to see me through
Whatever the case may be, I know He's gonna fix it for me.

(I just discovered that "I've Got Confidence" was not a Smith Family original: it was composed by Andre Crouch and popularized by Elvis Presley.)

I haven't been able to find any photos -- too much interference from other Smiths on the internet -- but they looked something like this: middle-aged husband and young-adult daughter as the lead singers (baritone and soprano), teenage son on the guitar, preteen son on the drums, and wife on the tambourine, piano, or organ.

 Scott, the teenage son, was a year younger than me, tall and buffed with big hands, a round face, short blond hair, and dreamy blue eyes.  The Nazarene equivalent of a teen idol, our own Shaun Cassidy!  I was desperate to become his friend, or at least feel a warm strong handshake, but I didn't have a chance.  He was mobbed.

Girls were swooning, batting their eyes at him, writing him love notes under the guise of prayer requests.  Old people (anyone over 30) were pushing to tell him what a "fine Christian boy" he was and getting him to autograph any piece of paper they could find, even the "notes" page of their study Bibles.  Boys were rushing to kneel at the altar in the hopes that Scott would come down from the podium and put his arm around them as they moaned and cried and "prayed through to victory."

Unfortunately, I couldn't join them at the altar, because I had made a major tactical error.  You could go down only to get saved (forgiven of the sins you had committed), sanctified (made holy, so you would be incapable of future sins), or to help someone else pray through.   And, not knowing that Scott would be there, I got sanctified just a few weeks ago!

Going down again so soon would be admitting that I had never been sanctified at all -- that I had been deceived by Satan into rising from the altar without praying through. Or that I was lying to get the praise and prestige.  A major faux pas. a major humiliation!

Every night I sat in my pew during Brother Jonathan's altar call, counting the teenage boys who went down, calculating whether the chance of Scott choosing me to pray with was worth a public humiliation. Every night I decided against it.

More after the break

"Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates": bulges and biceps, but where's the plot?

 

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) gets a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. A reviewer says that "It's definitely a movie to watch when you don't want to think too much." 

 I always want to think while watching a movie; structural analysis is the fun part. But it stars Adam Devine, whose jaw-dropping gorgeosity makes almost anything watchable, and his bromantic partner Zac Efron, who is also sort of cute, so here goes.

Scene 1:  Mike (Adam) is trying to sell his brand of tequila to a bar owner, using Dave (Zac) as a plant.  Except the bartender knows him -- they hang out! And the guys try this every couple of weeks.  He buys the tequila anyway.  The guys hug.  Zac is established as heterosexual in Minute 1.

Scene 2: Montage of the guys frolicking at parties -- trampoline, fireworks, kissing girls.. Beefcake shots of both. . Cut to them returning to their apartment to find two heterosexual couples -- Mom and Dad!  I'm guessing Mom and Dad got divorced and married other people, so there are four parents. 

They complan that the guys keep going to parties stag, htting on girls, and ruining things.  Wait -- in the montage, everyone was having fun. Nothing was ruined.  And the "hitting on girls" was a mutual flirtation, not a sleazy come-on.  Mom and Dad are being unreasonable.

Uh-oh, the montage was an unreliable narrator.  A lot of those parties turned into disasters. So Mom and Dad lay down the law: at the upcoming wedding, they must each bring a date (they specify a girl).  How will that keep the fireworks from destroying a camper, or grandpa from being pushed into his birthday cake?

Oh, and it turns out that the second couple is their sister Jeannie and her fiance Erik (Sam Richardson)

Character development: Mike is aggressive, easily-angered, and a schemer, while Dave is quiet, stable, and has to be talked into the craziness.  Mike saved Dave from bullies when they were in school. Shouldn't Dave be saving Mike?  Zac Efron is about twice as muscular as Adam Devine, and has a bigger dick, and everybody knows that you need a big dick to fight bullies.

Scene 3:  Betty and Veronica (um...I mean Alice and Tatiana) working in a sleazy bar. Alice gets drunk and dances on a table, so the boss fires them both.  They go home and watch a video of Alice getting dumped at the altar (by Kyle Smigielski, left), and exclaim "Fuck him right in the dick!"  I'm not sure a dick can get fucked by anothe dick.  Sounded, maybe. They reminisce about vodka brownies and wet t-shirt contests.

Meanwhile, the guys wonder where they can find nice, respectable girls to take to the wedding: Match.com, Tinder, Grindr (really?), Craigslist? 

They post their ad - "two incredibly gorgeous guys offer a free weekend in Hawaii" -- and the number of responses breaks the internet. 

Bob (Bob Turton) sees the ad. His friends tell him it's just for girls; he replies "that's not a dealbreaker," and goes to the interview in drag. He explains that he's new to drag, but he just got out of a divorce, and wants to fuck. They refuse graciously. 

Two lesbians respond: "I'm not really looking for a heteronormative relationship."  That's not what heteronormative means, ladies. 

Other responses: druggies, sleazoids, prostitutes, a racist. Check, please!

Scene 4: The guys discussing their plight on the Wendy show. She wants to know how two incredibly gorgeous guys have trouble finding dates. "Well, we only want nice, respectable girls." That doesn't explain it, dude. Sleazoids Tatiana and Alice, getting high in their underwear, see the show and figure that they can play respectable.

Later, the guys are in a bar, bemoaning their plight: because of Dad's "old tomato" (ultimatum -- these boys are dumb with a capital q),  they won't be able to attend their sister's wedding.  Cue the girls in ridiculous pink skirts and 1960s hairdos. How did they find out where the guys are?   Tatiana stages a meeting by leaping onto the windshield of a taxi and pretending to be hurt, so Mike can give her inept mouth-to-mouth.

Scene 5: In a bar getting to know each other, the girls make up jobs (school teacher and hedge fund manager) and back stories ("My ex died of cancer...in a plane crash.").  Veronica (I mean Tatiana) makes risque double entendres at Mike and gets him eroused. Dave shows his girl, Betty (I mean Alice)  his drawings of  anthropomorphized booze, including a unicorn with an erect penis-horn.  Like penises, Dave?  Minimal plot dump: he wants to be an artist, but is being held back by his low self-esteem. And before you know it, they're off to Hawaii.

Left: random naked Hawaiian guy

More after the break