Pets rule 🐕, Aaron Fradkin breaks down 'Beezel' 🧙🏻, Queerness in 'Cat People' 🐈‍⬛, & more!

After watching countless posts come across our feeds on Instagram and X, Bee and I decided that it was time to put our pets in the spotlight as well as be our theme for this week's newsletter.

Every week while we put our newsletter together, Bee and I share photos of our pets in the company chat (along with Lisa Franksenstein GIFs), which help sugarcoat the stressful week we've had. Let's face it, having a pet is the best thing ever (and no, we're not mocking those who don't have pets). They're our companions through highs and lows and listen to everything we tell them without an ounce of judgement and, for that, we're forever grateful for the love they show us in return.

As for animals, horror has been wishy-washy in how they're portrayed. We've seen zombies attack sharks (Zombie), sharks eat birds (Deep Blue Sea), dogs attack deformed humans (The Hills Have Eyes), or, spoiler alert, a cat protect a young Drew Barrymore from an evil troll in Cat's Eye. Unfortunately, we've seen many animals die onscreen, which brings many tears to our eyes as well (damn you, I Am Legend!).

Below in this newsletter, Bee and I introduce our pets, so please do share photos of ours with the hashtag #HorrorversePets (on X and Instagram) so that we can see who keeps you company all day long!

Issue 016’s Letterboxd list can be found here

Purrfect Horror: Cat People and Queer Tethering

This piece originally appeared on Bloody Disgusting

Director Jacques Tourneur‘s Cat People (1942) arrived smack dab in the middle of what can best be described as an early gay panic. Starring Simone Simon, as the eloquent, yet personally-tortured, Irena Dubrovan, an immigrant from Serbia, and Oliver Reed, her love interest Kent Smith, the queer-coded film follows one young woman’s struggle to understand herself and her identity. New to America, Irena constantly wars against what she knows to be the truth and society’s strange, warped fixation on heteronormativity. She feels wholly invisible in the world, so the local zoo becomes a haven, where she sketches a panther in all its majesty.

That’s where she meets Kent, a dashing young gentleman who takes a swift and severe infatuation with her. There’s immediate electricity between them, and Irena invites him over for tea. In her posh, upscale apartment, Irena regales the history of her home village and how a band of Mameluks enslaved her people. Many of them “bowed down to Satan” and “became witches and were evil,” she says. After driving them out of his country, King John of Serbia slaughtered much of the village, with the most wicked ones fleeing into the surrounding countryside. Those would be the cat people. Irena speaks the tale with a reverent fear, and in great disbelief, Kent brushes it off as a silly children’s story.

A fear of isolation haunts her. A fear born out of years, perhaps decades, of conditioning that who she is, a cat person herself, is unsuitable for society ─ born out of the Christian way of thinking that’s poisoned much of Western culture. After buying her a kitten, and learning it’s absolutely terrified of Irena, Kent takes her to the pet shop to exchange for a little canary. The bird doesn’t last long, soon dying from fright when Irena tries to catch it in its cage. Further distressed, Irena wanders off to the park. “I envy every woman on the street,” she tells Kent. “They’re happy. They lead normal, happy lives. They’re free.”

No one chooses to be queer. Irena’s struggle has been and continues to be my struggle. As a non-binary person, often feeling alienated from society’s binary constructs (feeling too male to be female and too female to be male), I find myself greatly identifying with Irena’s plight. Like many LGBTQ+ people, particularly in the south and other backwards portions of the country, her story doesn’t have a happy ending. Think Matthew Shepard. Sure, no one beats her and leaves her for dead tied to a fence, but her tragedy is all too common.

Kent and Irena quickly marry, and everything seems to go off without a hitch. Except, a chance encounter with another of her kind ─ during the rehearsal dinner, a stranger, with cat-like features, approaches and calls her “moya sestra” (or “my sister”) ─ sends her careening down the path of self-discovery, as agonizing as it becomes. Kent witnesses her misery and instead of supporting her through the journey, he advises she go to see a therapist named Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway). In their initial meeting, it’s crystal clear what Judd’s stance on the matter is. He spouts off some nonsense that not knowing her father growing up is the root cause for her pain and claims her delusions about cat people “corrode the soul and leave a canker of the mind.” He later betrays her trust and goes straight to Oliver to reveal his findings.

When Irena doesn’t uphold Kent’s old-fashioned standards for what a wife should be, he reveals he’s madly in love with his marine engineer co-worker Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) and files for divorce from Irena. He marries Alice soon after. Kent’s abandonment strikes quite an emotional blow; in fact, he begins to villainize Irena. “Things have always gone swell for me,” he confides in Alice. “I’ve just never been unhappy.”

Later, Dr. Judd meets with Irena in the zoo and a turning point seems to happen. “It is not my mind that’s troubled,” she says, finally standing up for herself. It’s a subtle, intimate story moment, but it soon pays off when Irena firmly accepts who she is. Irena comes to relish in her new-found power. Even when the film situates her as the “villain,” particularly in the iconic swimming pool sequence, she’s just not the villain at all. She’s the heroine, a queer person totally lost in the world with no one to guide her or even show her the least bit of compassion.

In the end, Irena pays dearly with her life. It’s the story of many LGBTQ+ people. We war with ourselves, and often the turmoil is excruciating, especially when mental health resources have long been denied us. When we do come out, we’re faced with ostracism, bigotry, assault, rape, and quite often death. In their 2019 Hate Crime Statistic report, the FBI reported 19.4 percent of the 15,588 submitted offenses were related to bias motivations around sexual orientation and gender identity. The Human Rights Campaign tracked fatal violence against the transgender and gender non-conforming community in 2020, revealing 44 deaths (the most violent year to-date since they began tracking in 2013).

Read the entire story on Bloody Disgusting.

Things Will Be Different releases on October 4th. If Ted Geoghegan says "it slaps", then it must.

Post-rapture film AZRAEL, starring horror favorite Samar Weaving and written by Simon Barrett, was left behind for theatrical release on September 27th.

This November, the Soho Horror Film Festival returns for its 7th anniversary, bringing fearless film lovers their next favorite scary movie, year on year. From November 22nd-24th, the festival will head underground to the Whirled Cinema, Brixton for a 3 day in-person extravaganza. Then, in their continued efforts to remain as inclusive and accessible as possible, the festival will maintain its vanguard of online accessible screenings, running from the November 28th - December 1st with a unique program of films and events to both the in-person and virtual festivals. More info at sohohorrorfest.com.

The Dead Northern Horror Film Festival runs from September 27th-29th in the world’s most haunted city (York, England). Come for three full days of horror films, events, parties, food and drink, and more! Learn more at deadnorthern.co.uk. (Tickets)

The 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days Challenge is back! The event runs from August 1st through October 31st, allowing participants to watch (at least) 100 horror films during this time (and all must be a first-time watch!). Read the guidelines here.