The Ritual: Unpleasant Buddy-Bonding and Human Sacrifice

When American filmmakers want to set their horror movies in someplace remote and scary, they choose Appalachia.  Apparently the British choose Sweden.  First I saw Midsommer (2019), where some unsuspecting college students stumbled upon an ancient human-sacrifice cult in rural Sweden. Now, in The Ritual (2017), four unsuspecting middle-aged men stumble upon an ancient human sacrifice cult in rual Sweden.

The men are:

1. Luke, played by Rafe Spall, who gave us a frontal nude scene in The Lady Chatterley Affair.  Have you ever noticed that ugly guys tend to be gifted beneath the belt?

2. Phil, played by Arsher Ali, who gave us a nude scene in Beaver Falls.  I'm not sure if this is him; there were a lot of nude guys, and none of them really looked like Phil.

3. Hutch (Robert James-Collier).  James-Collier agreed to play a gay character in Downton Abbey because he needed a job, without realizing how horrible it would be -- people thought he was actually gay in real life!  Plus it ruined his career.  He's relegated to roles in trash like...um...The Ritual.

4. Sam Troughton, who has played gay characters several times, as Dom.

The difference from Midsommer?

1.  Instead of midsummer, it's a bleak, cold autumn with washed -out colors. Why would anyone want to go hiking in such an environment?  I kept thinking "I could be watching Roman Holiday, with Gregory Peck on a moped in the hills of Tuscany.  Why am I watching this?"

2. Instead of college students overbrimming with hope and optimism, it's four depressed middle-aged men, beaten down by life, trying to recapture their lost joie de vivre.

3. Everyone is singularly unattractive, even the cultists.  And there's nudity to speak of.  Even when they strip down to be sacrificed, they're in flannel underwear.

4. It's all men, with the women in their lives barely mentioned or not mentioned at all.  That sounds like a good thing, but one gets the uncomfortable feeling that the hugging and "We can get out of this together!"  are acts of desperation rather than affection.  No gay subtexts to speak of.

5. There's nothing sexy about the movie.  Some of the men die before they reach the cultists; one is beaten to a bloody pulp, then sacrificed to a monster that looks like a giant elk with antler hands.

Spoiler alert: one survives. 

I disliked this movie in spite of the buddy bonding, or perhaps because of it. It's 2017; why not just make one of the guys gay?

7 Beefcake Stars in Kai's Cult in "American Horror Story"

In the new season of American Horror story, creepy Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) starts a "Make America Great Again" cult with some disenfranchised women and an army of blue-jacket thugs.  Good for his plans of taking control of the U.S. and becoming the next Orange Goblin, and good for viewers, since we get to see the super-hunks cast as thugs in their underwear, listening to "bedtime stories" about cult suicides.

The thugs all have whimsical names, to depersonalize them.  They are:

1. Speed Wagon: Cameron Cowperthwaite, who can also be seen on The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt and several gay-themed shorts.

2. Sandstorm: Jess Allen, who has a long list of credits playing bullies, thugs, henchmen, "Buff Guy," and Claire's friend on Modern Family.

3. Pus Bucket: Caleb Foote.  I think he's the one on the left, with the abs.

4. Heart Attack: Johnny Gorman, in his first tv role.

5. Tripod: Dustin King, also in his first tv role.  I assume he's Tripod because he has a third leg.

6. Gutterball: Kaiwi Lyman, originally from Hawaii, a Hollywood fixture since 2003. 

7. Unnamed: Danny Belford, who has had guest spots on a dozen tv series and Grease Live (2016), mostly as a dancer.

The Dandy and the Gay Cult: The Last Days of Pompeii

When I was a kid, my church didn't like anything "worldly," not even literature.  Novels were at best a waste of time, and more likely they would promote heresies like atheism, Catholicism, and witchcraft.

But they made an exception for historical dramas set in or around the time of Christ: Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis, The Robe, The Big Fisherman,  Barabbas, and even Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii (1834).

Later I discovered that Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was gay, and a member of the Dandy movement, about well-sensitive, highly refined gentlemen who obsessed over fashion and grooming, swooned over opera arias, enjoyed hedonistic vices, and wrote poetry.  During last days of the Romantic Era (1770-1830) and the first days of the Victorian, "dandy" was code for "gay."

Most of the Dandys weren't great writers; in fact, Bulwer-Lytton gave his name to a contest every year to see who can write the worst opening for a novel.  I only got through a few pages of the purple-prosed Last Days of Pompeii. But apparently, if you slog through the romance between Roman citizen Glaucus and the "beautiful" Ione, you'll meet the evil Egyptian sorcerer Arbaces, who seduces and "destroys" Ione's brother Apaecides -- he sings a song of "love" and then leads him to "a curtain on the other side of the chamber."

Now Apaecides is a priest for the evil cult of Isis, which engages in all sorts of decadent activities.  Not to worry, he renounces Isis and converts to Christianity before Arbaces murders him.

At least the destruction of Pompeii is not caused by God's wrath against the sodomites.

There have been several film versions, mostly skipping the gay subplot.  In the 1959 peplum version, Glaucus (bodybuilder Steve Reeves) gets a gay subtext with his best friend Marcus (Mario Berriatua), but the character of Apaecides, renamed Antonius (Angel Aranda, left, from a Spanish movie) is insignificant.

In the 1984 tv miniseries, Nicholas Clay (left) plays Glaucus, Ernest Borgnine Marcus, and Benedict Taylor Antonius, in a minor plotline that gets him a girlfriend.  There's also a new hunk, the gladiator Lydon (Duncan Regehr, top photo, posing with phallic symbol).

See also: The Flowers of Evil