Tonight, TMC is running what they're calling the "Screened Out" film festival. It's not exactly new news that Hollywood produced a buttload of horror movies on up through the '60s in which assorted demons, villains and ghosts engaged in plenty of overtly homosexual behavior. Plenty of social and film criticism has been written to the effect that these movies represented a sometimes sub-surface, sometimes more oblique societal anxiety about queerness. After all, what's scarier to a highly closeted culture than some hot young innocent being ravaged by a same-gender paranormal being?
So, it's not really all that interesting that TMC has grouped these five movies (The Uninvited (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Voodoo Island (1957), The Haunting (1963), and The Seventh Victim (1943)) together. But what is interesting is the following excerpt from QueerSighted, the gay and lesbian community blog on AOL:
The following year, MGM's adaptation of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' raised the hackles of the Roman Catholic censorious Legion of Decency after critics commented on how well writer-director Albert Lewin had been able to convey the homosexual undercurrents in the classic Oscar® Wilde tale.
The rest of this article, like the paragraph above, offers minimal critical insight and is more-or-less just an advertisement for TMC. But please note the inclusion of the Registered Trademark symbol in the middle of Oscar Wilde's name. Does this mean everyone's favorite little gold man is a homo? You'd think he'd be a little less anatomically Ken-doll-like, wouldn't you? But, good lord, people! Writing for a queer online publication does not mean that you can abdicate your proofreading responsibilities!!
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