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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 23m

I wrote about MAY for my horror column. This movie was a favorite of mine when I was a teenager, and I wrote about why and how it spoke to me then, and how my relationship to the film has evolved in the time since.

www.patreon.com/posts/monste...

a still image from Lucky McKee's "May" of Angela Bettis in a near close-up as the titular character. She has her thumb in her mouth. She is in a veterinary clinic and the details of the room are out of focus.

Ginger Snaps and May were two of my favorite movies when I was fourteen years old. They helped me deal with with the two dominant feelings of my adolescence: gender dysphoria and loneliness. Those two feelings tend to intertwine for young trans people. In my own experience, they did so ruthlessly. My dysphoria negatively impacted my life to such a degree that I was home-schooled from the age of fifteen or sixteen (I genuinely can’t remember), put on a heavy anti-depressant and had to routinely see a childhood psychologist to figure out what was wrong with me (it was dysphoria, but I wasn’t in a safe situation to bring it up). Being taken out of the public school system made it much more difficult to create lasting friendships, which exacerbated my loneliness and inability to relate to others. Homeschooling me was a decision that was made without my consent, and it hampered my skills of socialization, and the friends that I did have in middle school eventually stopped seeing me. I’ve gotten better at being a person, and forging relationships with people since transitioning, but I have still retained some of those bad habits and coping mechanisms that I instinctively learned when I was a teenager. One of those coping mechanisms was cinephilia. I felt like I didn’t have anyone to talk to, but I had movies. It worked for me then, but now I can look back on it and realize that it was a pretty sad state of affairs. I’m still trying to find the balance between living my life, and watching movies. Lucky McKee’s May was one of those films that I luxuriated in. Angela Bettis’s strange, anti-social veterinarian technician, who wanted nothing more than to have a boyfriend, and friends to call her own, was disarmingly familiar. I treated watching it like soaking in a warm bath. Revisiting it this week, felt odd, like coming back to an old habit better left in the rear-view, but I still liked the taste.

May begins with a brief prologue that shows the start of her difficulty socializing with her peers. The film takes viewers all the way back to elementary school, and May, with very long blonde hair, is wearing an eye-patch to obscure her lazy eye. Her mother—a cosmopolitan type—implores her to cover the eyepatch with her hair so her classmates will treat her equally. She ignores this advice until a young boy approaches her and innocently asks if she is a pirate. She shakes her head no. The bell rings. And she drapes her hair over her eyepatch. May’s mother keeps a prized doll locked in a glass case, and the doll itself is exquisitely Gothic, with a red gown, raven’s hair, and pale features. May fixated on this lovely creature, and substituted her need for friends with a budding relationship to this plastic creation. We never see May converse with her mother, but she gravitates to the doll in her worst moments. The film never shows the doll speaking, but May can hear her, nagging her insecurities, bringing her inner turmoil to her teeming, embodied psychosis. This is ostensibly a slasher film wearing the skin of a Frankenstein-riff, as May kills acquaintances of hers, severing her favorite body parts, and building a best friend of her own. But because the film is so careful, and precise about showing viewers the integrity of May’s inner-life, it is in actuality the rare horror film to genuinely grapple with the horrible shape of catastrophic loneliness.

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 15m

Yeah I can see that

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 17m

Amazing movie:

in a violent nigel @desiccatedveins.bsky.social · 15h

This movie was fucking incredible. Like a French feminist horror successor to Hennenlotter's Brain Damage.

in a violent nigel @desiccatedveins.bsky.social · 17h

10. Baby Blood (1990, dir. Alain Robak)

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 23h

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

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J Hoberman @jhoberman.bsky.social · 1d

www.villagevoice.com/witnessing-a...

The ultimate underground movie--a lyrical junkyard allegory annotated w chunks of mainly ’30s found footage. “A documentary showcase for the underdog’s spontaneous, uncontrolled fantasy” (Parker Tyler), desperately, despairingly beautiful, never more relevant.

danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

Star Spangled to Death (2004; Ken Jacobs)

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

Star Spangled to Death (2004; Ken Jacobs)

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

It’s so monumental

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L’avventura: Pet Detective @joshbrunsting.bsky.social · 1d

No way? What a loss. Genuinely indescribable the impact Jacob’s has had on film. Capitalism: Child Labor still rings in my mind. An all timer among all timers.

danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

RIP Ken Jacobs, a titan of experimental film and one of the 5 or 6 most important filmmakers in my lifetime. Must revisit this epic.

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

RIP Ken Jacobs, a titan of experimental film and one of the 5 or 6 most important filmmakers in my lifetime. Must revisit this epic.

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Schlock & Awe Podcast @schlockandawe1.bsky.social · 2d

New Schlocktober Episode! Lindsay & @liondennrobb.bsky.social go to a party and order a pizza. It's a Double of The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) & Scream (1996). We getting back to basics - and learning the ABCs of Slasher movies.

Schlock & Awe episodes can be found in the account profile

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Will Sloan @willsloanesq.bsky.social · 2d

I wrote about Ed Wood's finest literary works for the Metrograph Journal
metrograph.com/ridiculists-...

RidicuLists: The Top Five Literary Works by Ed Wood - Journal - Metrograph

Film history is a house with many rooms. In Ridiculists, Will Sloan explore some of its nooks and crannies. For the latest entry, a look at five of the cult independent filmmaker Ed Wood’s finest book...

metrograph.com

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

in Anthony Dod Mantle we trust 🫡

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 1d

😂

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

The Ravens

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

Oh no lol

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

What is this notebook of which you speak

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

love this movie so much, might have to pop it on tonight

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

Ahhhhhhh lol

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

If they can clear out the zombies I would very happily go there on holiday

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

I don’t get this joke but I will like it anyway

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 2d

Cimino & Alex Thomson found a new kind of red for Year of the Dragon, Godard & Fabrice Aragno found a new blue for Film Socialisme, Boyle and Dod Mantle find a new green in 28 Years Later

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 3d

🫡

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Travis Johnson @travisjj.bsky.social · 3d

Watching eXistenZ the way Cronenberg intended - peppered with randomly inserted gambling ads on Tubi.

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danielgorman20 @danielgorman20.bsky.social · 3d

👇👇👇

Ramona @mayagay.bsky.social · 3d

Ghosts of Mars is what John Carpenter was thinking about when he was playing Doom

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