Monster Scholar

Blood and beefcake. David DeCoteau’s Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy is not for the faint of heart. Unlike most horror films, the thrills and chills don’t come from the monster or gore effects, but the homoerotic tension palpable in nearly every frame of the film. DeCoteau is one of the most prolific horror filmmakers today with 50 plus films released by Paramount Home Video, HBO, Regent Entertainment, the SciFi Channel and Here! TV, a gay pay per view channel. Under the name of Rapid Heart Productions, he has written and directed films like Leeches! (2003), The Brotherhood II: Young Warlocks (2001), and Beastly Boyz (2006). His films are filled with witches, monsters, werewolves and zombies, but what keeps DeCoteau’s fans coming back is the Abercrombie and Fitch-style beefcake he casts in the leading roles. DeCoteau defines his audience as, “mainly gay men, but quite a few straight girls and even a few straight guys who show them to their girlfriends” and as an openly gay man, he e...

JFK and Elvis versus a Mummy. “Old age hath yet his honor and his toil” –Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ulysses The film Bubba Ho-tep opens with an aging Elvis stuck at the Shady Rest retirement community in Mud Creek, Texas. Elvis is bedridden with a cancerous lump at the end of his penis, and to make things worse no one believes he’s Elvis. Instead, they think he’s Sebastian Haff, an Elvis impersonator. But it turns out that Elvis, tired of fame and fortune switched places with Sebastian to regain the simple life. The arrangement was peachy until the real Elvis threw out his hip at a concert and caught an infection that put him in a coma, and then into a rest home. Elvis is moldering away in bed where the only thing he looks forward to is his next meal, when strange things start happening around Shady Rest. Bubba Ho-tep, a long dead mummy and the “brother” of King Tut, is accosting residents and sucking out their souls through their arse-holes. The mummy’s attacks give Elvis a purpose in l...

The King Tutankhamun exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art inspired this three part piece on the mummy in horror. I have been obsessed with ancient Egypt and mummies ever since I was a kid. I remember shaving the head of a Barbie doll, wrapping the entire body it in ace bandages, and putting it in a hand painted sarcophagus I made out of cardboard for an elementary school project. Those were the days =). After its success with Boris Karloff the Uncanny in Universal's The Mummy in 1932, the mummy has yet to achieve the blockbuster of another true horror feature. The mummy’s status in film stands in stark contrast to the commercial success of its other monster brethren including werewolves ( The Howling, An American Werewolf in London ), vampires ( Interview with Vampire, Twilight ) and even zombies ( Day of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead ). The reason for the mummy’s lack of success in horror is unclear, but it could be that after Universal released A bbott and Costello Meet the Mum...