Remember the Gay Musical Monster Movies Of Our Youth?

When I was young so very long ago, we'd all pile into the car and head down to the movies, but we never left the parking lot once we got there. The parking lot was the theater, with tinny sound and a monstrous screen. You'd watch beach movies and monster movies. The bully always got what was coming to him, and the captain of the sports team always got the girl. He certainly never got the boy.

Tim Sullivan loves those old horror films, bad special effects and all. And so he's gotten his friends together to create Chillerama, an homage to those goofy, bloody films of our past, presented in four parts. It's for a mainstream audience, but with a twist - one of those four parts is incredibly gay.

I Was A Teenage Werebear premiered last month in Hawaii, but it gets its first major outing next week at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco. Just how gay is it? It stars Sean Paul Lockhart aka Brent Corrigan, as a singing, dancing teen who's just not that into his sexually liberated bobby sock and poodle skirt girlfriend, but gets really heated by the bad boy in the leather jacket. After a bite on his shapely behind, he transforms into a muscle werebear every time he gets turned on.

The premise is too thin to stand as a feature, but as a 30-minute short as part of a monster anthology, it's quirky and endearing. Cute boys abound, and it really sells the tone of those old movies we grew up on. Lockhart sings more than passably, even without autotune. My favorite song is "Purge the Urge" which admittedly is helped along by Lockhart dancing around in a jockstrap like he's in a 1950s movie. It's innocent and sweet, which is a nice contrast to the manic monsters slashing their way through the rest of the cast.

For years people have been lamenting so many gay films are the same bashing or coming out tales, that we have no variety. With Werebear, Sullivan is going back and filling in the blanks for other genres, tongue-in-cheek, fake blood splashed everywhere. It's something to be encouraged, just like I'd encourage you to catch the screening June 20th in San Francisco, or June 25th in Denver. And see if you don't leave the theater singing "Everybody's Gay."

(img courtesy of media package)

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