"The Little Vampire 3D": An Inch Away from a Fully Open Gay Romance

 

The Little Vampire (2000) had a strong gay subtext (plus Jonathan Lipnicki, who grew up into a super-hunk), so I was interested in seeing what would happen with the new anmiated adaption, The Little Vampire 3D (2017).  Would they turn the subtext into a text, or diffuse it by giving the boys girlfriends?

Scene 1: Transylvania, Romania.  Weird to have both the historic region and modern-day Romania juxtaposed like that. A swarm of vampires flies into an abandoned church to celebrate the birthday of Rudolph, the Little Vampire (actually 13 in human years).  He's not into it: he never ages, so what's the point? We meet various humorous characters, like Rudolph's industrious sister, his chubby mother, his bickering uncle and aunt who flew in from Germany.  Did a whole extended family become vampires at the same time, or do vampires reproduce the way humans do, or are "uncle" and "aunt" just honorifics?

Scene 2:  An American family on vacation, complete with camper in tow.  13-year old Tony is obsessed with vampires, but his parents point out that there is no such thing  Plus they're tired of hearing the v-word.  Suddenly their car slides off the road, down an embankment, and crashes right into the vampires' graveyard.  

Scene 3:  Transylvania Tech Works.  The boss, Rookery, wakes up his abused employee, Maney (who looks like an older version of Tony).  "They're swarming," so he needs the truck.  

Scene 4: At the catacombs, Rudy's teenage brother is arguing with his parents: he's old enough to go hunting alone!  Finally he storms out -- Rudy follows him to a gas station sitting alone in the forest.  A man is walking his dog.  Prey!  But at that moment the vampire hunters arrive and shoot Big Brother -- Gregory  He falls to the ground, severely injured.  Rudy rushes to the rescue, and flies him back the catacombs, with the vampire hunters on their trail!

He's always called Rudolph in the movie, but I prefer Rudy.

Scene 5: The American family is rescued by a stereotypic German couple (in Transylvania?), who run a bed and breakfast in a huge, ornate castle.  Wait -- they were planning to go to the B&B all along, so why the camper?

Back at the catacombs, they tend to Gregory's wounds. Rudy goes outside to see if the vampire hunters tracked them.  Yep.  Now they're sealing the vampires in the catacombs!  The main family manages to escape, with the vampire-hunters in hot pursuit -- in an airplane?  Rudy draws it away so the others can hide in Uncle and Aunt's crypt -- in Germany? It's a thousand kilometers from Cluj to Munich.  Those vampires are fast fliers!

Now Rudy has to hide, so he ducks into the B&B/castle where Tony is staying.  Ok, the B&B is in Germany, not Transylvania. 

 Finally, the two boys meet!  Distrust -- posturing -- obvious flirting -- let's shake hands and not let go -- gazing into each other's eyes.   

Tony: "You can hide here, just no..."

Rudy: "Don't worry, I haven't sucked human blood in a long time."

Tony: "So you're not going to...um...bite me?"

Rudy: (Puts an arm around him, smiles).  Only time will tell.

Whoa, that's hot.  He came within an inch of saying "suck my cock."  These guys are going to kiss any second now.

Scene 6:  Rudy is hungry, but it's still daylight out, so Tony wraps him in aluminum foil and leads him to a cow to suck; but he takes too much, and turns it into a vampire-cow.  Meanwhile, Maney the Vampire Hunter is feeling guilty because his light-invention hurt a vampire.  

Scene 7:  To add a little tension to the relationship, Rudy becomes angry because mortals like Tony have trapped his clan and are hunting his family.  After they argue and fight a bit, Tony promises to help.  

Rudy demonstrates that, when they hold hands, Tony can fly, too. Wait -- how does Rudy know about this, unless he's flown with humans before?  Apparently Tony is not his first human boyfriend.

Rudy is apprehensive about introducing his new human boyfriend to the family.  Dad disapproves: "You can have your mortal friend, or you can be a member of this family."  He chooses Tony.

Mom and Sister Anna are more supportive of Rudy's...um...coming out.  Sister Anna flirts with Tony, and he gets all goofy, but not to worry, it's not really hetero-romance.  She put him under a spell.

Scene 9:  The vampire hunters capture Tony, "The little vampire lover," and tie him up.  Could you get any more obvious?   Rookery wants to kill him, but Maney feels guilty.  Meanwhile, Anna and Rudy follow; Anna denies that she is love with him.  Uh-oh, is a heterosexual fade-out kiss imminent?

Tony tries to escape by swimming across the lake, but almost dies of hyperthermia before the vampires rescue him.

Scene 10: The vampire-hunters go to the B&B and reveal the Tony-Rudy relationship to his parents.  They are shocked.  "The family is always the last to know."  How blatant can the gay symbolism get?

Meanwhile, Anna and Rudy argue over who will save Tony from his hypothermia (Rudy wins).  

 The vampire-hunters are returning to Transylvania to kill the vampire clan, so Anna, Rudy, and Tony have  to save them. Tony can't leave without telling his parents, but if he tells them, he won't be allowed to go.  Not to worry; Anna casts a spell on them, and they all drive to Transylvania.  Rudy and Tony fly (more hand-holding and hugging).  

Scene 11: Rudy and Tony don't reach the catacombs by dawn, so Rudy goes to sleep in an empty crypt in a cemetery, and Tony goes on by himself.  He has to remove the steel net from the catacomb entrance (why couldn't the vampires do that?)  More hugging.  These guys are definitely boyfriends.

Scene 12:  Rudy awakens and flies to the catacombs, arriving just in time to see the vampire-hunters about to shoot Tony.  He intervenes.  

They have rigged a bomb to seal off the catacomb entrance, trapping the vampires inside forever (Rudy and Tony hug as they await the explosion).  

Surprise!  There's another way out of the catacombs.  (So all of this plot is for nothing?  The vampires could have escaped at any time?)  Big Brother Gregory is reunited with Rudy and "my...um...friend."  He is reluctant to accept a human boyfriend, but finally gives in.  They shake hands.  

Scene 13: The vampire-hunters want revenge on the boys who ruined their plans (how? they didn't do anything but get captured and rescue each other).  They chase Rudy and Tony with crossbows and bombs.  Anna jumps out of the parents' car, and she and Tony, on the back of the vampire cow, rush off to save the clan, leaving Rudy behind.  (Wait -- why don't they hold hands to fly?  Because that would be too close to romantic, and the writers want to emphasize the Tony-Rudy romance?  Anna doesn't even hold on to Tony while riding the vampire cow.)

While the boy and the girl are gone, Rudy saves the carload of parents from being pulverized by the vampire-hunters.  Maney, upset over all their evil deeds, breaks up with vampire-hunter Rookery.  Then Rookery gets squashed by Tony and Anna on the flying vampire cow (unconscious, maybe dead).

Scene 14:  The vampire and human parents decide to trust each other after all.  They join the kids, plus the rest of the clan for Rudy's belated birthday party (yeah! Anna stops sitting behind Tony on the vampire cow!). 

Rudy is sad because the clan has lost its home in the catacombs, and it will be dawn soon (he's the only one who thought of that?).  Tony suggests the castle B&B.  They all arrive and move in.  The movie ends with the vampire cow winking at us before flying off.  Rather a let-down ending.  No hugging, no "we'll be together forever," no nothing between Tony and Rudy.  But at least there's no boy-girl fade-out kiss.

Wait -- there are curtain calls during the ending credits.  The boys appear separately, then together with the rest of the cast behind them.  But they're not holding hands.  They came within an inch of an open gay relationship, but didn't quite make it.  I guess they still needed deniability, so the movie could play in China.

The Top 10 Bodybuilders of "Bigger"

When I first moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I worked for Joe Weider's Muscle and Fitness. 

It wasn't as much fun as it sounds.  This was the era when bodybuilding was trying to rid itself of its homoerotic image, so the articles were often heterosexist, and male bodybuilders were invariably photographed with women draped around their biceps.

Weider was staunchly homophobic -- no fags in his organization!  Or if any sneaked in, they would be instantly fired.

So I haven't been all that anxious to see Bigger (2018), a historical drama about the bodybuilding empire that Ben and Joe Weider built, concentrating on the 1970s.

Especially when the blurb says they "Inspired female empowerment, championed diversity, and started a movement that changed the world of bodybuilding in America."  They were the opposite of diverse.

And it got a rating of 20% on Rotten Tomatoes.

According the Roger Ebert reviews, the movie toned down the homophobia: No bodybuilders or fans were gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.  And pushes up the anti-Semitic prejudice that Joe had to face as he introduced bodybuilding to the world.

 But I was curious to see what modern actors would be channeling bodybuilding greats:

1. Tyler Hoechlin as Joe Weider (top photo).

2. Aneurin Barnard as Ben Weider (second photo).

3.. Colton Haynes as Jack LaLane, who had a tv show aimed at fitness for women, and disparaged gays every chance he got.

4. Calum Van Moger as Arnold, who became the face and physique of bodybuilding for the masses, and later became the governor of California.  He isn't particularly homophobic, although he famously stated that "gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."

5. Billy Reilich as Reg Park, a 9-time Mr. Universe and peplum Hercules.

6. Arash Rahbar as Frank Zane, a 3-time Mr. Olympia and renowned fitness author.

7. Jared Motyl as peplum great Steve Reeves ("If you want something visual that's not too abysmal, we could take in an old Steve Reeves movie.")

8. Sergio Oliva Jr. as Cuban bodybuilder Sergio Oliva.

9. Stan DeLongeaux as Claude Regine.  I never heard of him, but who cares?

10.  That's it for the historic bodybuilders in the cast.  I couldn't help noticing that the black, gay, and deaf bodybuilders were conspciuously absent.  So much for diversity.

Just to get an even number, here's Steve Cook, who plays "California Beach Model."

The Nice Guys: Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, and Heterosexism

I was not in a good mood yesterday.  Two books arrived from Amazon.

1. The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami.  "A charming, surreal story."  "It had me enthralled."  "A wry metaphysical play."

It's  a 5000 word novella about a little boy held prisoner by an old man who intends to eat his brains.

And a beautiful girl.  Who kisses him. And helps him escape.

Same-sex relations are always destructive, heterosexual romance is salvation, got it.

2. A Brief History of Manga.   A tiny book, about 1/10th the size I expected, with a few words of text and a lot of photos on each page.  Altogether maybe 5,000 words.

And the photos:  naked women.  Bare breasts on nearly every page.  Leafing through it, I felt like I needed a shower.

I threw them both in the trash.

And a Netflix movie arrived in its red package:

3. The Nice Guys (2016) starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, a "stylish neo-noir mystery set in 1970s Los Angeles."  I like the 1970s, and I used to think Ryan Gosling was hot, so ok, let's give it a look.

A teenage boy named Bobby (Ty Simpkins) steals his parents' porn magazine in order to masturbate to photos of porn star Misty Mountains.  Suddenly a car crashes all the way through his house. He runs out to see the porn star in the flesh, dying.  Naked.  Bare boobs.   We never see Bobby again.

Meanwhile, failed cop-turned-private dick Holland March (Ryan Gosling) -- is that the name of a gay villain out of a 1960s thriller, or what?  -  is hired by Misty's aunt, who swears that she's still alive.  He begins searching.  One of his leads is a girl named Amelia.

Meanwhile hired muscle Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) beats up a guy who has been having an affair with a little girl.   Then another little girl, who I thought was the same one but turns out to be Amelia, hires him to beat up a guy who is stalking her.  Guess what?  It turns out to be Holland March!

Later on Healy is interrogated by two thugs (Beau Knapp, Keith David), who demand to know the whereabouts of Amelia. 

Healy approaches March, the guy he just beat up, and suggests that they work together to try to find Misty.

Wait -- what about Amelia?

Did I mention that they meet at Holland's daughter's birthday party?  13-year old girls everywhere, piling around, eating, bowling, grabbing at Holland to take photographs.

I'm getting weirded out.  What's with the young girls in every scene?

Holland and March go to a protest held by Misty or Amelia's anti-smog activist group, and convince a guy named Chet (Jack Kilmer, left, with boyfriend Dylan Sprouse) to take them to Misty or Amelia's boyfriend's house.

It's burnt out, so they convince a little boy on a bike (Lance Valentine Butler) to take them to see...I don't remember what.  I got distracted when the little boy offered to show them his dick for $20.

Out of nowhere.

That's even worse than the screensful of 13-year old girls.  I like looking at dicks, but...WTF?

Is it supposed to represent the decadence of 1970s L.A.?

Turns out that Amelia/Misty and Dean were making a half-porno, half-air pollution documentary financed by Sid Shattuck.

Meanwhile, Holland's daughter Holly (that's right, Holly Holland) starts investigating on her own, and gets into trouble with...

That was enough.  I went to bed, leaving Bob up to watch the rest, and Wikipedia to summarize the plot:  There's a big porno racket going on, and Amelia, as the daughter of a high-ranking government official, was threatening to blow the whistle on it, so Shattuck has hired a hit man (Matt Bomer) to kill her.  Detroit car companies are involved, and Chet plays some role.  I don't know what Misty's mountains had to do with it.

To the film's credit, neither Healy nor Holland get girlfriends.  I'm not even sure if they display any heterosexual interest.  They walk off into the sunset together, one of the main criteria of a gay subtext.

 But you have to wade through a lot of scenes involving little girls to get there.

See also: Michael in the Boys' Room with Cole or Dylan Sprouse; Beefcake and Heterosexism in my Netflix Recommendations