Benshoff notes that many psychologists in the early 1900s saw homosexuality in men as a manifestation of an extreme hatred of women, and films often depicted this in violent, misogynistic ways.īenshoff writes that Psycho “forever etched into audiences’ minds an almost textbook example of a stereotypical teenage homosexual (complete with a harsh overbearing mother and absent father) - not as a young man who desires other men, but as a knife-wielding, cross-dressing, psychopathic murderer.” And of Anthony Perkins himself, who starred in Psycho a couple of years after he and Tab separated, Benshoff writes that the actor “never lost the monster queer stigmata he acquired in Psycho (even after his heterosexual marriage).” The monstrous queer achieves this most commonly through infecting others and seducing them into joining their wicked ways, or by murdering one or both heterosexual participants, frequently while conflating sexual contact and violence. His “monstrous queer” is an often-coded queer character in a horror film who represents a threat to traditional heterosexual relationships. In Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, Harry Benshoff takes a taxonomic approach to film criticism, exploring numerous incarnations of what he calls the “monstrous queer” throughout horror film history. With his film career basically dried up and few other options available, he took a role in the Roger Corman-produced Sweet Kill- a shameless exploitation-flick ripoff of Psycho- and fashioned himself into a monstrous queer. īefore that, though, Tab’s second act came in 1972. Thanks to that role, he enjoyed a few years of renewed (camp) interest in his matinee idol past, with roles in films like Grease 2 (1982) and Lust in the Dust ( 1985). His third came when John Waters cast him in Polyester in 1981, opposite Divine. ![]() It was turned into a fantastic documentary of the same name in 2015, and he enjoyed a few years of touring the documentary on the festival circuit-finally recognized as the pioneering gay icon he could never have been in the 1950s-until his passing in 2018.īut being an out gay icon wasn’t Tab Hunter’s second act. In 2005, at age 74, Tab came out publicly, reclaiming the “confidential” of it all by naming his memoir about life in the closet Tab Hunter Confidential. “I thought my career was over,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in 2015. Tab’s burgeoning career faltered and never really recovered, dogged by rumors about his sexuality. He was infamously outed in the pages of Confidential Magazine he had been arrested years earlier at what the magazine called a “limp-wristed pajama party,” and rumors about the arrest were sold to the magazine by his own management in exchange for an agreement to quash a planned story outing Rock Hudson, already a bigger star. Tab Hunter was also gay, and was in a long-term, secret relationship with Anthony Perkins-the man, of course, best known as Norman Bates in Psycho. He went on highly-publicized dates with starlets like Debbie Reynolds, and had a chart-topping single called “Young Love” that prompted Jack Warner to create Warner Records just so Warner Bros. ![]() He was the “shy guy” in Battle Cry in 1955, the eager slugger in 1958’s Damn Yankees, and the romantic lead opposite stars like Natalie Wood and Sophia Loren. Once upon a time, Tab Hunter was-as George Takei would later put it-“the embodiment of youthful American masculinity.” Good-looking, impossibly-square-jawed and blonde, Tab was the very picture of the all-American boy, the wholesome, aw-shucks matinee idol answer to his contemporary James Dean’s dangerous rebel. Tab Hunter Confidential (2015) | The Film Collaborative i.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |