Revival: The dead return in small-town Wisconsin, with zombies, a gay character, a lot of hunks, and four d*cks

 

Link to the d*cks

Netflix just dropped a tv series called Revival, with an icon of a woman "under conviction," heading to the altar?  Sounds cool.

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, hearing the same preacher screaming about the same topics (the Second Coming, The Book of Jor-shua, Homa-Sekshuls) three times a week for month after month got a little tedious.  So twice a year we invited an evangelist in for a week-long "revival" to get us revved up again.

Scene 1: Christmastime at the crematorium of Wausau, Wisconsin.  Randy the Creepy Mortician (Graeme Barrett) wheels a cremation box past a dead girl while a female reporter sets up.   He explains the procedure, but wonders if anyone really cares about a story on cremation.  

"It's a piece on unusual jobs, so..."

Suddenly warning lights flash, and inside the dead guy starts yelling "Let me out!"   As the mortician tries to override the system, the door bursts open, and the dead guy jumps out, covered in flames. He runs around screaming.  The corpses in the other chambers are screaming and yelling to be let out, and someone in a body bag sits up. 

Wait -- this isn't about church revivals, it's about the dead coming back to life!  

Scene 2:  Sheriff Wayne (David James Elliot, d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) is arguing with his grown daughter, Dana: "This ain't my fault!  You've been running ever since you fumbled the Black Deer case!"  

"I'm doing what's best for me and Cooper!  After all we've been through..."  

The Sheriff gets a phone call, but can't deal with it, because he's trying to guilt his daughter into not moving away.

But the phone starts ringing "off the hook." "You'll have to come back to work --- it's an emergency.  Go see Randy the Creepy Mortician." 

Scene 3: Dana drives through the rainy December night, listening to 10-33 (emergency) calls.  Suddenly she screeches to a stop, staring in horror.  A bunch of people in suits are walking through the cemetery toward her, asking what's going on.  A n*ked man rushes by (he was buried without clothes).    A little girl wants to know where her mommy is.

Scene 4: TV report: It's been about a month since Revival Day, December 18th, and Mayor Ken (Conrad Coates, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) is finally lifting the lockdown order, but the town is still under quarantine while the CDC investigates the 47 people who revived.  All of them died during the two week period before Revival Day.  I looked it up.  In a town the size of Wausau, Wisconsin, about ten people will die during any two-week period.  This is way too many.

Cut to the Mayor interviewing one of the Revivers.  He felt pain in his arm, collapsed, and then he was in the funeral home, as if no time passed.  

Cut to Dana taking a gross milky bath.  Her friend comes in and complains that: she was supposed to visit her brother at Northwestern, not get quarantined with zombies; a girl she hates was revived; Dana never cleans up; and the lockdown is over, so get out!

Time to send her son Cooper to school.  The mean, aggressive, barbaric boys make fun of the girl who revived, but Cooper thinks she's nice. (Heterosexual identity established at age 11).

Left: Hudson Wurster (Cooper) has a femme affect, but he is surrounded by girls in most of his Instagram photos, so I'm going to identify him as straight.

Scene 5: Nellie's Bar.  Dana stumbles out, smooching with a guy (I can't find him in the cast list). They jump into her cop car and fumble around, trying to do it through heavy coats.  Then the Sheriff calls: she has to go investigate a dead horse.

"So, can I call you?" The hookup asks.  "Sure."  But she doesn't give her number.

Cut to the dead horse, on the property of a rich jerk who writes books about how to live to 100 (cut out red meat, and walk a lot).  There's also a dead coyote on his property, and some small objects that Dana finds disturbing.  I can't tell what they are.

Scene 6: Dana arrives at the sheriff's office, which is swamped by people wanted to know if their loved ones were revived. We meet several quirky small-town deputies, including McCray (Nathan Dales, top photo), a condescending jerk with bad breath; and her ally, Gunderson (Mark Little), "quirky, kind-hearted, the lead bowler of the Pinsconsin Pride."  

Dana wants the list of the Revived, but the Sheriff won't let anyone else see it.  In other news, she's been assigned a partner, and Gunderson calls him "a cutie patootie."  Gay identity established instantly.

Left: Mark Little seems to be straight in real life, but he is inclusive in his comedy routine.  Among the phrases he suggests for "the nonchalant man" to say during bedroom stuff: "Whoa, buddy, that was awesome."

In his office, the Sheriff is arguing with the Mayor about bringing in a guy from the CDC to help investigate the Revived. Shouldn't they have done that weeks ago?  

 More after the break

Alex Pettyfer: A teenage buddy-bond, then a career of meeting The Girl in a gay-free universe. At least he's super-sized

I found several n*de photos of Alex Pettyfer, who I recall vaguely from the 2000s.  Didn't he play a gay teenager at one point?  So I'll start the research.  

Link to the super size

Alex was born in 1990 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, about 30 miles from London.  His parents were stage actors making the rounds of West End theatres.  His career began at age seven, when fashionista Ralph Lauren met him in a toy store and chose him to be the face of British youth.  

Several schools followed.  I don't know if Alex kept flunking out, or being sent down for pranks, but eventually he ended up at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London, and landed his first on-screen role, Tom Brown's School Days (2005).

Movie versions of the 1857 novel by Thomas Hughes are usually rather open about the romances of macho, athletic boarding school boy with snobbish intellectual East (played by Jimmy Lydon, left, and Freddie Bartholomew, center, in 1940).  Alex's version tones down the buddy-bonding in favor of a mentoring relationship with the headmaster (Stephen Frye).  Plus he flirts with a girl.

I'm a little disappointed, but maybe the gay roles come later.

Alex Rider: Stormbreaker (2006)?  It was supposed to be the start of a series based on Anthony Horowitz's novels about a 14 year old spy.  But the reviews were awful, so it was dropped. Spoiler alert: Alex gets a girlfriend.  

Left: Otto Farrant played Alex Rider in the tv series.  He gets a girlfriend, too.

Wild Child (2008)?  A spoiled rich girl is sent to a stuff British boarding school.  Alex (Pettyfer) plays her "love interest."  Why do they call it a "love interest" instead of "heterosexist propaganda"?

This shot from Tormented (2009) looks like Alex is hugging a boyfriend, but he's actually bullying a boy.  The boy dies, then returns from the dead to get his revenge on the popular kids who "tormented" him.  Bradley plays one of the popular kids; he does stuff with his girlfriend, and then gets his junk torn off.

Alex's backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

More after the break

The Pontius Gemstone Horror Picture Show, with Stacy, Frank, Rocky, and a special appearance by Dolly Parton

 

Gay icons Dolly Parton and Tim Curry (Frank in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show") both died on August 25th, 2026. so I wanted to find some way to get them both in the same story, and Pontius and Stacy from "The Righteous Gemstones" seemed ideal as a modern-day Brad and Janet. 

Link to the NSFW version

There’s a light at the Frankenstein place

 It was dark, it was raining, the narrow country road was heading nowhere, and on the radio, there was something about demolishing the Washington Monument to build a 50-foot tall golden statue. 

"Turn that junk off!” Stacy told his boyfriend Pontius.  “I’m tired, I’m cold, and I’m not in the mood.”

 “Ok, ok, chill, Stace.  How about Dolly Parton?”

 “Your Grandpa’s bff?”

“She was actually my Grandma’s bff.  They recorded an album together.”  Pontius didn’t like to talk about his family much, because it was so complicated – and seedy. It seemed like someone with a grudge against his granddad, world-famous Evangelical preacher Eli Gemstone, showed up every single year.  There were kidnappings, murders, assassins on bikes.  He actually met Stacy when the guy was shoot by a serial killer targeting Grandad Eli.  

“Go ahead, put on some Dolly,” Stacy told him.  “ She always cheers me up.”

Pontius pulled up the “Greatest Hits” album his phone and sighed as she began “Two Doors Down.”

 It had been a bad day from the start.  Well, not waking up with Stacy in his arms at the Charlotte Hilton.   Breakfast was ok.  But the last session in the Queer Youth Conference was bogus, all about handling internalized homophobia and religious guilt.  It was 2026.  Who felt guilty about being gay or bi anymore?  They wouldn’t have gone at all, but they promised to report to Uncle Kelvin, who was running the queer youth ministry at the Salvation Center.

They got a late start, and then they had to detour around Columbia, and then they took a wrong turn onto an endless country road in rural South Carolina.  No mile markers, and the GPS wasn’t even working.   

Crunch!  A flat tire.  Of course!  Stacy pulled over to the side of the road.

 “Do you have roadside assistance?” he asked.

 “Sure. but…no bars.  I can’t call.”  He hesitated.  “ I’m a poor litle rich boy – we had drivers, chauffeurs, and auto mechanics on staff, so I never learned how to do anything but get gas – maybe.  I don’t suppose you know how to change a flat tire?”

 Stacy giggled.  “Do I look  know anything about cars?”

“I don’t know,” Pontius said.  “When I look at you, all I can see is how hot you are.”   He drew Stacy in for a kiss.

“Hey, didn’t we pass a castle a few miles back?  We could stop by and see if they have cell phone reception.  Or maybe they have a land line.”

“A castle in South Carolina, Stace?”

 He shrugged.  “Maybe it’s part of a Medieval Times restaurant, or a miniature golf course.  Anyway, unless you have a better idea….”

The “castle” was more like one of those counry mansions built by the robber barons in the 19th century, all Gothic spires, with a central tower and a greenhouse dome.  When they knocked, a middle aged man, balding but with long blond hair, answered the door and said “Hello” in a weird faux-British accent.

“Hi, I’m Pontius, and this is my boyfriend Stacy."

He stared.  “You can call me…Riff Raff.”

 “Underdog role playing -- cool!  So, Riff Raff, our car broke down.  Could we use your phone to call a tow truck?”

 He continued to stare.  “Hmm…I think you’d better ask the Master about that.”

 The Master?  Pontius nudged Stacy.  Were these guys into a BDSM master-slave relationship?

He led them through the parlor, past a huge assortment of Goth  relics – stone gargoyles, a statue of a bear, a skeleton in a coffin.  The Master must be a Heavy Metal rocker.

“You’re very lucky that the Master is home tonight. Usually he’s out with his…um…affairs.” 

“You’re lucky!” came a voice from above – It was a woman with frizzy black hair, dressed in a maid’s outfit, sliding down the staircase bannister!  “I’m lucky, we’re all lucky, ha ha ha!”

 When she got to the base, she curtseyed. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Huh?”

 “Magenta!  My name is your favorite color, Magenta! Like pink, but hotter!”

 “Oh – I was going to say blue,” Pontius told her.  “I’m digging the French maid outfit, but your accent is slipping.  It sounds Eastern European.”

 “It’s Transylvanian!  We're aliens from the planet Transylvania."  She paused expectantly.  Did she think they would be surprised?

"Cool," Pontius said, covering a yawn.  "My brother dated Jimmy Olsen, who works for the Daily Planet, and one time in Metropolis he introduced us to..."

"Shall we continue?" Riff Raff interrupted.  "It's astounding -- time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll."

 Through two more knicknack-filled rooms and into a space that looked like a ballroom. 

 “The Master will be down presently,” Riff Raff said.  “He’ll want you out of those rain-soaked clothes.”  He started pulling off Pontius’s shirt, and unzipping his pants.   The maid Magenta did the same with Stacy. 

 A blond hunk fumbling with his shirt?  His cell phone had bars now, but calling a tow truck could wait….

 Stacy was not as enthusiastic about Magenta. “Wait a minute – I’m gay!  Could I get Riff Raff? My boyfriend Pontius is bi – maybe he’ll be into the French maid scene.”

 She sneered. “Transylvanian maid.  But you can relax, femme boy.  I just like to watch.  In another dimension, with voyeuristic intention, well secluded, I see all.”

 “Ok, then, we’ll both take Riff Raff,” Pontius said.  He reached down and tried to fondle his chest, but the blond dude pushed his hand away. 

The Sweet Transvestite

With a loud clank, an old fashioned elevator descended, and out came a hot guy in a dominatrix outfit, with fishnet stockings, high heels, pearls, glam makeup and an old-time movie star hairdo.  Pontius nudged Stacy “Dibs.”

The Master began to sing: Don’t get strung out by the way I look – don’t judge a book by its cover.  I’m not much of a man by the light of day…

“Don’t say that,” Pontius interrupted.  “There’s nothing wrong with being femme.  Actually, I prefer femme boys.”  He put his arm around Stacy.

 “Um…ok….I’m just a sweet transvestite from  transsexual Transylvania..”

 “Not cool, dude,” Stacy said.  “Those oldster terms are offensive.  You’re a drag queen, not a transvestite, and it's transgender, not transsexual.  And how can everybody on a whole planet be trans?"

 “It's just a song, ok?"

Pontius held out his hand.  "I'm Pontius, and this is my boyfriend Stacy."

"Charmed.  My name would be too complicated for your tiny human minds to comprehend, so you can call me Frank.  Frank N Furter.”

 Pontius and Stacy both started giggling.  “You’re an advanced alien species, and that’s all you could come up with?” Stacy said. 

 “Do you have a brother named Meat Loaf?” Pontius asked.

Frank glared at Riff Raff.  “Um…have you met my boy toy, Rocky?   When I was just a sweet young thing, I built a man...with blond hair and a tan.  He’s good for relieving my…tensions.”

  Rocky was a silver fox muscleman, in his 50s, wearing only a golden jockstrap.  He flexed as he walked.

 Stacy nudged Pontius. “Dibs.”

Rocky held out his hand and grunted.  

"I'm afraid my man is nonverbal.  I never could get the esophagus right, but everything else works.  A deltoid and a bicep, a hot groin and a tricep makes me...shake.  Makes me want to take Charles Atlas by the..."

 “We have a flat tire, “ Pontius began.  “We came in to use your phone, but we have bars now, so we can be on our way.  Unless…” he said hopefully.

Frank began to sing: Why don’t you stay for the night? I could get you both rooms. We could listen to some Dolly Parton tunes. Or if you want something visual, that’s pretty groovy, We could take in an old Steve Reeves movie.

“Who?”

More after the break

13 Writers and Artists of the Romantic Era That You Didn't Know Were Gay

When I was studying for my M.A. in English I had to select two adjacent historical eras for my Comprehensive Exams.  The problem is, gay content seems to go up and down, a homophobic wasteland (Medieval, Restoration-Augustan, early Victorian) followed by a period of homoerotic exuberance (Renaissance, Romantic, late Victorian).

For my first period, I chose the Victorian Era (1830-1910), mostly because the professor of my graduate seminar, was gay-- or at least we thought he was.  For my second period, I chose the Romantic Era (1770-1830), because the poets were young and cute, and their lives seemed informed by homosocial and homoerotic bonds.  Later I discovered that several were gay in real life. 

The top 13 gay or gay-subtext literary figures:

1. Hugh Walpole  (1717-1797), who built a pseudo-Medieval castle, Strawberry Hill, to entertain the A-list gays of the early Romantic era.

 2. and 3. The Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Charlotte Butler (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1831), who eloped, set up housekeeping, and entertained many of the artistic and literary greats of the era.

4. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), who forged a series of Medieval poems during his teens, and upset over his lack of recognition, committed suicide.  Many of the other Romantic poets revered him as a beautiful youth martyred by an uncomprehending world. He has only appeared on screen once, in a 1970 German movie, played by Ulrich Faulhaber.

 5. William Blake (1757-1822), who advocated for "free love" and illustrated his poetry with lovingly-detailed, super-muscular male nudes

 6. William Beckford  (1760-1844), who built his own pseudo-Medieval castle, Lansdowne Tower, where he kept his huge art collection. 

7. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and 8. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who roomed together and walked across England together (in the company of William's sister Dorothy).In Pandaemonium (2000), they are played by John Hannah and Linus Roach.

9. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), who hung out with attractive men, especially Greeks and Italians, and shared a house in Rome with fellow poet Percy Shelley. I hadn't yet read Byron and Greek Love (1985), but I thought Manfred highly homoerotic.  In Gothic (1986), Byron was played by Gabriel Byrne (seen here holding hands with Shelley, played by Julian Sand).

10. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), who cohabitated with Byron and wrote Adonais to mourn the death of the beautiful young poet John Keats (check out the beefcake in the Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais". Besides, his wife, Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein.  In Frankenstein Unbound (1990), a scientist goes back in time to meet Shelley (gay performer Michael Hutchence, top photo) and the real Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia).

11. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), who introduced the gay-coded Dandy to England.

12. John Keats (1795-1821), whose love for Charles Armitage Brown overwhelmed his love for Fanny Brawne (which was never consummated), and wrote of pure beauty much more often than the beauty of women.  In Bright Star (2009), which makes the romantic triangle overt, Keats is played by gay actor Ben Whishaw (left), and Brown by Paul Schneider.

13. Gay artist Henry Fuseli.

Frankenstein, vampires, gay subtexts, and beefcake.  It beats boring, 800-page long Victorian novels about who is in love with whom.