Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Old Dark House (1932)

Sir William Porterhouse: So, you got your feet wet?

Gladys: Yes, Bill, and that wasn't all either.

Sir William Porterhouse: Yes, I didn't suppose it was!

James Whale's The Old Dark House is a perfect movie -- if you were making a list of the ten best haunted house movies you'd have to include it and it's not even about a haunting. The fact that I only saw it for the first time within the past decade or so stuns me -- you can see how every "haunted house" movie after has been forced really to riff on it because it is a perfect distillation of the thing it is. Anyway I'm not really here to heap more praise on this movie, as I've done several times now since seeing it -- I'm just here to wish one of its stars, one of the gay ones, a happy birthday. 

Happy 127th to the grand old closet queen Charles Laughton -- speaking of James Whale, Laughton went on to wed Whale's Bride of Frankenstein herself Elsa Lanchester, which provides me with the opportunity to once again recommend any and all books about those two but especially her autobiography Elsa Lanchester, Herself, which is probably the single most entertaining celebrity bio I have ever read. Lanchester was a grand writer and storyteller and had one fuck-ton of a life to regale us about, including her gay ass husband. Not that it's possible to hold it against Chuck, given the times he lived during -- and anyway he directed the masterpiece The Night of the Hunter so anything he ever did is black water under the dreamy night-time bridge. 

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

I Have No News of The Onania Club...

... I was just curious if any of you had heard about this movie? I only heard about it for the first time when John Waters brought it up during a Q&A at for the Criterion release screenings of his two movies last week. So if you're like me and clueless -- first off, I apologize. So The Onania Club was directed by Tom Six, the dude who made the Human Centipede trilogy (which of all things was just announced to be getting an enormous fancy 4K box-set from Umbrella in Australia btw, in case you're into those terrible terrible terrible movies.) Six made this movie is 2019 but supposedly very very very few people have seen it -- one of them being John Waters, who put it into his Top 10 list in 2021; and here's what John had to say which I think will give y'all the gist better than I ever could:

"OK, I’m really going out on a limb here, replacing Pedro Almodóvar’s exquisite Parallel Mothers, a film everybody should love, with this loathsome unreleased feature everybody will probably hate. The Human Centipede director tops himself with a story of rich Los Angeles women who gather together to masturbate while watching news footage of the world’s misery. Often wrongheaded but sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, it has been rejected by film distributors worldwide. All I can say is that the movie sure as hell delivers. You will probably never be able to see it. Maybe that’s a good thing . . . "

And sure enough nobody has released it in the seven years since it was made. There's a thread on Reddit about it that says Six is just holding out for an inflated check for the film and that several labels including the fine freaks at Severin have indeed offered to release the movie -- this makes sense to me since everything I've ever heard about Tom Six is he's a total maniac. Of course you could just read the logline for the Human Centipede movies and assume that, but it's surprisingly rare -- look at Wes Craven! Most horror directors are like him -- perfectly nice people who get their subconscious freak-shit out on screen. Six seems to be one of the exceptions. Anyway we love an urban legend movie like this so I had to do a post -- Waters brought the film up in relation to a question about whether movies and art still had the ability to shock in our current world, saying that watching rich ladies jerking off to footage of 9/11 shocked even him lol. Anyway this makes me realize I didn't post the video I took of John Waters introducing the screening of Hairspray I attended over the weekend! So I should do that.

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Good Morning, World

I was surprised when hit-maker and pop-god Mark Ronson posted this photo on his Instagram earlier this week, since this hot man has been notoriously stingy at exploiting his own hotness for our sakes for ages, even though he's always been as hot a piece himself as any of the stars he wrote music for -- anyway it seemed right to give him props for this little Pride gift not just in Ye Olde Pit Thread on Bluesky (which is still going steady and strong with fresh entries landing every damn day!) but here on the site proper as well. We've nursed a Mark Ronson crush for actual decades now -- anybody remember that time he got his pants torn off on stage? Ahh memories. Anyway happy July! It's my birthday in two weeks -- what are you buying me? None of that peace shit -- I demand war.

Jon Bernthal Twenty-Two More Times

Well this was a perfectly spectacular rabbit hole to fall down here on the afternoon of this absolutely shitty fucking day -- back in the middle of May I posted ten pictures of Jon Bernthal for Esquire magazine that were on their own quite the treat. But it turns out I should have done some further digging because over on the Instagram of the shoot's photographer Billy Kidd (do we think that was his birth name?) outtake upon outtake upon outtake were being unfurled -- twenty-two of them to be specific! So why the hell would you stare at news of the world falling apart when you can just focus very very intently on the way that shirt cradles Jon's bosom instead? You're welcome. Hit the jump to have your shitty day saved...

Pop That Cork Cooper Koch

A happy update to share on last week's annoying news that the cowards at Amazon had dropped Luca Guadagnino's movie Artificial, about Open A.I.'s leading piece-of-shit Sam Altman -- the wonderful folks at Neon have supposedly picked the movie up for distribution! That comes via the in-the-know Matthew Belloni on the Nazi-website (via, thx Mac) who says this will be officially announced later this week and the movie is probably going to be out before the end of this year. Huzzah! Make like the film's co-star Cooper Koch here and drink one in praise of there still being some balls in the film world. Anyway I'd actually forgotten all the people in this cast (not that it's surprising given any actor with even half a brain should want to be filmed by Luca's loving camera) -- besides star Andrew Garifled there's Cooper here, there's Anora bald-beauty Yura Borisov, there's Jason Schwartzman (who basically stole Queer from everyone not named Lesley Manville or "Drew Starkey's Nipples Through That One See-Through Shirt), there's Cooper Hoffman and Billie Lourd and Monica Barbaro and Chris O'Dowd and Zosia Mamet and Nicholas Hamilton (the cute gay who played the bully from the It remakes) and Mark fuckin' Rylance (who definitely stole Bones and All with that fucking scuzzy hair-braid of death). Fingers crossed this lands at NYFF! Cannot wait. In summation -- fuck you, Amazon. 

Give 'Em Hell Refn

As if unloading that slutty milk campaign on us Charles Melton admirers wasn't enough for this sweaty end-of-June Tuesday afternoon, Neon has just now unleashed the first full-length trailer for Nicolas Winding Refn's Her Private Hell as well -- and as glimped in the first teaser as well as yesterday's sweaty torso poster it appears to be a real "Imagine Charles Melton in a fetish, any fetish, and voila you got it" fest. Leather, uniforms, you name it Refn is gearing Chuck up for our visual benefits. 

I still have no idea what the fuck this movie is about and oh my god I do not care in the slightest -- as with anything Refn has made in the past decade and a half it's all about the vibes and I subscribe to these vibes. A lot of people don't! And I feel bad for them! There are shots in this trailer that made my eyes pop out of my head. 

Literally. My eyes are sitting on my desk right now, I am typing this blind. Anyway this movie was not loved at Cannes but that only made me more excited -- his two T.V. series (Too Old To Die Young and Copenhagen Cowboy) were similarly divisive and I loved every second of them. I would put Refn in alongside Robert Eggers and Wes Anderson as filmmakers who've alienated a lot of people by going off the deep ends with their respective styles but I'm so here for it from every single one of them. Art, baby!

Her Private Hell is out on July 24th. And hit the jump

for more Charles Melton gifs if you think you can take it...

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... making harder bones with Charles Melton. 

Chuck's got Milk! And he wants you to drink it! Oh those devils at Big Milk, they went and hired Charles Melton to be their new spokes-hunk (via) and I have a feeling the internet is gonna be real thirsty real fast looking at these first five photos they've dropped. I sure am! Lick your lips and hit the jump for the entire batch...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Living (2022)

Sutherland: When a girl like that steals 

your hat, always cheaper to buy a new one.

A happy 45th birthday to the great Tom Burke today! I didn't realize he's been acting for almost thirty years now but it does make sense now that I realize the first thing I ever saw him in was the sleazy Aughts thriller Donkey Punch in 2005 with my beloved Julian Morris -- and repeatedly at that because he's the guy who has the threesome with Julian and a girl and there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of homoerotic tension between the two guys in that scene. 

Needless to say I have seen that one scene more than I've seen any movie on Sight & Sound's Greatest Films list haha. I never really put that together with Burke when he started showing up in classier fare though -- in 2013 there was N.W. Refn's Only God Forgives and then it wasn't until Johanna Hogg's The Souvenir in 2019 that he really grabbed me again. (What a performance that is though.) 

After that I knew who he was proper, so when he popped up in Miller's Furiosa, Soderbergh's Black Bag, and my beloved Oliver Hermanus joint Living as quoted up top -- and I'd say the sequence between him and Bill Nighy is probably the film's peak -- I was always excited to see him. Anyway I think he's become one of our finest actors and I wouldn't be surprised to see him be an awards-magnet for a role in the next few years. Big fan! 

What's your favorite Tom Burke performance?

Five Frames From ?

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Good Morning, World

Josh Heuston should not be making me think 

about him and the Eiffel Tower -- it's misleading! 

How Dare You NWR

It would seem that somebody on the promotional team at Neon realized that sweaty half-naked Charles Melton was getting the most attention in the Her Private Hell teaser trailer that got released -- and yes, I led that parade -- because both the image touting the movie's R-rating and now this the first official teaser poster for the movie have leaned hard into Charles Melton's sweaty half-naked torso. Just as all of us would also like to lean into. Anyway if I can't find a physical copy of this poster to hang on my wall at some point I might have throw myself into the sea so let's they print some of these babies off. Just saying, Neon! Send me one and consider me purchased for eternity. I am cheap as fuck. Oh and in related news:

I think Anya Taylor-Joy speaks for all of us

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) June 29, 2026 at 10:28 AM

Get Ready To Sell Your Souls

This is a less a "day of purchase" than it is a "millisecond of purchase" -- in October Mubi will be releasing a book called The Faust Bible: The Making of F.W. Murnau’s Masterpiece which is, as the title explicates, about the making of Murnau's 1926 silent masterpiece. It's going to be loaded with material that was long thought lost including photographs and such -- they say it'll include around 400 photos, documenting the making of the movie step by step. I can vividly remember watching Faust for the first time in my German Expressionist Cinema class in Film School back in the day -- when it gets to that shot of the devil spreading his wings over the city (see down below) I just about slid off my chair in a fit of ecstasy. Can you imagine what that would've done to your brain in 1927? That's some seeing the Brontosaurus for the first time in Jurassic Park in 1993 level of mind-blowing material. I haven't actually watched Faust in well over a decade -- I keep meaning to catch it on the big screen when it screens here in NYC, which isn't not often, but that link up top says they're planning all kinds of events for its centennial this fall, besides the book itself, so I guess I'll dive back in then. What wonderful news on an otherwise horrific (per usual) day. No word on when the book's pre-order will be up (I will surely let y'all know five seconds after I have secured my own copy) but the book is out on October 17th. 

Five Frames From ?

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Good Morning, Werwulf

Even though we got our first official still from Robert Eggers' Werwulf last week I did not expect them to be dropping the trailer this soon -- but they did! It's here! Even though the movie's not out until Christmas. I'm sure we'll get longer clips and teases closer to the release but honestly I am fine with this two minute long smorgasbord of gross images flashing by, up to and including... 

... two count them two...

... looks at Aaron Taylor-Johnson starkers mid-transformation. What else do you need? (Apologies that I did not gif Lily-Rose Depp's hairlip even though I know you were shouting "Hairlip, hairlip!") Anyway obviously this is the movie I most want to see that remains in 2026 -- this is always the case when there's a Robert Eggers movie... well unless there's a Luca movie, I guess. But then it depends on subject matter. And Aaron's flexing buttocks do a lot of heavy lifting on they're lonesome. Anyway! It's Monday, I am not awake yet, just watch the trailer and buy your tickets when you can: 

Pick Me Up, François Arnaud

How has Fucktoys not come out yet? What is this world? This movie has been bouncing around film fests for over a year, since premiering at SXSW last March -- I posted the first trailer even before then. I follow the movie on social media and it's constantly screening places -- it's screened here in NYC more than once but somehow every time it did I was otherwise occupied. I feel cheated! At least François Arnaud s out here giving us hope. Hope, and other feelings. Anyway this has been a lazy week for me but somehow, despite me taking it easy in the wake of Tribeca and NewFest back to back, I have fully hit the wall today -- don't be surprised if you're forced to stare at François flexing from now til Monday. Such a sacrifice! I've got a screening of Hairspray to attend tonight -- with John Waters and "guests" in attendance! -- so maybe keep your eye on my Instagram and you'll see some of that there. And I'm seeing John a second time tomorrow when he and Ricki Lake do a Q&A and signing at Barnes & Noble. (This is all to promote Criterion's release of Hairspray and Desperate Living this week, which I told you about on Tuesday.) So... yeah. Have a good weekend or whatever! 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Sonny: Kiss me.

Moretti: What?

Sonny: Kiss me. When I'm 

being fucked, I like to get kissed a lot.

The great Sidney Lumet was born 102 years ago today.

What's your favorite Lumet film that's not this or Network?

I have a real soft spot for Deathtrap but then, you know, gay.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?