TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA

Short

Blending horror and humour, Lethal Ethel is a mockumentary that follows the story of a Naskapi vampire who goes to murderous lengths to protect her land and culture.

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Blood, boys, and a masked killer on the loose! Paul Etheredge-Ouzts’s Hellbent, often cited as the first gay slasher film and image+nation’s 2004 Opening Night Film, unleashes a scythe-wielding murderer at West Hollywood’s Halloween Carnival. As bodies pile up, Eddie and his crush, Jake, must fight to survive in this landmark queer horror classic. With its wicked sense of humour, eye-popping production design, and ultra-gory special effects, Paul Etheredge-Ouzts’s Hellbent takes the slasher genre to a new homo height. This campy debut follows handsome boy-next-door Eddie and his three best friends into the fantastical world of West Hollywood’s annual Halloween Carnival. Distracted by his crush on the darkly mysterious Jake, Eddie—a would-be police officer—fails to notice the masked, scythe-wielding killer stalking him and his friends. As the decapitated bodies begin to pile up, Eddie and Jake must join forces in a desperate fight for survival. Packed with surprises and propelled by an explosive soundtrack, Hellbent delivers thrills, chills, and wicked laughs at breakneck speed. Blending classic slasher conventions with queer desire, camp humour, and unapologetic gore, the film carved out a distinctive place in queer horror.

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At Grayson Manor, family legacy is a curse, desire is dangerous, and even a pair of hands can have a mind of their own. Glenn McQuaid’s wickedly funny, unapologetically queer Gothic horror turns the conventions of the haunted-house movie into a delirious tale of repression, excess, and bodily autonomy. Boyd Grayson (Chris Colfer), a hedonistic gay heir with an appetite for men and a talent for provoking his formidable mother, Jacqueline (Alice Krige), has little interest in fulfilling her dreams of a traditional family legacy. But when a horrific accident leaves him handless, Jacqueline seizes the opportunity to remake her son—and secure the heir she so desperately wants. Her solution is experimental prosthetic hands controlled by Boyd’s subconscious. Unfortunately, his impulses are anything but innocent, and the new appendages soon unleash a bloody cascade of chaos. Blending camp melodrama, grotesque practical horror, and dark comedy, The Restoration at Grayson Manor skewers heteronormative expectations while embracing queer desire in all its unruly, outrageous glory. A twisted celebration of the monstrous and the misfit, McQuaid’s gleefully excessive film brings image+nation’s new queer horror series to a suitably bloody close.

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The leather bars of New York’s underground scene become the setting for a dangerous game of desire, identity, and surveillance. William Friedkin’s Cruising plunges into the city’s pre-AIDS queer nightlife, where a young undercover cop is drawn into a world he was sent to investigate. Al Pacino stars as Steve Burns, a rookie police officer assigned to go undercover in Manhattan’s leather district to track down a killer targeting gay men. Disguised as a member of the scene, Burns moves through bars, clubs, and late-night encounters as the investigation draws him deeper into a world that is both unfamiliar and increasingly difficult to observe from a distance. Released in 1980, Cruising remains one of the most controversial films about queer life in American cinema. Friedkin’s shadowy, atmospheric direction captures the charged anonymity of New York’s leather and S&M subculture, while deliberately blurring the boundaries between performance, policing, desire, and identity. Cruising will screen alongside Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, a documentary exploring the real-life murders and notorious leather bar at the heart of the film’s story. Together, they offer two perspectives on a pivotal moment in queer New York, just before the AIDS crisis transformed the community.

Short

A slasher with a grudge meets his match when a group of queer friends on a weekend getaway turns his killing spree into a bloody night he never saw coming.

Short

At summer camp, Syd is secretly transforming into a werewolf and struggling to act normal around new friends. When they discover those friends are werewolf hunters, Syd decides that fitting in may require removing everything that makes them inhuman.

Short

A famed detective arrives at a remote mansion to find a murderer standing over his latest victim. As the detective presses him to confess his motive, the truth grows increasingly complicated, revealing that the two men's shared history may be central to the crime.

Short

Nightmarish corporeal body horror with excessive violence.

DocumentaryIN-CINEMAVIRTUAL

In late-70’s NYC’s “slummy and fabulous” West Village, a serial murderer dismembered victims and “exploitive” Exorcist-director William Friedkin ripped a page from the headlines, inciting the community to action. As anarchy raged, an unexpected jouissance permeated the hot-blooded summer of ‘79. Addison Verrill, a 36-year-old Variety reporter, split time between his live-in lover, splashy premieres with the likes of Streisand, and exploring “eroticized fears” in pitch black container trucks. His shocking murder convinced crusading journalist Arthur Bell to dedicate himself to the case—a mission that inadvertently inspired Cruising. Helmed by a straight director and his straight superstar, Al Pacino, the film attempted to infiltrate the hedonistic, “leather and Levis” world of the notorious Mineshaft bar. Gay extras flocked while gay activists turned the set into a battlezone as two competing visions of representation clashed. The results would be felt for generations. Jeffrey Schwartz, the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker of Vito (I+N24, 2011) and I am Divine (I+N26, 2013), guides this graphic, gripping documentary. In it, Dan Savage joins historians, journalists and leathermen alike to trace Cruising’s makings and cultural mark all the way to the youth culture of today.

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Join Sheri and her entourage on this short and sweet sci-fi romp that explores found family with effortlessly queer sensibilities. Grieving the loss of her beloved grandmother, Sheri and her astronomer dad are soon mystified by radioactive meteors that crash land in the forest nearby, spawning a hungry intergalactic creature. Campy, fun, and outrageous at times, Alice Maio Mackay’s eighth film delivers movie store nostalgia, quippy conversation, and neon green alien gore. The scale of everyday problems in Our Effed Up World—or a small town in Australia to be more specific—is cut down to size, replacing trivialities, ennui, and existential dread with pure extraterrestrial mayhem. A movie for B movie buffs with an added dash of realism to the world of science fiction, plus vocal cameos from Brandon Flynn of Hellraiser and Jack Haven of I Saw the TV Glow make for quite the adventure, bringing all the more appreciation to simple nights with loved ones under a starry sky among the soothing sound of crickets and the laughter of friends.