what did the hayes code have to say about other aspects of sex? it's actually a lot worse than just prudishness. among other things, mixed race couples were strictly forbidden, as was all queerness.
Replies
so "La Cripta e L'Incubo", because it was made outside hollywood, is able to be surprisingly frank about homosexuality in comparison to Hollywood productions in that year. and that's fascinating to me, as someone familiar with hollywood horror movies. but it's also complicated.
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 4 0 • view
the film is an Italian Spanish coproduction. i have only partial knowledge, but it seems Italian censorship rules had not changed significantly in Italy since the fall of fascism. and the Spanish industry was notoriously anti-sex in that era (though irregular in enforcement). so what is this film?
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 1 0 • view
was it a sympathetic portrayal? were they dancing around the rules, using the fact that it's a less-scrutinized low budget genre movie to allow them to be more pro-gay than usual? i don't know. that's tantalizing. if that's what happened, there's an interesting parallel with victorian vampire tales
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 2 0 • view
my impression is that in some ways, gothic horror had freer reign around topics such as homosexuality, because it was this little disreputable pocket genre no one really bothered with. there might be some similarity between the production of this adaptation and Carmilla itself.
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 3 0 • view
or maybe it's just happenstantial. maybe it was in the source material, and the high volume, low cost machine which churned out this and other productions caused this b-movie to happen to land at a fairly literal rendition of the source material. was it happenstance and pragmatism?
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 2 0 • view
it doesn't seem to be a very well studied film, and i have found very little information about it. but i'd love to know more! in some ways, maybe not knowing is part of what's tantalizing about this.
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 1 0 • view
there's a glimmer of something there. i'm connecting it to my knowledge that there were other queer people in that era, with various degrees of visibility, with varying abilities to publicly make art about themselves. look, there is a glimmer of light reflected by their skin.
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 1 0 • view
in the present, we, too struggle to be afforded space and visibility. we've had a remarkable few years of queer horror. 'I Saw the TV Glow' and 'Huesera' vaulted to my list of all time favorites, and there are many other good ones too.
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 3 0 • view
will that continue? are financiers going to suddenly fall in line with the new far right agenda, and become suddenly cowardly when approached by filmmakers? will Michelle Garza Cervera even be allowed to make a second film after 'Huesera'? it remains to be seen how, exactly, things will go.
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 5 0 • view
outside the various insulating mythologies we have, experiencing media critically becomes a different process. it's defined by a detailed landscape of happenstance and cultural particulars. i find i'm less interested in broad generalizations, and more interested in understanding this.
mar 13, 2025, 5:45 pm • 7 0 • view
fascinating thread 👏🏼
mar 13, 2025, 6:31 pm • 1 0 • view