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Willow Catelyn Maclay

@willowcatelyn.bsky.social

12K followers 690 following 4.3K posts

Film Critic (Film Comment, Reverse Shot, Polygon etc). GALECA. Co-Author of CORPSES, FOOLS AND MONSTERS: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF TRANSNESS IN CINEMA

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · Oct 17

Every time there's a Twitter purge, I share the link to my book. I co-authored "Corpses, Fools and Monsters" and it is about transness in cinema. People seem to like it!

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725695...

Corpses, Fools and Monsters by Willow Maclay, Caden Gardner: 9781914420580 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A radical history of transness in cinema, and an exploration of the political possibilities of its future. In the history of cinema, trans people are usually murdered, made into a joke, or viewed as ...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 13h

fuck yeah! I'm glad they loved it!

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 13h

I love to see Vladdy hit home runs against the Yankees. I love it so much. It rules.

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 16h

I'm revisiting an old favorite tomorrow for my horror column with a lightly personal essay on MAY, which is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 16h

New Yorkers, you will definitely, definitely, definitely want to make time for these movies. They don't come around often, if ever, and Monika Treut is a great subversive director who is still waiting to be discovered by the queer cinephile world at large.

Muscle Distribution @muscledistribution.bsky.social · 7d

Here’s our new trailer for FEMALE MISBEHAVIOR: THE FILMS OF MONIKA TREUT, which opens in New York at @anthologyfilmarchives on October 11th before expanding to other cities over the coming months.

More info:
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screeni...

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 21h

Yessss! It would be absolutely incredible on a wine movie club outing. Just totally perfect vibes for our group

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Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay

Manohla Dargis @manohladargis.bsky.social · 1d

Ken Jacobs, Visionary Experimental Filmmaker, Is Dead at 92 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/m...

Ken Jacobs, Visionary Experimental Filmmaker, Is Dead at 92

www.nytimes.com

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 22h

I'm so glad you have PIECES in your life

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 1d

Going on a little vacation by thinking about Sensei Sergio St. Carlos saying, "a few small beers".

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 1d

I genuinely can't stand him or his "art".

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 1d

I'm too fucking tired to debunk every stupid thing that Ryan Murphy said about Christine Jorgensen or how the public response to Ed Gein was catastrophic to the the perception of trans people so I'll just point to my book. We covered all of it.

bookshop.org/p/books/corp...

Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema

The History and Future of Transness in Cinema

bookshop.org

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 2d

I am stoked to announce that I wrote the booklet for @vinsyn.bsky.social 's upcoming release of BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO. I wrote about the way giallo films use experimental music and sound and how director Peter Strickland deconstructs those elements in his film.

vinegarsyndrome.com/products/ber...

Berberian Sound Studio

2025 Subscribers: This is NOT included in your Subscription. If you'd like to purchase it, you will need to login to view your special 50% off SRP pricing. This special limited edition spot gloss slip

vinegarsyndrome.com

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Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3d

We are going to be looking at John Carpenter this month on my patreon. My reader's choice poll is now up.

www.patreon.com/posts/140445... (no paywall)

a still from John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 2d

KARATE BEAR FIGHTER was famously part of the illustrious subgenre "Sonny Chiba fights random opponent*, and was part of a trilogy. In the other two films, Sonny Chiba fights a Bull, and a professional wrestler, respectively.

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 2d

You haven't lived until you've seen Sonny Chiba fight a bear

Ghoul-jin Rondo @gaijinrando.bsky.social · 2d

Mexican lobby card for KARATE BEAR FIGHTER (1975)

Lobby card features a picture of Sonny Chiba fighting a bear.

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 2d

I love THE FOG too. Forever fave

Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay

The Wonder Years of Lead @gonebabygone.bsky.social · 2d

Absolute queen shit

KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 3d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

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Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay

T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 4d

I was trying to place the Looney Tunes that's playing on the TV in One Battle After Another when Bob is walking through Sergio's home. The shot of church bells was distinct. I remember it because it was a recent viewing. It's the final seconds of "Of Rice and Hen", it's on a Collector's Choice blu.

Four screenshots of a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. In the top left corner is the name of the animator who worked on each individual sequence - this isn't my video, it was posted on the Cartoon Research blog years back.

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3d

it was sooooo much fun. Stat should always be kicking Wheeler Yuta's ass

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3d

I cannot think of anything I want less than a biopic about The Replacements

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3d

I've never really written about John Carpenter on my patreon. A few years ago I wrote about ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and I recently published an essay for Arrow's upcoming release of IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, but otherwise he's uncovered ground for me. Very excited to look at one of my faves.

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3d

Dying to see this. It seems so definitive.

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3d

We are going to be looking at John Carpenter this month on my patreon. My reader's choice poll is now up.

www.patreon.com/posts/140445... (no paywall)

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 4d

New patron's choice poll will be up tomorrow, and it will be horror themed for the month of October.

Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 8d

i am joining the chorus in cheering for Paul Thomas Anderson's ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. This film is a small miracle considering the state of big budget American movies.

www.patreon.com/posts/140015...

From the very first frame, it is clear that nothing will be held back in Paul Thomas Anderson’s hilarious, and action-packed One Battle After Another. I’ve gotten so used to modern big-budget Hollywood movies having little, or nothing to say about the worsening and unjustifiable living conditions in America that the immediacy of Anderson’s newest was shocking. We catch up to the leftist revolutionary group the French 75 in the process of preparing to liberate a migrant detention center. The group’s ostensible Alpha is Perfida Beverly Hills (played with motherfucking swagger belying a hidden vulnerability by Teyana Taylor), and she is coaching Rocket Man (Leonardo DiCaprio) on his duty to their mission. He was never the most agile, or the finest at carrying out the on-the-ground work of liberation, but he was the guy who came with the fireworks. He signed their actions in cursive with an explosion after the deed was done. They have chemistry, but Anderson’s camera is preoccupied with more than their lust. His early trademarks for intense continuity and stunning feats of aggressive, and nervous mise-en-scene rumbles with a newfound confidence, and there’s a palpable sense of danger in the freeing of these caged people. His tracking shots—perhaps the hallmark of his style—rush through with an agile sense of purpose alongside the young revolutionaries. It’s unbelievably exciting to see them accomplish what they set out to do, and, in turn, cathartic in its directness of grappling with the unending images of imprisonment and state violence that have become commonplace since the current President’s second term. It is made even more prudent by Anderson’s understanding of history, and with the fact that the film begins sixteen years ago, many years before our present, but looking a lot like right now. It feels like Anderson is getting away with something in the manner of Alex Cox’s attacks on the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

a still image of Leonardo DiCaprio in a bathrobe and holding a gun on a desert highway from ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 6d

My TWIN PEAKS coverage continues. In this essay I look at Season 3, Episode 16, and say goodbye to Audrey Horne.

www.patreon.com/posts/140188...

a still image from Twin Peaks The Return of Audrey Horne in close-up dancing at the Roadhouse.

A beautiful girl, covered in blood, ambles out of the darkness. She’s lit up by the high-beams of a convertible, and the wafting, romantic chords of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” can be heard reverberating out of the speakers. Tthe dreamy uncanny of midnight revelations. On-the-run lovers Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) have spent the first hour of Wild at Heart (1990) rampaging down their own yellow brick road, making stops to mosh, and fuck, and truly luxuriate in the endlessness of their love. David Lynch loved the deep darkness of a late night and placing a camera on the hood of a car, and letting the head-lights carve up the night, going on and on, forever and ever. It’s an ethereal space he came back to again and again. It’s easy to give yourself over to the haze of Sailor and Lula’s tunnel of love, and hope that they never come out the other side and into reality. Knowing this motif of Lynch’s, makes the clothes they come across, littered all over the pavement, the worst possible wake-up call for these love-birds. The girl who has trudged into their lives is the victim of a terrible car crash, and she just wants to find her bobby-pin. She is in shock, and she does not realize that the sands in her hourglass are quickly running dry. Sailor and Lula try to calm her down, and get her into their car in an attempt to rush her to safety, but she is an apparition that will haunt them for the remainder of the film. She doesn’t see them, and she veers back and forth between screaming for her boyfriend Robert, panicking about losing her purse, and then calmly rubbing her exposed skull, and whispering about the red sticky stuff that’s in her hair. They watch her spirit be pulled from her body. Lula doesn’t realize it, but when she goes to hug Sailor for comfort, she presses her bloody palm onto his back, and lightly stains his snake-skin jacket. The symbol of his individuality is no longer only his. Their honeymoon is over. That stain won’t be coming out.

This dying girl is played by Sherilyn Fenn, and prior to this moment, she was primarily known as the brash, confident, high-school femme fatale Audrey Horne. In Twin Peaks, she frequently played with fire, and managed to get out of dangerous situations through a combination of guile, street smarts, and dumb luck. Audrey was above being a “girl in trouble”, because she made the trouble, not the other way around. It seems wrong to watch her be brought low. Like we’ve gone in a wrong direction and gotten lost somewhere. As if seeing her be anything but in control is to bear witness to some alternative reality where everything is askew, but looks familiar. It feels like things were not supposed to end the way that they do for Audrey Horne, and it is one of the great tragedies of Twin Peaks that she finds herself at the mercy of BOB, trapped somewhere beyond recognition, and with a laundry list of forgotten dreams.

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