"Welcome to Derry": "It" prequel with interesting monsters, Cold War paranoia, 1960s racism, and "bury your gays."

 

I've seen the 1990 miniseries and the 2017/2019 movie adaptions of Stephen King's It, with Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgard (left), respectively, playing the transdimensional "destroyer of worlds" who animates every 27 years to kill kids.  The original novel has a gay character (buried right away), and the 2017/2019 adaption has a gay-subtext guy, played by Jack Dylan Grazer and James Ransone, who sort of comes out in a blink-and-you-miss-it gesture. 

So I don't have high hopes for the tv series Welcome to Derry (2025).  The usual Stephen King heavily closeted and buried-right-away traditions will be compounded by the setting: 1962 (every 27 years, remember?).  But we'll give it a look.

Scene 1: The Music Man (1962) is playing on the big screen.  Young teenager Matty (Miles Eckhardt), sucking on a pacifier, watches.  Manager Cal yells at him for sneaking in without paying, and chases him into the lobby.  A girl covers for him (always kind, nurturing girls and blustering, bullying boys, innit?).  

Notice that it's Christmastime (actually January 4, 1962), and Matty has a black eye, signifying that he's a victim of abuse (obviously --what Stephen King kid hasn't been abused?)

Matty runs out into the snow, past a billboard reading "Welcome to Derry, Birthplace of Paul Bunyan.

Several towns claim to be the birthplace of the folk hero, including Ankely, Minnesota (where they hold Paul Bunyan days every summer), and Bangor, Maine.

Left: Camper at the Bunyan festival.

Matty hitchhikes, and is picked up by a male-female couple, a Wednesday Addams-looking girl, and a young boy who spells out everythiing; "L-I-E-S,"  Not R-E-D-R-U-M? Asked where he's going, Matt says "Anywhere but Derry."

Weird family, bragging that the daughter is "our little harlot," and having the boy spell scary words like "necrosis," "kidnapping," "strangulation," and "cadaver."  "I want out!" Matty screams, and they repeat "Out! Out! Out!"  

Mom gives birth to a bloody bat-winged thing that flies around and attacks everyone before deciding to kill Matty.  

A very impressive scene. But what's with introducing a major character, then killing him off?

Scene 2: Four months later, April 1962.  A Femme Boy  is making a list of the fighter planes that fly by.  

The plane lands, and two soldiers get out: Russo and Hanlon (Jovan Adepo, seen here with his boyfriend in Watchmen). Russo complains about being stationed in small-town Derry, where nothing exciting ever happens, har har.  But the Big Boss notes that as the northernmost air force base in the U.S., it's essential to monitor Soviet air space and prep for Cold War era-nuclear war.  Wasn't Alaska a state in 1962?  

Hanlon has rented a house in town; he and the Missus are longing for "normal."

"Well, if normal is what you're looking for, you're going to love Derry."  Har-har.

Scene 3: Cut to the "idyllic" small town.  A year after Bay of Pigs led the world to the brink of nuclear war, everyone is on edge. At the high school, they practice "duck and cover."

A teen girl walks through the halls, getting stared at and pranked by jars of pickles.  Her friend consoles her.

Meanwhile, Femme Boy tells his boyfriend Teddy (Mikkal Karim Fidler), "We're not alone in the universe."  He doesn't mean gay people, seven years before Stonewall -- he means aliens.  Maybe they have one hidden in the Derry Air Base.  Boyfriend thinks he's crazy.  

"Teddy sucks balls" on his locker. Homophobic or all-purpose slur?

"Did you study for the test?"

"What's the point, when World War III is imminent?"

Femme Boy is played by Jack Molloy Legault, who fills his instagram with photos of his girlfriend (except for this one with the director).  But I assume that Mikkel Karim Fidler is gay in real life because, when his talent agency got him tickets to the advance screening of Karate Kid: Legends, his date was a boy. 

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Russell Posner: The incredibly cute gay teen of "The Mist" plays a politician, gets tied up, shows his dick, and vanishes. With bonus nude Morgan Spector and Jack Black

I used this photo of an incredibly well hung guy as an  illustration for my profile of the Norwegian Fire Viking.  He looks a lot like the incredibly cute Russell Posner, so I thought I would do a profile, on the off chance that they are the same person.

Turns out that the incredibly cute Russell Posner is not too easy to track down.

Famous Birthdays promises "A complete biography," but the complete biography consists of: "Canadian actor, born in 2003." 

Rotten Tomatoes adds: "began acting in commercials while in elementary school, and made his stage debut in Lost in Yonkers in 2012." When he was nine years old?

Broadway World likewise promises a "complete biography," and says only that he starred in The Mist.

His listing on We Audition says only that he's a "New York based actor" 

Trying to find him by googling "Russell Posner" and any of "high school," "college," "theater," "commercials," "Canada," and "actor" yields a guy from Florida who died at age 77 and a postdoctoral researcher in oncology.

Plus a shirtless photo of an incredibly cute guy who doesn't look like him.

Russell has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, beginning with the 11 year old son in Eugene! (2012), a tv movie starring Eugene Mirman.

He played the 14-year old son of  Dan Landsman (Jack Black) in The D Train (2015).  Dan is organizing a high school reunion, and tries to get the most popular guy in school, Oliver (James Marsden), to come.  They end up doing some incredibly sexy stuff, but the buns belong to Dan as he gets up from a tryst with his wife.

Next Russell played the son of a journalist who decides to research The Pirates of Somalia (2017).

Russell's most famous work to date is in The Mist (2017), based on the Stephen King novel.  I just read the plot synopsis on the fan wiki, but it sounds incredibly homophobic:

As a murderous mist descends upon the town, high school Adrian (Russell) is at a party with his girlfriend, getting bullied for being gay (wait, that doesn't...).  Later while taking refuge in a hospital, he kisses Tyler (Chris Gray), who beats him up, then relents and agrees to sex.

He is kidnapped by a psych ward patient who sees "the incredible evil" in him.  They must mean being gay.

His Dad says that he could have loved him "in spite of being gay,"  if only he were "right in the head."  In spite of?  

More after the break

Ten Nude Dudes from Rejected Reviews, Part 2: From Ben Affleck to Bill Skalsgard

 

Every day I check the new releases and my recommendations, beginning with Netflix, and then going on to Hulu, MAX, and, scraping the bottom of the barrel, Amazon Prime, looking for movies or tv series to review.   They should be in a genre that I like, with gay characters, gay subtexts, or at least some beefcake. 

Most are easy to reject, icons with ladies only, a man and a woman gazing at each other, or guys shooting things. 

Sometimes I just jump in, but usually research is necessary to ensure that there are no nasty surprises, like queerbaiting or homophobic jokes. 

The result is a lot of n*de dudes with no review attached.  

1. Garrett Clayton, top photo, in Reach, 2018.  Socially awkward band geek Stephen, Garrett Clayton,  is planning to kill himself due to the constant bullying, until the new k*d at school, Jordan Doww, falls in love...um, befriends him.   According to a review, it's supposed to be a gay romance, but they "staunchly refuse to say the word," although there are a lot of homophobic slurs thrown around...at a performing arts school in 2016?

2. Stephen Luca in Blame the Game, 2024. Three male-female couples gather for their weekly game night. Two of the guys, Stephen Luca and Dennis Mojen, get naked, but nothing comes of it. In fact, the new guy gets tormented by his girlfriend's ex.

3. Ben Affleck in Going All the Way, which just appeared on Netflix, even though it's from 1996. After returning from the Korean War, two men, Jeremey Davies and Ben Affleck,  search for love and fulfillment in Middle America. Sounds fine, except in the icon, they're in the background of a shot of a woman's breasts, and according to the plot synopsis, they don't become a gay couple.

Left: Ben dick.  You already know what his face looks like.

4. Jaeden Martel in Mr Harrigan's Phone, 2022.   A teenager makes friends with an elderly hellraiser, who dies, but continues to call him, and arrange for the deaths of his enemies. No girls in the plot synopsis or trailer, but the wikipedia page reveals that he has a crush on a girl.  Why do they hide that? To lure queer viewers in?

5. Nicholas Alexander Chavez as a hunky priest in Grotesquerie, 2024. I actually started watching. The detective arrives at the house.  The cop tells her that they should let the FBI handle it, because it's a hate crime.  "Hate crime against what?" she asks.  "Everything."  

A nuclear family Mom and two preteen boys have been killed and placed at the dinner table.  Dad's body parts are scattered all over.  The timer goes off: whatever is cooking in the pot is read.  I'll bet it's Dad's head.

I fast forward...it's women talking to other women for 45 minutes, and then the detective in bed with her boyfriend. And it turns out to be a tv show, not a movie.  Next!

More Chavez after the break