"The Dead Don't Die": By-the-numbers Zombie Apocalypse, with some gay subtexts and Josh O'Connor's dick

  

The problem with Movie Night is, I'm asked to choose something from the "new selections" on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime,  and MAX, with no research, just a cover blurb.  Then, if it turns out to be awful, I get blamed: "You picked this!"  

Last night I selected The Dead Don't Die on Hulu, because it starred Bill Murry and it was about zombies in a small town.  I was wondering if anything new could be said about zombies after so many years of being blasted by Zombie Apocalypses.  

No. Other than a few absurdist touches, like characters being aware that they're in a movie and an alien spaceship that appears out of nowhere, picks up Tilda Swinton, and vanishes, it's the standard. Due to..um...fracking?,,, day and night get mixed up, cell phones don't work, and the dead re-animate.  

They crawl out of their graves, fully corporeal,  even though some have been dead for centuries -- and eat the living in a small Pennsylvania town.  Maybe everywhere in the world. The only suspense is wondering who will get eaten next.

This movie needs an editor.  Cop #1 enters the diner to look at the two zombie-eaten waitresses. We see one, then the other, with their innards turned into spaghetti.  Cop #2 enters to look.  We see one, then the other again.  Cop #3 enters to look.  We see one, then the other a third time!  

But on the bright side, there is no hetero-romance, and we see many gay subtexts.  Probably unintentional.

The main zombies and zombie-dinners are:

1.-3. Three big city hipsters:Austin Butler, top photo; Luka Sabbat; and Selena Gomez.  They stop for gas and for some reason decide to stay overnight in the town's decrepit hotel instead of continuing on to Pittsburgh. Selena flirts with every guy in sight, even when she doesn't want to get something from him, but there's no indication that she's dating either of her companions.

4-7. Police officers Bill Murray and Adam Driver, second photo.  Adam asks the female police officer at the station for a date, and Bill had an affair with town drunk Carol Kane.  But the two end up together, with a sort of buddy-bonding going on before they are killed.

8-9. Neither racist farmer Steve Buscemi nor cat-loving hotel manager Larry Fessenden, left, have wives at home, mention dead wives, or flirt with the gals at the diner.

10-12. Caleb Landry Jones, who played a gay guy in Stonewall, runs the gas station/horror movie memorabilia shop, seems to have a crush on delivery  driver RZA.  He almost asks him for a date, but loses his nerve. Later he is trapped in a hardware store with Danny Glover, and almost grabs his hand before they are eaten.

Bonus: Caleb Landry's butt

More after the break

"Bodkin": 10 minutes of gritty urban crime, then paranormal pagans, with some gay teases and a nude Irish bloke

 Netflix has been pushing and pushing the tv series Bodkin at me.  I have no idea what it's about, except that "bodkin" comes from the old expletive  "odds bodkin,"   But I'm running low on content to review, so let's go in.  It's 4:00 am, so I'm watching on my laptop, with the sound muted.  This will be important later.

Scene 1: Establishing shot of a city I don't recognize. Narrator Gilbert Power says: "When I started this podcast, I didn't expect to solve anything.  I didn't expect it to change my life."  Let me guess: by meeting the Girl of Your Dreams?  "But most of all, I didn't expect Dove." Yep.

Scene 2: Dove, the Girl of His Dreams, a rather hard, scruffy looking sort, enters a sleazy apartment, calling for Krtek.  Sounds Polish -- maybe this is Warsaw? The place is a mess.  "How long have you been holed up here?"  Uh-oh, he's hanging in the bathroom.  Suicide!  A cheery way to begin.  

Before the Girl can react, there's a knock on the door: a priest in a devil's mask.  She directs him to Dave's Halloween party upstairs. Dave is not a Polish name.. The devil priest calls her "mate," so we must be in Britain.  Not London, though.

Scene 3: Establishing shot of a pedestrian bridge, a welcome relief after the near-impenetrable darkness of Scene 2.  Dove tells the Boss that she's been investigating this story for 18 months, and she's not stopping now. He points out that her key informant just hung himself, so she's in danger and needs to stop. 

"Nope, I'm obsessed."

"This scandal could get us all shut down!  I'm putting you on another story. In Ireland."

"Ireland!  No fucking way would I ever go back to that horrible place after all of the horrible things happened to me there!"

"Tough,  you're going.  It's the best place to hide, because no ever goes to Ireland.  You'll be working with your Love Interest, a podcaster named Gilbert Power."

"No way!  I hate podcasters. Sadistic necrophiliacs!"

Scene 4: At the Dublin airport, someone is screaming at Gilbert (Will Forte), calling him a sadistic necrophiliac who gets off on murder.  I guess a lot of people hate podcasters.

"I'm more into hearing people's stories.  The mystery of the human heart." Dove interrupts, astonished that anyone would fall for that load of b.s.

Gilbert introduces himself and the girl who is screaming at him, his research assistant Emily.  She tries to be friendly, but Dove rudely ignores her. So the employee of a podcaster thinks that podcasters are monsters! 

Scene 5: Back to the near-impenetrable darkness as the three and their driver head through a scary forest in County Cork.  They're going to have lunch, and then investigate the site where the scary, disturbing Samhain festival was held. 

Wait -- what about the gritty crime story Dove was investigating back home?  Was it all irrelevant, just a very long excuse to get her to Ireland?  So the real story is about neopagans with crazy, murderous rituals, like Midsommar?  That's annoying -- I spent ten minutes searching for a character named Krtek  (it means "short") and a pedestrian bridge in Warsaw.

Their driver, Sean (Chris Walley, top photo and left),  tries to be friendly, but Dove rudely ignores him.  Geez, this lady is a total jerk.  Maybe she'll be redeemed by her Love Interest

The mystery: 25 years ago, three unrelated people disappeared during a local Samhain festival.  They closed it down, but now it's up again, so no doubt more people will be eaten by a Samhain monster.

Scene 6: They take photos at the site of the festival, praising its beauty, but I think it's dark and depressing.  Check your color pallette, editors!  Driver Sean points out a billboard praising a local amoral monster, who went to Silicon Valley, made shitload of money, and then returned to destroy the town by building a server farm. I imagine that he'll be the Big Bad of the series.

"Wait -- I don't want high tech," Gilbert exclaims. "I want to see small, isolated, quaint, traditions from 300 years ago still in use, and not a single cell phone."

Dove buys sunglasses for a dismal, overcast day.  A little girl praises them, and she says "Fuck off!"  Gilbert, baby, the Girl of Your Dreams is a sociopath.

Scene 7: In the quaint town of Bodkin, they interview two geezers, who make fun of Gilbert for doing podcasts -- but know what happened to the missing lads 25 years ago: Geezer #1: "A rogue wave got 'em."  Geezer #2: "They were disturbing the fairy stones, so they were eviscerated.  You don't disrespect the fairies!" So we're going to have some paranormal.  That's more interesting than that stupid organized-crime story back home.

Scene 8: In their bed-and-breakfast, the manager makes fun of them for doing a podcast, and criticizes Americans for being stupid and obese. In another room, a spirit-animal wolf stares at Dove, then leaps out the window. She assumes that it was a dog, but the landlady, hearing about it, gets all flustered and distracted. Besides, there haven't been any wolves in Ireland since the 18th century.

Scene 9: Next stop: Ailibhe's Hollow, a circle of stones where the villagers held their Samhain Festival until that night 25 years ago. The smiling, chubby Darragh arrives to explain that the festival was really used for a "sneaky ride." Figure it out yourself. Meanwhile, Dove calls headquarters to complain about Gilbert being an idiot.  She's anxious to get home and work on real stories.

More after the break

"We're Here": Drag queens bring love to homophobic small towns. With bonus small town guys' dicks

When I "figured it out," back in the 1980s, I immediately started looking for a safe place, where you weren't asked "What girl do you like?" every thirty seconds, where your friends wouldn't run away in horror if they found out, where you didn't have to hide all the time.  

Everyone did. They called it The Great Gay Migration: every gay man who could afford it, and many who couldn't, fled from their homophobic small towns to the gay neighborhoods of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York -- that's all we knew about, at first.  Later, some chose smaller gay neighborhoods in Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, and Toronto.  We went home once a year, maybe, to field questions about the hotness of California girls at Thanksgiving Dinner.

We knew that some LGBT people stayed home, or made the Great Gay Migration, then changed their minds and went back.  We had no idea why.  I still don't, after watching several episodes of We're Here, a reality series where three drag queens sashay down the street in small, redneck towns like Selma, Alabama; Watertown, South Dakota; and St. George, Utah.  I'd be afraid to go near them, even as  cisgender and masculine-presenting.  Establishing shots minimize the horrified looks and screeching about the Book of Leviticus, probably because you have to get the screechers' release: most people seem delighted by the sashaying queens in their dull, colorless town.

The queens teach some of the locals the basics of drag, like how to hide your bulge, and put on a show with them. 

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, amid the Confederate flags and monuments, they help:

A femme guy who works the makeup counter at the drug store.  His only gay friend in town moved to Philadelphia.  Why didn't you?

A cisgender straight guy who wants to do drag as an ally.

A woman who rejected her daughter when she came out as bisexual -- "I just thought, 'she's going over to the enemy."  Then she found the daughter's diary, and wondered what she did to make the girl consider suicide.  Being rejected by the family, maybe?  She wants to do drag to restore the relationship.

In the immensely Mormon, cowboy-redneck Twin Falls, Idaho, which looks horrible no matter how hard the queens work at finding it quaint, they help:

A queen who can spend months without ever seeing another queer person.

A reformed homophobe -- "I threw the slurs around.  I just thought, 'They're bad people.  Good people don't do that.'"

A transman and his wife. who haven't exactly been rejected by the family -- "Mom came to our wedding, but she wasn't happy about it."

In Christian-central Branson, Missouri, they help:

A Dad who wants to do drag to become more emotionally available to his sick daughter.

Tanner, who came out at age 17.  His mother was completely supportive.  Then he decided that he had to choose God over the "homosexual lifestyle."  She doesn't get it.  He wants to do drag do let Mom know that it's ok, he's going to heaven, so he doesn't need sex or romance on Earth.

Grr -- the second thing I did after "figuring it out" was to find a gay-friendly church, and there was one in my homophobic small town 40 years ago.  Somebody tell this guy that the five "clobber verses" in the Bible have nothing to do with contemporary LGBT people or committed gay relationships, being gay is ok in most mainstream Protestant churches, and 70% of young evangelicals support gay marriage.

More after the break

"My Life with the Walter Boys": Five brothers, three hunks, and an instant replay of the Kelvin/Keefe "are they really gay?" mishegas

  

I dislike tv series about how small towns are so much better than big cities, with good old fashioned down-home values -- which means gender-polarization,  mom baking pies and dad watching football, plus heterosexism, every boy gazing wistfully at a girl.  

But My Life with the Walter Boys, on Netflix, is about a big-city girl who moves to a ranch in Colorado, for some reason, where the family has five boys!  Including Cole, played by 25 yer old Noah LaLonde (top photo)!  I'm going to review Episode 3, which has the Homecoming Huddle -- a dance, i guess -- to check for gay characters.

Scene 1: In the rustic barn, Sensitive Alex (22-year old Ashby Gentry) is telling focus character Jackie the colorful history of the family's cider wagon and explaining how important home coming is.

Cut to Brooding Cole, practicing football with his little sister,  who is playing her first junior football game.  He'll be in the stands cheering her on. At least no one is uptight about breaking gender stereotypes.  As he bends over, he winces -- uh-uh, injury.

Scene 2: Two boys at the kitchen table, while Dad (Marc Blucas, left) talks to someone about the pests eating their crops.  Hopefully the new pesticide will kill the lot.  Mom comes in -- wait I thought it was a single dad -- and drinks coffee while discussing farm stuff.

Scene 3: At school, Jackie's friend thanks her for not telling Brooding Cole's girlfriend that they're cheating on her (Horndog Cole apparently cheats on everybody with everybody).   

On to a meeting of the fundraising committee for the auditorium renovation. They expect kids to take care of that? Jackie suggests a silent auction. Mean Girl, who hates Jackie because you have to have an antagonist, thinks the idea is ridiculous, but everyone else loves it.  Snarl, snarl. 

More butts after the break

LIttlekenny: A kid-sized version of "Letterkenny," with a gay kid, less homophobia, and some grown-up butts

 

Someone told me that Letterkenney, one of the numerous comedies about quirky small towns in Canada, was "quietly queer-friendly."  So I watched the first episode. Umm...it was about trying to get the central character Wayne to fight by saying that he was like a woman, or that he was gay, with more homophobic slurs per minute than a high school locker room after gym class.  Interestingly, one of the homophobes told his chums that he was, in fact, gay.  

The head homophobe said "We know, and we support you.  Now let's get back to implying that Wayne is gay to get him angry enough to fight."  That is way homophobic. Imagine if, instead of gay, they figured that the best way to get Wayne angry was to imply that he was Jewish. 

Other guys in the episode get gay or woman accusations for dating a "good Christian girl,"  for having his girlfriend stolen by another guy, and for using the Tindr heterosexual dating app. Definitely not "quietly queer."

So when Hulu dropped a kid's version, Littlekenney, I streamed it out of curiosity: kids are usually much more homophobic than adults, but six homophobic slurs per minute would be a tough record to break.  How low could they go?

It's not actually for kids, it just features child-versions of the characters.  There are only six episodes, each about two minutes long, and about a third is taken up by a "Mature" proviso and Hulu displaying the name Hulu over and over -- you don't notice how annoying it is until you see it every two minutes.  Half of the episodes don't have a plot: they consist of the boys reciting the problems of other kids at Letterkenny School, like getting in trouble for farting or eating paste.

Episode 1: Two boys recite some of the problems.  They promise that with 500 kids, there will be 500 problems, but we only hear eight or so. No homophobic content.

Episode 2: The teacher tries to mentor the mentally disabled Darryl.  Then two bullies harass him.  Next, she tries to mentor the surly outcast Wayne.  After school, the bullies harass Katy.  Wayne intervenes, and they all become friends. 

I think Wayne grows up to be the central character, played by Jared Keeso, who everyone is trying to force into fighting by calling him gay and a woman.

 

Bonus: Jared Keeso's butt.

Episode 3. More problems. Three involve being gay, or Dad trying to prevent you from "turning" gay:

"Your friend showed you his dick and said it was a mouse, and you said that was the only one-eyed mouse you ever saw."

"You and your friend touched tubes, and your Dad got real cross, but he got even meaner when Mom said he probably did that as a boy, too."

"You got campiest camper award at the Cub Scouts, and now Dad wants you to play football instead,"

More after the break

Northern Exposure, Episode 1.2: Progressive homophobia, three guys in a sauna, and much ado about a toilet.

 

With new content still limited by the writers' and actors' strikes, we're watching old shows that we missed back in the day, like Northern Exposure (1990-95), about a young doctor forced to relocate from New York City to Cecily, Alaska, population 814.  It received 39 Emmy nominations and two Golden Globes, but I never watched back then because I figured it was just another "disease of the week" drama, and because of the opening: an ear-grating harmonica plays while a baby moose ambles down Main Street.

Three episodes in, and it turns out I was correct: it's a "disease of the week" drama with laconic jokes. Trigger warning: the first three episodes feature gunshot wounds,  cancer, death, and suicide.  And two different old guys who refuse to follow the doctor's instructions because they've always been independent.  The jokes are mostly of the "this town is so small!" and "it's so isolated!" sort.  

Joel (Rob Morrow, left) thought he was being sent to Anchorage, and  complains bitterly about being tricked into moving to a "hellhole" where you have to chop your own firewood and no one has ever heard of a bagel.  He does this in front of townsfolk, but it's ok, many of them are refugees from the Lower 48. Some came to escape from big cities, and some came for a visit and got stuck.  It's like "Hotel California": you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Episode 2 does something unheard of in 1990, in the heart of the AIDS pandemic and homophobic backlash: it mentioned LGBT people! Actually, 18 tv episodes in 1990 featured gay characters, but they were usually AIDS patients, murderers, or making a pass at a straight person. This episode was praised for its "progressive, gay-positive" message. Let's see how well it holds up in 2024.

Plot 1 features Ed (Darren E. Burroughs), an Indian youth, who is trying to be Joels' best friend, even though Joel treats him with unabashed contempt (but Joel treats everyone in town with unabaslhed contempt, so how could he tell?)..  His problem: Uncle Anku has blood in his urine, but refuses to see a Western doctor. He was a medicine man for 40 years; he believes in traditional Indian medicine.  

 Ed invites Joel over for dinner (KFC, flown in from Anchorage) and a sauna, hoping that he can convince Uncle Anku to get an examination.  Nope.  Joel visits several more times -- maybe he just likes being half-naked in the sauna with other guys?  Still no.  Finally he lays down the law: come in for an examination, or no more visits.  Psych!  Uncle Anku has seen a specialist in Anchorage!  Why keep it a secret, and put Joel and your family through so much anxiety?

This plotline has some gay subtexs.  Ed's interest in Joel seems more profound than "I'm lonely, and need a friend."

Plot 2: features Joel's toilet.  It doesn't work, but his landlord/love interest Maggie is still in the "I hate you!  You're arrogant!" stage, and refuses to fix it because what idiot doesn't know how to fix a toilet?  Oh yeah, prissy, elite, entitled, arrogant, sexy...um I mean arrogant New York snobs.  Joel tries to hire someone, reads a book on plumbing, and so on.  Eventually Maggie gives in.  Tenant law: you have to provide a working toilet. 

Plot 3: Chris in the Morning (John Corbett, left), the radio DJ, tells us that when he was 15, he broke into a house intending to steal stuff, and found a book that changed his life: Walt Whitman's poetry.  Later, in juvenile hall, a guard beat him up for reading it, yelling that "unnatural, pornographic, homoerotic poetry" was forbidden. Chris hadn't realized that Whitman "enjoyed the pleasures of other men," and had to rethink his habit of beating up "queers."

Minnefield (Barry Corbin), who literally owns the town, hears the broadcast, and is irate. Making disgusting accusations about America's greatest poet!  He throws Chris through a plate glass window and fires him. Hey, that's criminal assault!.  He takes over the morning radio himself, and devotes it to "normal" music, like the soundtrack to Kiss Me, Kate (hey, Cole Porter was gay!).  Then Oklahoma! and Carousel.  The townspeople hate it; they prefer Chris's philosophical musings.  So the macho, homophobic guy likes gay-coded show tunes, har har.

Interestingly, a review of the episode calls Barry Corbin a "Broadway Superstar," but I can't find him listed in anything but Henry V.

At a town meeting to complain about the new radio format, Minnefield stands his ground: "Chris made a mistake, and he has to pay for it.  A breach is a breach." Seriously, why doesn't anyone call Minnefield out on his homophobia?  Do they all agree that it's wrong to mention gay people on the radio?  They demand that Chris be re-hired.  Nope!

After consulting with Joel, Minnefield gets back on the radio to explain.  "Whitman was a pervert, but he was the greatest poet America ever produced," and we shouldn't try to destroy him.  He mentions several other American heroes with personality faults: alcoholic, gambler, crossdresser...but we aren't allowed to discuss the terrible things they did.  We need to concentrate on the positive.  We need heroes.   "If Whitman were standing here today, and someone called him a fruit or a queer, that person would have to answer to me." So you're saying that it's ok to know that he was gay, but not to disrespect him by aying that he was gay?  

This, by the way, is a heartfelt speech, telling the audience what they should take away from the episode: being gay is horrible, but we should ignore it, because "we need heroes."   From the vantage point of 2024, it seems incredibly homophobic, but in 1990 it was a plea for tolerance.

Chris in the Morning apologizes. He didn't mean to defame Walt Whitman, but now he understands that it was wrong to mention that he was gay.  He gets his job back.

And the town library/general store has a run on requests for Walt Whitman's poetry.  

Beefcake: Joel, Ed, and Uncle Anku in the sauna.  Joel in the shower.

Gay Characters: Of course not, although in a few years, the town will host the second gay wedding on network television.

Homophobia:  Everyone seems to agree that calling someone gay is a defamation.  Even Joel the New Yorker.

My Grade: Even taking into account its historic context, this was a very difficult episode to watch.  And that grating harmonica solo opening!  D.

Above: Rob Morrow's butt in Private Resort. Left; Grant Goodeve, who plays Maggie's boyfriend (before she dumps him).

Set in the same time period:

The Feast of the Seven Fishes: all the tropes I hate, but I still liked it.

Wet Hot American Summer: Skyler in a satyr costume, gaslit gay guys, and how to use your penis