Original subtitles

- I have a feeling that, inside you, somewhere,

there's something nobody knows about.

- Something nobody knows?

- Something secret and wonderful,

and I'll find it out.

- [laughs] It's not good to find out too much, Charlie.

[tense upbeat music]

- James Whale and Alfred Hitchcock was sort of the bridge,

to me, between horror films and queerness.

- Now, you seem very interested in the subject of murder.

- Well, no more than anyone else.

- I think you'd be hard pressed to not find a gay man

who doesn't relate, at least, [laughs]

to being driven crazy by his mother's voice in his head.

- [Mother] It's sad when a mother has to speak the words

that condemn her own son.

- Hitchcock created a picture that, as soon as you saw it,

you couldn't look away and you couldn't let go of it.

[menacing music]

- Like Hitchcock, James Whale's images

in those movies are so indelible.

I never really know for sure

if I should be repelled or intrigued.

- Alfred Hitchcock recognized the fear

surrounding living your life as a queer person.

- I really like James Whale in a lot of ways

because I can say "Yes, yes,

it's because he's queer that I connect with these monsters."

- Hitchcock was making these gay characters

the more interesting characters

because maybe it was a part of him.

[slow tense music]

- I think Hitchcock's kind of weird about sex in general.

I think he finds the whole thing a little bit unappetizing.

[creepy music]

- James Whale figured out

pretty early on how to get past the censors.

- Alfred Hitchcock's like balls out. He's like, "What?"

No rules.

[woman screaming]

- What you see is filmmakers being

a little bit more explicit about queer storylines

because they could get away with them. [laughs]

[slow music]

- Am I giving you bride? [laughs]

♪ You can get just what you want ♪

♪ If you know where to go ♪

♪ What to do ♪

♪ Find just what you need to find ♪

♪ Come and join me inside ♪

♪ The backroom ♪

♪ Ooh ooh ooh ♪

- This creature of yours should be kept under guard.

Mark my words. He will prove dangerous.

- Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous?

- When you talk about queer cinema,

you have to talk about James Whale.

[tense music]

- He did all kinds of movies,

but his kind of quartet

of horror movies are what he's remembered for.

[tense music]

[Bride hissing]

- He created the archetypal horror film in Hollywood.

- It's alive!

It's alive! It's alive!

It's alive!

- Now, I think with Whale's films, you can definitely,

you know, he's not making it hard for you

to do the queer read on them.

[footsteps creaking]

- My name is Femm, Horace Femm.

- There's plenty of camp in those movies.

It's a, it's almost like a language, I wanna say,

for queer artists and a coded way of speaking about society

in a way that society won't necessarily catch on to.

- Can I take your coat and hat, sir,

and give 'em a nice dry in the kitchen?

- No.

[chiming music]

- So, James Whale's a fascinating figure.

He, you know, serves as an officer for the British

in World War I, spends a lot of time in a POW camp,

and in the camp, starts getting involved in these dramatics,

these little plays that are being put on

to sort of raise the morale of the men,

give them something to do,

and that's where he discovers this love of theater.

[creepy music]

He returns to London after the war is over.

He winds up directing a play called "Journey's End,"

which is considered by many

to be like the definitive World War I play.

So, you know, he,

on the success of "Journey's End"

goes to Broadway, eventually goes to Hollywood.

[bomb blasting]

- Hello, Jimmy.

You got one quickly.

- He was an obvious talent,

and he signed a contract with Carl Laemmle at Universal

and they gave him the pick of the properties,

and being a homosexual with a modern sense of humor,

he said, I'll do "Frankenstein," please.

[thunder rumbling]

- We are about to unfold the story of "Frankenstein,"

a man of science

who sought to create a man after his own image

without reckoning upon God.

- Whale created a groundbreaking film

because he incorporated German expressionist cinema into it,

camera angles that had never been used before,

all filtered through the lens of his queerness.

- He found an actor in the canteen

at Universal Studios called Boris Karloff

and said, "I think your face has possibilities."

[slow music]

- When I think of monsters, I'm like,

"It's all about Frankenstein."

So classic, such a good look,

a strong brow, handsome shoulders,

[Frankenstein roaring]

stitched together of corpse body parts.

I love that guy.

- He's a monster.

And you know, just on the most basic level,

gay people are called monsters

and have been for a long time.

So, there's that.

- There he is! The murderer!

[crowd shouting]

- If you've been on the other side of the pitch fork,

you're maybe a little sympathetic to the monster.

- "Frankenstein's Monster,"

how do you not fall in love with that oaf?

You know, walking around,

just looking for love

and everybody keeps chasing him with pitch forks.

[crowd shouting]

This sort of empathy towards the monster is clearly a draw

for me with the genre.

It kind of begins there.

- The monster is innocent.

He is brought into being.

He is what he is, and it is the society that is the monster.

[crowd shouting]

- The monster never did anything to nobody.

He just, he's an innocent, in a real sense of the word,

but he looks real scary to people

because they don't get him.

[bride screaming]

[Frankenstein growling]

- There's something about Frankenstein as a monster

that I think speaks to a really quintessential part

of queer experience

and that like you don't always realize

that you're different, right?

And once you do,

you realize that society sees you as something monstrous.

It's like this internalized self loathing.

[crowd muttering]

- Horror has always been interwoven very deeply

with the idea of what it means

to be someone who is not accepted by society

but nevertheless has a soul.

- Would you like one of my flowers?

- [Emily] Which is the story of Frankenstein's monster

in particular.

- "Frankenstein" is one of the first movies I heard

of having a like clear queer parallel.

- Is anything wrong?

- I've felt it all day.

Something is coming between us.

I know it.

I know it.

- When you look at James Whale directing "Frankenstein"

and you look at the queer theory surrounding it,

it is almost always the homosexual subtext

because James Whale was a homosexual director.

But what gets lost is the transgender narrative.

- Think of it,

the brain of a dead man waiting to live again

in a body I made with my own hands,

with my own hands.

- "Frankenstein" is about the idea

that science might subvert the ways

that God has set up the universe.

There is this element of science helping you find

your true form that is not, not trans,

but also society regards that science as ghoulish.

Every day, trans people are playing God for themselves.

- It's moving.

[thunder rumbling]

- They are saying,

I'm going to reanimate the parts of myself

that everyone has told me should be dead.

- Now I know what it feels like to be God!

- That powerful metaphor creates

within us this kinship with this monster

who really doesn't deserve what comes to him.

[menacing music]

[dogs barking]

- "Frankenstein," which was an immensely popular

and famous film.

[dramatic music]

- James Whale was, by that point,

becoming number one or number two director at Universal,

so he could have a little more freedom to do what he wanted.

[man shouting] [door banging]

[creepy music] [rain dribbling]

- Good evening.

- I really love "The Old Dark House."

I love the way that he seems to be inventing a genre

and satirizing it.

[creepy music]

[thunder rumbling]

You are witnessing construction and deconstruction

at the same time.

[man laughing]

He's giving us the, you know,

it was a darken and stormy night,

the spooky house and the weird people inside

and the don't go in that room and all of that kind of stuff.

[woman screams]

And at the same time,

there's such a tongue in cheek attitude to the whole thing.

- I'm dreadfully wet and I would be so glad

if I could go and change my clothes?

- What?

- I wondered if I might change my things.

- You look wet. You better go and change your things.

- There's an incredibly effeminate gentleman

running the house.

- My sister was on the point of arranging these flowers.

[mischievous music]

- And then he is got like a really dykey lesbian sister.

- You think of nothing but your long straight legs

and your white body and how to please your man.

- Thinly veiled, thinly veiled.

Then there's like a hundred and something year old man

like tucked away in a room somewhere.

- Who are you?

- I'm Mrs. Waverton. This is my husband.

Are you Sir Roderick Femm?

- Who's fully played by a woman in a beard.

- You shouldn't have come here.

- "The Old Dark House" is really spectacularly queer.

- Well, there's no accounting for tastes, you know? [laughs]

- No.

- Ernest Thesiger was a wonderful actor,

a decorated war hero, and an absolute screaming queen.

- This is my room.

- Huh?

- There are one of two things that I should very much like

for you to see.

- He was a great friend of Queen Mary's.

They used to embroider together.

- It's only gin, you know.

Only gin. I like gin.

- Thesiger was a female impersonator

and kind of a bawdy musical comedian and he brings that

to all of his film performances for Whale.

- You will have to stay here.

The misfortune is yours, not ours.

- No beds. They can't have beds.

- As my sister hints, there are, I'm afraid, no beds.

- "The Old Dark House" starts to build the camp sensibility

and humor of James Whale's work

that we didn't really see in "Frankenstein."

[wind whipping]

[woman screaming]

It's really a muscle building exercise

that allows him to tell stories like "The Invisible Man."

[creepy music]

- James Whale's third horror film

for Universal was "The Invisible Man,"

which is another one of those stories

about a scientist who forsakes his girlfriend

in order to do these mad experiments.

- Why did you do this?

- Power, power to rule,

to make the world grovel at my feet.

- Also pre-code, "The Invisible Man" is really violent,

really deviant, and you have this madness

that gives you a sense of Whale's playfulness

as a storyteller.

- He's here, the Invisible Man!

[woman screaming]

- We'll begin with a reign of terror,

a few murders here and there.

We might even break a train or two.

[train engine rumbling]

[Invisible Man laughing]

- It might have been

one of the first maniacally cackling villains

that I had ever seen.

- I'll show you who I am and what I am! [laughs]

- Just, I mean that cliche of the monster

who is so delighted by his own evil

that he just can't keep from giggling,

and I'm sure I was influenced.

[Chucky laughing]

- The concept of "The Invisible Man,"

and of course, there's the, you know,

the book about the Black experience, "The Invisible Man,"

but this idea of a person who was living among others

but can't be seen by them,

I was very aware that other people were aware

that I was Black immediately in every situation,

but queer, not so much,

and even in the Black community that I came up in,

it really was not,

to be a man and to be gay were not two things

that you could be at the same time.

I think that that's probably

where the invisibility thing comes in

because having to hide was just a part of the fabric

of my understanding of how to live.

- Huh? How do you like that, eh? [laughs]

- James Whale is amazing for how brilliant his movies were

and how far they went and he was able to do that pre-code,

because at that point, anything went.

[woman screaming]

♪ Here we go gathering nuts in May ♪

♪ Nuts in May, nuts in May ♪

♪ Here we go gathering nuts in May ♪

♪ On a cold and frosty morning. ♪

- Hollywood had been suspect for its morals

and sort of licentious images on the screen,

[Invisible Man groaning]

and the Catholics and the Protestants were very concerned

about Hollywood ruining the morals of America.

- That's fine stuff, but it'll rot.

That's finer stuff still,

but it'll rot too in time.

- Don't! How dare you?

- There was a seat change in Hollywood

at the end of 1933 going into 1934

with the advancement of the Hayes Codes.

- The code sets up high standards of performance

for a motion picture producer.

It states the considerations which good taste

and community value make necessary

in this universal form of entertainment.

- The Hays Code was something

that was written by a Jesuit priest

and the intention was that it was a set of standards

for film productions to follow.

[typewriter clicking] - You can't intimate

homosexuality, you can't show immorality.

- [BJ] Seductive dancing, interracial kissing,

excessive use of drugs and alcohol.

[typewriter bell rings]

- So, in "Frankenstein" for example,

when the film was released after 1934,

i.e. after the production code seal of approval was put in,

- No!

- Both the drowning of the little girl was cut out

as well as the line about playing God.

- In the name of God,

now I know it feels like to be God!

- Certainly, when the code came in, what was great,

you saw him doing somersaults

and you saw him figuring out new ways

to put meaning into his material in a way

that he could get it past the censors.

- He was dealing in horror and fantasy.

And so, when the censors would come in

and tell him he couldn't do things,

it was like, but this is not real.

This is somebody's dream.

- When you have these fantastical movies

with these imaginary creatures,

it could, the story can be whatever you want.

[upbeat band music]

- He agrees, I think somewhat against his will,

to do a sequel to "Frankenstein."

- Nothing can persuade me.

- We shall see.

[creepy music]

- No, not that.

- Oh, he's quite harmless, except when crossed.

[creepy music]

- If you just sort of go into it

thinking he's gonna be the return of "Frankenstein,"

then you should steady yourself

because it's an absolutely bizarre film.

[scary music]

- She's alive!

Alive!

- James Whale's fourth and final horror film

for Universal is the "Bride of Frankenstein,"

and this film is really quite a remarkable reworking,

inversion, deconstruction of all of the horror movie tropes.

It's really Whale kind of doing what he wants

and sending up the conventions of the production code.

He puts all of this kind of subversive stuff into the film

that just flew over the head of the censors.

- Henry! Henry!

Henry! Henry! [sobbing]

- I guess the question is,

is how gay is "Bride of Frankenstein?"

And to me, it's very gay,

but I think we have to ask the question of,

how gay do they mean it to be?

And the answer is very complicated.

[slow music]

[Una whimpering]

[Una shouting]

I really don't think he was trying

to make a campy gay movie.

I think he was trying to make something compelling

and entertaining and emotional.

- Before you came,

I was all alone.

It is bad to be alone.

- Alone, bad.

Friend, good.

- I think he was trying to make a serious movie

but I think he understood entertainment.

- Why have you come here tonight?

- My business with you, Baron, is private.

- The whole movie is predicated

on a marriage being interrupted

so that these two men can go off together

and create life their way, their special way.

You know? [laughs]

- He literally yanks that man from his bed chamber

where he's about to have sex with his wife, I assume,

and like he's like, come together,

make a baby with me, Dr. Frankenstein. [laughs]

- If you, Herr Baron, will do me the honor

of visiting my humble abode,

I think you'll be interested in what I have to show you.

- Every time I watch "Bride of Frankenstein,"

I forget there's a scene with weird little people

that live in glass cases.

And I'm like, what is this?

- There's a certain resemblance to me, don't you think?

Or do I flatter myself?

- Pretorius, is sexless, manipulative, properly evil.

- There are always accidental deaths occurring.

- Always.

- With this bizarre agenda for creating life without sex.

- Shall we put the heart in now?

- Yes.

- One of the ways that James Whale was fearless

in making "Bride of Frankenstein" was just the way

he directed Ernest Thesiger to play the character

of Dr. Pretorius, 'cause he is so camp and such a queen.

- I can't be the first person to to call him Dr. Gay Torius.

I cannot be the first person to do that.

- Alone, you have created a man.

Now, together, we will create his mate.

- You know, he does this thing with his hands

where he like splays his fingers.

He goes,

- The Bride of Frankenstein.

- Like he's the bride's publicist.

- Whale was able to use his queer friends

in the most delightful ways.

- You've got this gaggle of queer actors.

You've got Elsa Lanchester.

You've got Colin Clive.

You've got Ernest Thesiger.

You've got Una O'Connor.

- Let them all be murdered in their beds.

- Una O'Connor is a hilarious leader

of the torch bearing villagers.

- That's the best bar I ever saw in all me life. [laughs]

- In "The Invisible Man" and "Bride of Frankenstein,"

that you're just playing

similar Gladys Kravitz type characters,

like that annoying neighbor

who's just not gonna leave it alone.

[Una screaming]

- Whoa, look! Milady, he's alive!

- James Whale gave them the freedom to be who they are

because he knew who they were inside,

and thus, was able to bring out something in them

that they were safe to express,

which they could not ever do with any other director.

- It is interesting to think, Henry,

that once upon a time, we should have been burnt

at the stake as wizards for this experiment.

- Whale got much more dangerous

and aggressive and transformative,

and he created a really, really queer female protagonist

who is basically saying,

"I don't want that guy that you made for me."

[Bride screaming]

- Her entire reason for existence is to be the mate of,

you know, the man they've created

and does not, not interested,

would rather not, thank you.

We'll pass.

- She was created for him and she was like, no thank you.

- I don't think so.

I don't want him. No!

- No, that's not happening.

- Absolutely not. Who is this man?

- I wanna have control of my own body.

I wanna have control of my own sexuality,

and I wanna go find who I wanna find.

- "Bride of Frankenstein" is like a peak bad bitch.

- She was able to just be like, mm-mm.

I was really struck by that

'cause it just didn't occur to me that you could,

that you could say, no.

- I mean I think it's important for all women to see,

like "No" is a complete sentence.

- There's no like learning curve for her.

There's no section of the story

where you see her like try to make it work.

No, she just wakes up and she is like, absolutely not.

- You have created life, and I'm alive,

which means that I have a mind of my own and my own ideas

about what I would like to do,

and isn't that fucking terrifying?

- She was like, I don't even want him.

- We don't know what her preference was

but we know it wasn't him.

- It was just a singular "No" in a long line of no's

that I needed to be able to hear women say

before I could fully embrace my own "No."

[slow music]

[Frankenstein whimpering]

[Bride screaming]

- So many times these monsters get agency

and they have power like queer people,

but in the end, they have to die,

and in fact, they often kill themselves.

- He pushes Frankenstein

and his bride out of the castle and says,

- Go. You live.

Go.

[tense music]

You'll stay.

- We belong dead.

- We belong dead.

[Bride hissing]

[dramatic music]

- He doesn't just take the bride with him.

He takes Pretorius with him

'cause he knows that they're all unnatural together.

It's glorious. [laughs]

[bombs exploding] [upbeat dramatic music]

- What he was able to bring in terms of queerness

to that film is remarkable

because the film is absolutely a chronicle

of queer life in an odd way

because of these different archetypal characters.

It's about the creation and the demise of the monster,

but also, it's looking at the demise

of the acceptance of gay life as it was known in Hollywood.

It's the culmination of of Whale's expertise

and his life's work,

even though he had no idea

that this was really the beginning of the end for him.

[dramatic music]

- As his longtime partner David Lewis would later put it,

you know, he never shouted it from the rooftops,

but he was never in the closet either.

- Everybody knew about him and he was not, he didn't hide.

He didn't have a double life.

He didn't have a wife and a bunch of kids as a cover.

He lived a gay life.

- It depends on who you ask

whether or not Whale's queerness was an issue in his career.

Certainly, if you look at, you know,

Bill Condon's "Gods and Monsters,"

he was too much for the industry.

They couldn't deal with him,

and that's sort of why he gets pushed aside.

But there are other people who were his contemporaries

who were like, "No, he made some movies that bombed

and just kind of fell out of favor with the studio."

So, you know, it's one of those things

where historians can't really agree.

I would certainly say, they would probably all agree

that his being, you know,

unapologetically out in the 1940s was probably not seen

as a career boost.

[chiming music]

- He managed to become a major league director

in a town that was, on the face of it, totally homophobic.

- He did commit suicide.

Yet, in his suicide note, he said,

- [James] To all I love, do not grieve for me.

My nerves are shot.

And for the last year, I've been in agony day and night.

I've had a wonderful life, but it is over.

So, please forgive me, all those I love,

and may God forgive me too.

Goodbye, and thank you for all your love.

I must have peace, Jimmy.

[contemplative music]

- [Interviewer] Mr. Hitchcock,

why do you always make mystery film?

- Well, life is a big mystery. Isn't it?

It always has been.

I think people are intrigued by mystery

to find out about things they don't know anything about.

That's a mystery.

[dramatic music]

- [Norman] Mother? Oh God!

Mother! Blood, blood.

[chiming music]

- For queer people who get so little

of ourselves reflected back to us by culture,

we tend to pick up on the things that we get.

[chiming music]

Especially those powerful images,

and Hitchcock, if nothing else,

he knew how to create a powerful image that would live

in your heart and soul.

[creepy music]

In a Hitchcock movie,

no image is sort of just there by accident.

Every image is there specifically, almost like using,

you know, words in a sentence.

[creepy music]

Hitchcock's filmmaking feels queer in a number of ways.

He has an eye for feminine detail that is unique to him

as a filmmaker.

He uses a lot of female artifacts, things that, frankly,

male directors would normally not even really notice

or pick up on or think to isolate in a closeup

to tell their story.

- It's interesting with Hitchcock because I think he was,

[thunder rumbling]

wrestling with both an awe and a hatred of women

and expressions of femininity,

along with a very modern desire

to represent a lot of different kinds of characters

who also might be queer.

- That's the most thrilling compliment I ever got.

- For me, one of the interesting parallels

to queer Hollywood was queer Britain in the 1920s,

where cinema was bursting

with all kinds of queer inspiration,

and Alfred Hitchcock was part of that world.

He worked with a lot of queer talent,

going back to Ivor Novello with "The Lodger."

Ivor Novello was a matinee idol in early cinema.

Hitchcock knew exactly what he was doing

when he cast Novello.

And he knew exactly what he was doing

when he cast Charles Laughton in "Jamaica Inn."

- See, Lady Beston, that's why he stays here

and never comes to London anymore.

He keeps a girl here, the monster.

- There she is,

my exquisite Nancy.

[horse neighing]

- Laughton was a brilliant, brilliant actor

who was a very conflicted man.

- She was going to tell you about me.

I didn't like that.

- You know Charles Laughton,

married for a very long time to to Elsa Lanchester,

tormented by his bisexuality,

if not his homosexuality.

He has a certain famous,

in Hitchcock adaptation of du Maurier's "Jamaica Inn."

- [Humphrey] Please be still.

[tense music]

- [Alonso] In his era,

no other filmmaker had queer representation

like Alfred Hitchcock.

- We want a private suite with a bath.

- Facing the mountain.

- And a shower, of course.

- Hot and cold.

- And a private thingummy if you got one.

- Well, I'm sorry gentleman,

the only things I've got is the maid room.

- What? - The maid room?

- Well, don't get excited. I'll remove the maid out.

- Yes, I should think so.

- What?

- Caldicott and Charters

in "The Lady Vanishes" are not interested

in any women in the picture.

[mischievous music]

[paper rustling]

What's really important about Caldicott and Charters is

that they're not the villains, they're just in the story.

- Lock the door.

- Hello? - Oh!

- [Bryan] Another example is the character of Isobel

in "Suspicion."

- I was completely fascinated by the way your villain,

- My villain?

My hero, you mean.

I always think of my murderers as my heroes.

- She has a lover

and it's treated in a way that's very matter of fact.

- Think of it.

This very minute,

there are hundreds of people who've committed murder

and they're walking about freely.

- [Bryan] And let's not forget Mrs. Bundy in "The Birds."

- Ornithology happens to be my avocation.

Birds are not aggressive creatures, miss.

They bring beauty into the world.

It is mankind-

- Sam? Three Southern Fried Chicken.

- Hitchcock also operates in that brand of,

homophobia might be putting two strong a point on it,

but definitely a distrust and an unease about queerness.

- Hitchcock clearly had a a real interest

in these male characters who were outside of society.

- And so, you get a character like Uncle Charlie

in "Shadow of a Doubt."

- Charles is coming.

- Did you say Charles?

- Joseph Cotton is very much a confirmed bachelor

and is killing these women who are wealthy widows

who are living off of, you know,

their husband's toil.

[menacing music]

And that just, for some reason, is greatly offensive to him.

And so, he sets about to strangle a whole bunch of them.

- And at night, you sleep your untroubled,

ordinary little sleep filled with peaceful, stupid dreams.

[classical music]

And I brought you nightmares.

- There is this notion that gay men,

not only don't want to have sex with women,

but hate them and want to kill them,

this notion that radical misogyny

and homosexuality go hand in glove, as it were.

- And he has that wonderful speech

when they're at the dinner table.

- The cities are full of women, middle aged widows,

husbands dead, proud of their jewelry but of nothing else.

Horrible, faded, fat, greedy women.

- And we hear Theresa right off screen saying,

"But they're human beings."

- [Theresa] They're alive, they're human beings.

- [Don] And then turning to the camera,

- Are they?

- It's not just that these guys are somehow warped outsiders

of society, they are literal menaces to the common good.

- [Theresa] Somebody come quick.

Help.

Somebody come quick, bring some water.

- He got away with putting these kind of characters in

in a time that you didn't see gay characters.

- [Phillip] I've heard nothing but innuendo.

- Call it my woman's intuition, if you will.

- I think you're jealous.

No, I mean it, and I'm very touched.

- Hm?

- Leonard?

[gunshot blasting]

- But the gay characters weren't exactly heroes.

They are mostly villains.

[punch thudding] [dramatic music]

[man screaming]

[tense music]

- "The Rope" is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies.

I find that movie interesting,

primarily because of its screaming gay subtext

that's barely subtext.

I think it's almost text.

- Brandon, how did you feel?

- When?

- During it.

- "Rope," okay,

if you have ever had a gay threesome and died,

this is the movie for you.

- Now the fun begins.

- It was pretty revolutionary.

It would just be impossible to not see the gay subtext

if you yourself were a gay person living at that time,

walking to a movie theater to see that movie.

It would be impossible to miss it.

And yet, at the same time, it's going over,

you know, a lot of the audience's head's.

- "Rope" is Hitchcock's take

on the Leopold and Loeb killings

and the idea that this gay couple read too much Nietzsche

and decided they were ubermensches

and they were just gonna kill people because they could.

- The Davids of this world merely occupy space,

which is why he was the perfect victim

for the perfect murder.

- "Rope" felt like

almost more explicitly demonizing these gay characters.

- John Dall and Farley Granger,

they are clearly a gay couple engaged

in a sadomasochistic relationship.

- I don't think you appreciate me, Phillip.

- I'm beginning to, Brandon.

- These men have a body in the middle of their apartment,

in their table during a party.

- Trust you to find a new use for a chest.

- I hate that movie, I love that movie,

but I hate that movie because it makes me so anxious.

It's "The Telltale Heart."

It's the beating of that hideous heart

underneath the floorboards.

[tense music]

- These two men have committed a murder,

but it's all set up like they've had sex.

- Let's stay this way for a minute.

[case clicking]

- That's Hitchcock doing what he did,

which is he's winking at the audience.

- I have never in my life looked at another man

in the longing way that those two men look at each other

throughout the whole film.

- You frighten me.

You always have,

from that very first day in prep school,

part of your charm, I suppose. [sighs]

- Farley Granger is so like simultaneously terrified

yet turned on,

and he's completely under John Dall's thumb.

- Man, I can't!

- You've got to.

- No, he knows,

- Shut up.

- You have a top and a bottom. You know?

You, the one who's really driving the train on this one

and the other one who's like constantly skittish

and nervous, and are we gonna get caught?

- Brandon, you're going too far.

- Why? What do you mean?

I just thought it'd be nice to have supper in here on this.

- The queer writers that Hitchcock worked with

on some of these films

included Thornton Wilder from "Shadow of a Doubt,"

Patricia Highsmith who wrote "Strangers on a Train,"

Daphne du Maurier who wrote "Jamaica Inn,"

"Rebecca," and "The Birds,"

and Arthur Laurents from "Rope."

- Arthur Laurents was one

of those openly gay Hollywood writers.

Laurents was in a relationship with Farley Granger

who was a wonderful actor and a fascinating guy

who lost his virginity on the same day

to a man and to a woman.

Arthur Laurents writes the screenplay.

So, he's writing the part for his lover

to portray this queer man.

- Brandon had a delightful evening.

Though I had a rotten evening.

- Keep drinking and you'll have a worse morning.

- Arthur Laurents being an openly gay screenwriter,

the intricacies of the relationships

between the three main characters would

obviously not be lost on him.

- Voice down.

- I hope I didn't upset Phillip.

- But that area was all about the coding

of the relationships.

It wasn't about making them explicit.

It was about making them implicit,

and it was through their actions

that their desires are known,

not necessarily, apparently, to Jimmy Stewart,

who I don't think he knew he was playing gay.

Everyone else did though. [laughs]

- I once thought of inviting him to join us.

- Why didn't you? The more the merrier.

- Because he hasn't the nerve.

- Jimmy Stewart, as the [squeaking]

also possibly queer coded professor who's a bit of a,

you know, he's kind of a bitch.

- In another moment,

you might have been strangling each other

instead of the chicken.

- There's no lady on his arm. I'm just saying.

- He's got it.

He's got it!

He knows.

He knows. He knows.

- All right. Easy. - He knows.

- I'll take care of it.

- No you won't.

I'd just as soon kill you as kill him.

- One way to read "Rope" is overtly homophobic.

Another way to read it is that it's not homosexuality

but a homophobic society that's turning men into monsters.

[metal clattering] - No.

- I'm thinking the guy in the trunk is gay too,

but you know, we don't know.

- [Announcer] It's history, bizarre.

It's amazing. - Stick 'em up.

Bang. Bang.

[balloon popping] [mischievous music]

- When I think of Hitchcock's representation of queerness,

I think of "Strangers on a Train."

- Guy?

[creepy music]

Guy?

Over here, Guy.

- Hitchcock worked with women like Daphne du Maurier

and Patricia Highsmith

who were both gay as a box of bird seed.

- Want to hear one of my ideas for a perfect murder?

- What's interesting about Patricia Highsmith

and her penchant for writing

about villainous and violent and homicidal homosexuals,

in the most famous works,

which would be "The Talented Mr. Ripley,"

as well as "Strangers on a Train,"

these men are desperate to take the identity

of the object of their desire.

- It must be pretty exciting to be so important.

- A tennis player isn't so important.

- Oh, but people who do things are important.

Now, me, I never seem to do anything.

- It's about wanting to completely possess someone.

- Two fellows meet accidentally, like you and me,

no connection between them at all.

Never saw each other before.

Each one has somebody that he'd like to get rid of.

- If you're a Republican politician,

you know what's gay about "Strangers on a Train."

[mischievous music]

There is tapping. There's looks.

It's, again, not explicit,

but they both know what they're talking about.

- Oh, we do talk the same language, don't we?

- Well sure, Bruno. We talk the same language.

- I think, if you think about Patricia Highsmith,

it's like these thrillers that she wrote,

you know, thinking about these queer characters

as these sort of like very depraved figures,

like makes sense when you think about her own,

like her own sort of self hatred.

- Oh. - Is your name Miriam?

- Why, yes.

What are you,

- She was a lesbian who did not wanna be a lesbian.

She was like a homophobic, self-hating lesbian,

and she would try to have sex with men

and then be like, [groans] sex with men is terrible.

[upbeat carnival music]

- When it comes to queer characters,

I wanna say he's a product of his age, you know?

There's so much Freud floating around.

There's so many overbearing mommies, you know,

who have turned their sons

into these kind of like whipped queer dogs.

- Now, you haven't been doing anything foolish.

- [Don] Whether it is Bruno in "Strangers on a Train"

or Norman Bates,

they are mama's boys who are not just queer

but also homicidal to boot.

[dramatic music] [flames crackling]

[bomb exploding]

- As a queer filmmaker

who was in the closet for a very long time

and struggled with naming my own identity,

I always related with Daphne du Maurier's work.

- I have never known birds of different species

to flock together.

The very concept is unimaginable.

Why? If that happened, we wouldn't have a chance.

[steady music]

- Daphne du Maurier, she often,

when speaking about her own gender,

talked about feeling like deep down inside

in this box was her true gender and that it was a boy

and that it wasn't something that she could always be,

but it was something that was always there.

- Who are you?

What are you?

- Whether we're talking about Melanie in "The Birds"

or the second Mrs. de Winter in "Rebecca,"

they have this idea of who they should be

or who they would like to be

and it doesn't match up with who they are.

- I feel so uncomfortable.

I try my best every day,

but it's very difficult with people looking me up and down

as if I were a prize cow.

- Something I really identify with

in Daphne du Maurier's work, on a very personal level,

I can understand this deep pain behind hiding who you are.

And yet, at the same time,

you're essentially telling everybody very clearly

the type of prison that you feel like you found yourself in.

- This is Mrs. Danvers.

- How do you do?

- How do you do?

- You know, you have this like legendary bitch, "Rebecca."

Her absence was a blessing

to everyone except Mrs. Danvers

who was completely and utterly obsessed with her.

- Did you ever see anything so delicate?

- She's without a doubt a big old dyke.

She is so in love with Rebecca.

It's so obvious, and it becomes really obvious

in the panty scene.

- She's gonna show you how sheer it is.

She's gonna be like, "Look."

- You can see my hand.

- I'm just gonna let you know that I could see everything.

And not only that,

I'm gonna make it just like a tiny bit hotter

and let you know that nuns made these drawers.

[dramatic music]

- It's a lovely room, isn't it?

Loveliest room you've ever seen.

Everything is kept just as Mrs. de Winter liked it.

- Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca" is

like the ultimate service bottom.

- I really do think that she was a service top.

- Mrs. Danvers was definitely a service bottom,

in my opinion.

- Mrs. Danvers is a top.

- A service bottom.

Don't you think?

- I think Mrs. Danvers is a service top.

- Because she liked to be in the shadows.

She liked to be like around the blinds.

- I mean, I don't even know why there's a discussion

on this point.

- It is very much DS, dominant, submissive,

- Total top.

She might be a servant, but that was a, that,

oh my God.

- But again, it depends how you define top and bottom,

doesn't it?

So, that's a trick question.

[steady music]

- You know what I think?

We're all in our private traps, clamped in them,

and none of us can ever get out.

We scratch and and claw but only at the air,

only at each other, and for all of it,

we never budge an inch.

[scary music]

I was born in mine.

[tense music] [raindrops splattering]

- If you were to look at the sort of killer cross dresser

or the murderous man in a dress type trope,

Hitchcock was not the first one to do it.

But "Psycho" is certainly like the best known example of it.

- There are a lot of movies about men who dress up as women

and use that as a way to gain entry

to spaces that women are traditionally in.

Famously, you have Norman Bates

in Marion Crane's bathroom in "Psycho,"

which is kind of the original trans bathroom panic.

[shower rod squeaking] [scary music]

[Marion screaming] - Hitchcock captured

the essence of female as victim.

[creepy music] [Marion screaming]

He was able to raise that ideal to such a height.

[creepy music]

I mean half the country stopped showering.

[show curtain rings clicking]

[body thudding]

- One of the scariest things about "Psycho,"

before we get to the shower scene,

is Marion Crane's moral ambiguity.

This is something that is so truly upsetting

at the time in 1960,

that he very overtly begins the film with her

in her black brassiere.

He is laying bare the fact that this is a woman

who is essentially, quote, "Asking for trouble."

- What are you running away from?

- [Osgood] The parlor scene, it's so magnetic.

It's like one of the more magnetic scenes in movie history.

- Wouldn't it be better if you put her someplace?

- You mean an institution?

- She's leaning in physically to the conversation,

kind of trying to figure this guy out.

And I think, it feels like what she's trying

to figure out is,

why is this guy not trying to fuck me?

[creepy music]

- We all go a little mad sometimes.

Haven't you?

- When you watch Hitchcock films,

sexuality is something

that comes up for the lead characters almost always.

Like sometimes, it's a little bit more subtextual,

but with something like "Psycho,"

it feels like he is really inviting the audience

to look at a particular part of life, i.e. sex,

and how that's connected to morals, ethics, identity,

anything else that you hold dear.

[tense music]

- Hitchcock's legacy and filmography are complicated.

He's had some really interesting women characters,

but he also famously said that we should torture the women

to create good entertainment.

[rain splattering]

- It makes sense that some of the characters

that we villainize

in horror movies are the products of suppression.

If you are treated as a pathology, as a sickness,

then sickness is what you become.

[tense music]

- [Michael] When I see Anthony Perkins

in a movie like "Psycho,"

- I've caused you some trouble.

- No.

Mother, my mother,

what is a phrase?

She isn't quite herself today.

- The character of Norman Bates is

a queer man playing a queer man.

- [Norman] Please, mother.

- [Mother] No, I will not hide in the fruit cellar.

You think I'm fruity, huh?

- There's a different kind of connection

between a mother and her gay son

and you really see Hitchcock kind of exploiting

that in "Psycho"

without really having to say much else about him.

We all kind of pick up on, "Oh, that's why."

- Well, a a boy's best friend is his mother.

- That was, in Hitchcock's design,

essential that Norman be my dad.

[bright music]

- Are you alone?

[bright music]

♪ I've got a date with the prettiest girl in school ♪

- It was very comfortable for my father

to be an All American straight kid

who could headline movies in, and movie musicals.

That was easy.

- I don't want to die.

I don't know if I could kill anyone if I tried.

- He was a young, teenage heart throb.

He was always kind of a little off

and that was what made people interested, I think.

- And you're killing me. You've been killing me for years.

Yes, you have, and it's too much.

- He went to acting as a way to be anything but himself.

- You are like all the beautiful things in this wood.

- He was tender and warm

and everybody wanted to take him home.

And then he did "Psycho."

Norman Bates changed Anthony Perkins' life forever.

- Gee, I'm sorry I didn't hear you in all this rain.

- "Psycho" appears, and it's like there's no mask.

You're playing your own internal stuff.

There's no remove.

- Did she arrive with anyone?

- No.

- Did you spend the night with her?

- No.

- He is giving you that character

in every twitch and in every nervous, jittery, candy eating,

you know, thing that he's doing.

Hitchcock is cannily, and maybe cruelly,

finding all the Anthony Perkins parts

of Norman Bates and vice versa.

That just becomes a thing that you just don't shake.

- The fact that, yet again, in his career,

Hitchcock cast a closeted gay actor

to play the monster male figure in his movie,

I think is telling.

It was clearly a pattern in his career.

[water bubbling]

- Hitchcock knew that my father was queer and it,

that was sort of a motivator in hiring him for the part.

Hitchcock was too much of a trickster

and a little imp to not want to add that really vital edge.

- Wife's taking a nap,

and I never can keep quiet enough for her,

so, I just thought I'd look you up and talk.

- The John Gavin scenes, for me, with my dad are,

it's like my dad against his old, discarded itself.

- You look frightened.

Have I been saying something frightening?

- I don't know what you've been saying.

- Hitchcock was probably impish enough

to kind of really lean into that

and hire Gavin to mop the floor with.

Norman couldn't possibly stop him.

[menacing music]

And of course, he's wrong.

- He imbues Norman Bates with colors and flavors

that are above and beyond what's there on the page,

that I as a gay man who,

you know, spent some, at least,

thankfully not my whole life, but you know,

some of my adolescence certainly in the closet,

can really relate to.

I was a mama's boy too. You know?

- Sometimes, when she talks to me like that,

I feel I'd like to go up there and curse her

and leave her forever or at least a fire.

But I know I can't.

- Anthony Perkins is really channeling the pain

of not being able to express his queerness.

And that's why we remember it

as such a powerhouse performance

because it really is somebody's real lived pain.

- So, the narrative, in my house,

was "Psycho" had been too right for my dad

and therefore, was the end of him as an actor, really.

It was like his coming out and his funeral at the same time.

In one swift move, the whole,

the whole jig was up.

"Psycho" was no good for him.

It was too good,

it was too good, and therefore, no good.

It had damaged my father's career

because now no one could see him as anything else.

There was no freedom in 1960 to say, "Oh, and by the way,

the reason why I'm so great in this role,

I'm just like that."

If my father had made "Psycho"

and then somehow miraculously had been allowed to come out

and had said, "Look, you fuckers,

out there in the audience who ate that up."

I mean, you eat it up,

and what you're eating up is truth, right?

You ate up Tony Perkins's truth

and he's got a lot more of that.

Like, he's got a lot of that.

He's a human being. You know?

That could have been mined in a way that just couldn't be.

Do you know?

There just, there, it just wasn't,

there wasn't an outlet for that.

[menacing music]

[chains jingling] [scary music]

- It was perhaps inevitable that, at some point,

he would step back into the role for "Psycho II."

- [Narrator] It's 22 years later,

and Norman Bates is coming home.

Psycho II. [scary music]

- It felt good to see him going

into a packed, huge movie theater.

We toured the world,

and he would get up there and talk before the movie,

and people were going nuts.

And so, it's like your dad's Paul McCartney for 10 minutes.

- I just moved back here after being many years away,

and I forgot to bring any cutlery.

- And it was like, this is good.

This seems good. This seems like this is all working.

[woman screaming]

[creepy music]

And then there was the "People" magazine cover,

[thunder rumbling]

which basically said,

remember Tony Perkins who's gay and played a mama's boy,

a killer who dressed up like a woman?

Remember all that? It's happening again.

That cover was,

I saw that as a kid.

There's no way that I didn't get that

and then be fed a very different narrative.

- We know all about that. Don't we, Norman?

- And then "Psycho III" was sort of triply,

sorry, interesting,

[upbeat tense music]

because he was authoring this as the director.

He was, it was his point of view.

"Psycho III" is like this dirty movie.

- [Norman] She can't help it.

She can't help the things she does.

- This was the dawning of like, "Oh my dad's like,

like sex is like a big thing for him."

There's no mistake about how my dad is looking

at Jeff Fahey.

If Norman Bates could make a movie about Norman Bates

as an older guy,

it'd probably be really fucking dirty,

and good for him.

- You did a nice job on her, Norman,

fresh as the day she was croaked.

- It was so authentic, and all of a sudden my dad,

who had been completely inauthentic with me

for so long was all of a sudden now

on a big screen being authentic.

- The past? It's never really past.

It stays with me all the time,

and no matter how hard I try,

I can't really escape.

It's always there,

throbbing inside you.

- I don't know, it's almost on the nose, you know?

How sad it is and how much he was able to tap into

that energy in his film roles,

because he really did live it.

- For many years, our next guest was one

of Hollywood's most confirmed bachelors,

but a talented young photographer has changed all of that.

Here are Mr. and Mrs. Tony Perkins.

Tony Perkins and Berry Berenson.

- Do you know, like I think

my mom and dad's story is a genuine one.

They loved each other for real

and they had a for real sexual relationship.

- Was he anything like you had imagined having seen him in,

on the screen and having liked him on the screen?

- Everything and more. Yeah.

- Really? - Yeah,

definitely. [laughs]

- That's great, let's hear about the more,

'cause we know the abstract.

[group laughing]

- He needed to be hidden, and so, she was gonna help.

And I don't think that, until it became literally fatal,

I think she probably would've done it forever.

- AIDS has claimed another Hollywood star, Anthony Perkins.

Perkins, who was 60 years old,

did not discuss his disease publicly.

He died in his Hollywood home this weekend

with his wife and two sons by his side.

[slow music]

- The story of how he contracted HIV was made up.

I mean, my parents made it up.

It was a blood transfusion.

He'd had a surgery on his face to get,

a little thing had been removed,

and they had used some bad blood.

We were parrying reality and choosing the lie.

And it's kind of a lot to untie.

I think we do it for love.

If my mom was gonna be captain of the love team

and that was the route she was charting for us,

then let's do it.

You know? Good.

That's love.

And it is love. It is.

Protecting somebody is love

and it just has other things attached to it.

My dad was a really good dad.

He was a complete original.

He introduced a significant wrinkle

into my understanding of how the world works.

And you know, that's,

in a way, that's a privilege.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Norman.

[upbeat electronic music]

♪ Hey there, it's really nice to meet you ♪

♪ I've known you for a while ♪

♪ I'm not sure if you see through ♪

♪ The intents of my smile ♪

♪ I think you might be unaware ♪

♪ 'Cause I look, I've got a stare ♪

♪ And you might not even care ♪

♪ But you can get it ♪

♪ Let me know ♪

♪ Come and get it if you want it ♪

♪ 'Cause you know that you can get some ♪

♪ If you want it, you can get it ♪

♪ 'Cause I got it, come and have some ♪

♪ You can get it ♪

♪ I see you looking at the night ♪

♪ Maybe just one night ♪

♪ You let me know if it's night ♪

♪ 'Cause you can get it ♪

♪ I'd much rather 'cause you don't know ♪

♪ That's not really my style ♪

♪ But if you're feeling, come around now ♪

♪ You can get it ♪

♪ Just let me know ♪

♪ Come and get it if you want it ♪

♪ 'Cause you know that you can get some ♪

♪ Get you some of this ♪

♪ If you want it, you can get it ♪

♪ 'Cause I got it, come and have some ♪

♪ Trying to help you out ♪

♪ You can get it ♪

♪ Get some of this ooh, ah, ah ♪

♪ Get some of this ah ♪

♪ Get some of this ooh, ah, ah ♪

♪ Get some of this ♪

♪ So if you're ever feeling, you know ♪

♪ The slightest bit thirsty ♪

♪ You can get a sip ♪

♪ I can take you to a disco, anyplace that you wanna go ♪

♪ I'm just trying to let you know ♪

♪ You can get it ♪

♪ We can kick it in the backroom ♪

♪ Or dance under the floorboard ♪

♪ Anything that you want to ♪

♪ 'Cause you can get it ♪

♪ If you feel like you deserve a treat ♪

♪ Well, I can be that treat, baby ♪

♪ Or I can be the meal ♪

♪ Go ahead and take a bite of me ♪

♪ Take a big old bite, sugar ♪

♪ Just let me know ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Come and get it if you want it ♪

♪ 'Cause you know that you can get some ♪

♪ Get some of this ♪

♪ If you want it, you can get it ♪

♪ 'Cause I got it, come and have some ♪

♪ Trying to help you out ♪

♪ You can get it ♪

[upbeat electronic music]

♪ Let me know ♪

[rocks clattering] [bird cawing]