Special thanks to Jester for commissioning this episode! You can find out more about commissions on our Patreon. Hmm, a 2000s-era supernatural love triangle YA novel by a Utah-raised author with a lot of extremely unfortunate implications baked into the lore....this all sounds familiar, but we can't put our finger on it. Maybe it's just Pike specif…

Our summer celebration of Pride comes to a close (with many apologies for the delay) on a return to a familiar face: Jamie Babbit, best known for the landmark lesbian film BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER. Today we look at her 2007 follow-up, its deliberate attempts to introduce young viewers to the world of queer activism, and how well it achieves those goal…

Listen, this is a queer podcast 365 days a year. Pride Month won't be stopped by a little thing like June being over. It's time for the 90s, and the film its director describes as "an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 on acid."On the board for this episode: the difference between "queer representation" and "queer cinema," the queer reclaiming of mains…

It's time at last to spotlight the patron saint of this podcast, the pope of filth himself: John Waters. While he's better known for Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble is the most potent and maybe the best of his 1970s work, a razor-sharp satire of heteronormative culture that can only flourish because it comes from such a tight team of collaborating a…

Happy Pride Month, listeners! It's time for our annual four-episode journey through the history of queer film, and this year we'll be looking in particular at camp and outsider cinema. While Bride might be quite famous, it's also a perfect starting place for our discussion: director James Whale's camp masterpiece, which those who knew him spent yea…

The sequel's still better. We revisit the weird double image of Magic Mike, a "quiet lives of desperation" dance movie that was marketed almost solely based on its five or six minutes of male strip revues. Which both sells the subtler moments of the script short and disguises the unmasked contempt that the film overall has for women. It's...well, l…

We're back, and not a moment too soon; there's a twister in Kansas! As season two kicks off Clark gets boner powers and Pete finally gets a role in the plot, while Dr. Hamilton continues to mosey through his episodes being both inscrutable and delightful. Oh, and Lionel is blind now. It's handled as tactfully as you'd imagine. CONTENT WARNING: Disc…

Special thanks to Chelsea for commissioning this episode! You can find out more about commissions on our Patreon.Today we were set a daunting challenge: find something that hasn't yet been said about infamous cinematic trainwreck Showgirls. As the modern conversation swings from "reclaimed camp" to "was it in fact Good Actually all along" following…

For our 100th mainline episode, we decided to look in on one of Dorothy's childhood favorites, a cult hit that inspires a mix of terror and deeply held affection in all who remember it. And since Dorothy is also a megafan of Baum's books, it also provided a chance to talk about how the Oz series has been adapted over the years. Thanks for 100 episo…

Special thanks to Anile for commissioning this episode! You can find out more about commissions on our Patreon.This month we stretch our muscles by getting into some ~literary fiction~! More precisely, the work of Dennis Cooper, a big name in queer outsider art who influenced previous DBC alumni Billy Martin (aka Poppy Z Brite) and Chuck Palahniuk …

Yes, the actual name of this anime is either "My Sexual Harassment" or "Boku no Sekuhara," but we wanted our title to briefly capture the extremely mangled naming convention from the height of this title's memetic fame. Because anime fandom is, has always been, and will always be an embarrassment. We're looking at you, "Boku no Hero" people. For th…

We made it to the end of season one! And then they left us with a cliffhanger! Rude! There continue to be Vibes we did not request. But on the bright side, John Glover came back to chew some more scenery, and that's always a fun time. CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of police brutality, sexual assault, racism, incest1:30 Bite-Sized Summary4:00 Monsters…

Our holiday gift to you, our dearest listeners, is a second bite at the meme, the myth, the legend: that terrifying dead-eyed snowman puppet animated by the trapped soul of Michael Keaton. And also a microbudget slasher. We figured we'd watch one basically watchable movie and one deeply uncomfortable one, and that's sure what we got!Also feat. came…

Special thanks to Ceslatoil for commissioning this episode! You can find out more about commissions on our Patreon.An academic specializing in fan studies and a trans media critic walk into a Harry Potter fanfic. Chaos ensues. In which we unpack the different structural needs of fanfics versus standalone works, the problem of only thinking through …

Special thanks to Roisin for commissioning this episode! You can find out more about commissions on our Patreon. In which two Star Trek fans -- one casual, one Deep -- reckon with a Star Trek movie made for people who hate Star Trek and pay homage to all the good fanwork this movie spawned before digging into the messy postmortem of the project its…

In which an extra-large basket of episodes brings us dead little brothers, sex pollen, and the show somehow pulling out another shockingly decent plot about toxic masculinity.CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of euthanasia, sexual assault, suicide, sexualization of minors, incest, grooming, child abuse, and misogyny.2:00 Bite-Sized Summary 5:00 Monsters …

For our final October outing into horny horror (and if this movie isn't horror, we don't know what is), we looked at beloved cult classic and infamous banned film The Devils, which has been unavailable in its complete, uncensored form more or less since its filming in 1971. Buckets of criticism, including multiple books, have been written on the fi…

Back in 1943, a queer screenwriter penned a film about a woman struggling with her fear that she had unnatural urges waiting to reveal her as a monstrous beast. Forty years later, Paul "The Canyons" Schrader decided the best way to tackle reinterpreting that hidden gem would be to add incest and a lot of full frontal. It is, to say the least, A Lot…

This week's episode was chosen by listener poll, and y'all did us a solid by choosing the post-quarantine horror film HOST. Everything about it is so deceptively simple that we predict a lot of imitators, but who knows if they'll be able to capture this hour-long film's charms. CONTENT WARNING for discussion of suicide, pandemic stuff, parental sex…

We return to the works of Billy Martin AKA Poppy Z Brite for a Crow tie-in novel that wants to say a lot about systemic oppression in the queer community but kind of trips over its own feet and then breaks every bone in its body. Which is certainly interesting to watch, if nothing else. This episode was commissioned by Anile! You can find out more …

In which we wish Whitney was actually a character who hadn't mostly existed offscreen up to now, so that we could actually sympathize with him, and even Michael Rosenbaum can't save this batch of scripts. Dorothy seemed ominously thrilled about the next batch, though...CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of brainwashing, sexual assault, suicide, rape cultu…

In which our Very Special Guest Lynette brings us an ABC TV movie of the week from the halcyon year 1974. If you've seen lauded modern masterpiece The Boy, you may also be familiar with this movie's plot. We're pretty sure Palahniuk watched it, because it would explain many things about Fight Club. CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual assault, mis…

We really had a great time watching this movie. It also, as you might expect from a film inspired by The Craft and written/directed by a cishet dude, has a lot to unpack. Let's dig into those good intentions, great moments, and bits of unintentional thematic whoops. CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual assault, abusive relationships, racism, misog…

This week brings us the film debut of Madeline Olnek, who longtime listeners might've heard us praising before for WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY. While this is definitely a 90s time capsule even if it was filmed in 2011, it's also adorable to the nth degree. Not to mention how lovely it is to see a fat woman cast as the romantic lead. CONTENT WARNING: Dis…

We all know the set-up: a gay couple goes through an elaborate comedy of errors to hide their Big Secret from their parents, who've come to visit out of the blue. But in this case, the secret isn't that Stephen and Danny are in love...it's that they're hitmen for the mob, and they've been telling Stephen's parents they were caterers. Tough to googl…

This year's Pride theme was decided by vote, and y'all called for queer genre films--we're happy to provide. But tradition demands that we start with the oldest and stodgiest conventions to know our roots, and so we bring you a classic tale of a Repressed Murder Gay, written by highly regarded thriller writer (and lesbian) Patricia Highsmith. You'r…

We swear we decided to read the book about a bunch of asshole writers trapped in a building while the world outside possibly dies of a pandemic all the way back in January. Still, if that subject -- as well as the laundry list of content warnings we've had to do up for Chuck "the Fight Club guy" Palahniuk-- isn't something you're up for right now, …

As is becoming tradition for this show, one actually pretty good episode is balanced out by a load of crap, and an accomplished horror star is doing The Most. Thanks for your service, Mr. Candyman, sir. Smallville would like to remind you that ACAB, until the next time that such a sentiment no longer directly affects Clark and is therefore inconven…

After lo these many months, we've finally returned to the well of Anne Rice novels--sorry, "Anne Rampling." Exit to Eden is part of Rice's weird walkabout with literary and erotic novels before her return to vampires, and it wins the coveted "probably less actively dangerous as a damagingly inaccurate text about BDSM than 50 Shades of Grey" award a…

De către Trash & Treasures

De către Trash & Treasures

De către Trash & Treasures

Not to be contained by the first of April, Go Crows returns! We're making a proper go of it, but the title stuck. Apologies to all the other theoretical podcasts about Smallville that might have come before us. Our three-episode spread this time leads us on a merry chase through The Fly, an episode that's just about Good, Actually; and an evil lesb…

This documentary was delivered right to our doorstep with a stamp that said "your brand": the tale of a late-night comedy writer and how he stumbled into the enormous and yet nearly lost world of the industrial musical, multi-million dollar shows put on for corporations and never meant to be seen by society at large. Which is a crime, because "My B…

In which a longtime Phantom fan and someone who doesn't even go here read a published fanfic that hits all the notes of being BAD fanfic, including: a sequel that the original didn't need, killing off characters for no reason, magically adding babies that make no sense, and turning the canon love interest into an asshole because they're in the way …

"Wait, wasn't this week supposed to be Good Manners?" Weeeeeeell, we ran into a little trouble. Mostly in that Good Manners isn't about LADY werewolves. Instead, we decided to take a look at Blood & Chocolate, a movie based on a popular proto-YA novel in that it shares some character names. It might not be a GOOD movie, but it managed to surprise u…

Entry two in our exploration of the werewolf genre is a big ol' puberty metaphor and a fantastic celebration of being weird, goth, and just a little bit pretentious as a teenager. Not to mention the great acting. CONTENT WARNING for discussion of sexual assault, queerphobia, animal death, and mass shootings1:00 Production Info7:00 The Role of Women…

It's that time of year again, where we put our spookiest foot forward and our horror history hats on. And since we're a podcast full of vampire fans, we thought we'd step out of our comfort zone and try out some of those werewolves we've heard so much about. This week we're joined by media critic Jourdain Searles to shine a light on the horror clas…

It's our third anniversary! We decided to celebrate by talking about Hannibal Lecter's (excuse us, "Lecktor") first appearance on film. And if that gives us lots of opportunities to also talk about a certain Bryan Fuller...well, that's just a lucky coincidence, isn't it? But seriously, Manhunter is pretty great, and responsible for the aesthetic of…

Every bad book club eventually succumbs to the allure of Crichton, so we picked ourselves a doozy: a seafaring adventure about how everything would be better if all those minorities would just calm down and let a rational straight white man make all the decisions. Anyway, Dorothy insists this is the least eye-melting title she could've chosen. But …

The post-LOTR fantasy boom was a strange time. It inspired Hollywood to pick up dozens of fantasy novels and cram them into three-act Hollywood adaptations whether or not much remained of the original work by the end. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it...really, really didn't. Wow, this movie hates women more than we remembered, huh?CONTENT WARNING …

Look, sometimes a movie survives for 35 years because it's very pretty and we all love Tim Curry, and it's okay to admit that. This film has GLITTER and EIGHT THOUSAND CUTS and TANGERINE DREAM and oooooh boy that script, huh? Content Warning for discussion of sexual assault, misogyny, and body horrorShannon's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mx_dapperT…

80s and early 90s vampire fiction responded to the wealth porn aestheticism of Anne Rice by getting as punk and filthy as possible, with varying results (look we're not even going to humor the claim that this is anything but very obviously a response to the Vampire Chroincles). In this case....well. Is it possible to be more misogynistic than an An…

It's been a rough theme, so we decided to close out on something fluffy: sure, this is the epitome of "we want the gays to have rights but we don't want them to be TOO gay about it, except maybe in a funny way," but it's also sweet and sometimes wicked sharp satire. Plus, it's a movie about gay men written by a gay man, making it the first movie th…

The biggest movie to deal with transness in the 90s---well....it thinks it's talking about drag, except for the part where all of its leads are full-timers. The charming Alexis Sara rejoins us to talk about drag politics, the movie's "naturalistic" racism, and that damned "all homophobes are just in the closet" trope. Remember, trans people are peo…

This one is so bad Dorothy and Vrai couldn't ask anyone else to be involved. It would've been cruel. Yes, marvel at the go-to example of the lesbian phase movie, complete with the myth of "lesbian bed death." It's a real shame this isn't the podcast with the booze. For bonus points, this is quite the snapshot of a pre-9/11 America (oh yes, you bet …

If you grew up in the 90s, chances are good you crossed paths with Lurlene McDaniel, the queen of teen lit tragedy porn. While starting from a genuinely good place, wanting to help sick kids feel seen after her young son was diagnosed with diabetes, her career mostly involved biting off waaaaaaaay more than she could chew and fitting just about eve…

Sometimes the sequel IS better. We're joined by film critic Ross Dickerhoof to talk Magic Mike XXL, the only film in the Mikeverse that Vrai has seen. Sure, it might not have the Deep Social Commentary of the original, but it also doesn't seem like it hates its audience nearly as much, and we're here for that. Let's fight toxic masculinity with Bac…

We promised, and we finally delivered: we read the Robot Dildo Arms book, aka a landmark work of queer science fiction aka some fuckery that epitomizes the "fuck you, got mine" of a certain subset of white gay men. Join us as a goofy, harmless fantasy about boning handsome hard-bodied aliens takes a sharp left turn into eugenics and Why Feminism Is…

Our very first guest brought only the best -- one of the most adorable gay romcoms on offer by seriously underappreciated filmmaker Angela Robinson. It's cheesy, it's heartwarming, and it's got a very special place in Dorothy's memories.CONTENT WARNING for discussion of homophobia and racismVisit Alexis on Twitter @TransComics or on Patreon https:/…