TCM Classic Film Festival
Ongoing Series
Classical Hollywood is full of Queer films--works by Queer directors, with Queer stars, and with Queer characters, obvious or not--and the annual TCM Classic Film Festival (April 24-27) does not skimp out.
TCM Classic Film Festival
UPCOMING SCREENINGS
Mark your calendar for these amazing events.
Suddenly, Last Summer
TCL Chinese Theaters
Despite being made under the Hays Code, this movie is uncharacteristically clear about its gay themes. Based on the Tennessee Williams play and adapted to the screen by Gore Vidal, Elizabeth Taylor plays a young woman who is institutionalized in order to keep the (gay) secrets of her recently-deceased cousin.
The only son of wealthy widow Violet Venable dies while on vacation with his cousin Catherine. What the girl saw was so horrible that she went insane; now Mrs. Venable wants Catherine lobotomized to cover up the truth.
Bringing Up Baby
TCL Chinese Theaters
Likely bisexual Cary Grant and sapphic icon Katharine Hepburn star in this perfect screwball comedy that still feels fresh today--and is a footnote in many queer film histories as the first Hollywood film to use the word "gay" to mean homosexual.
David Huxley is waiting to get a bone he needs for his museum collection. Through a series of strange circumstances, he meets Susan Vance, and the duo have a series of misadventures which include a leopard called Baby.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
TCL Chinese Theaters
If you love Queer cinema, you probably watched this movie a lot in high school. Rocky Horror needs no intro--but when do you get a chance to see it on the big screen ? No word on whether this screening will be encouraging callbacks or auctioning virgins before the show.
Sweethearts Brad and Janet, stuck with a flat tire during a storm, discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite scientist. As their innocence is lost, Brad and Janet meet a houseful of wild characters, including a rocking biker and a creepy butler. Through elaborate dances and rock songs, Frank-N-Furter unveils his latest creation: a muscular man named ‘Rocky’.
Car Wash
TCL Chinese Theaters
"Honey, I am more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get" is the iconic snap-back from gay-and-proud Lindy in this cult Black comedy about the employees at a Los Angeles carwash.
This day-in-the-life cult comedy focuses on a group of friends working at Sully Boyar’s Car Wash in the Los Angeles ghetto. The team meets dozens of eccentric customers – including a smooth-talking preacher, a wacky cab driver and an ex-convict – while cracking politically incorrect jokes to a constant soundtrack of disco and funk. Some of the workers find romance as the day moves along, but most are just happy to get through another shift.
The Birdcage
TCL Chinese Theaters
A gay cabaret owner and his drag queen companion agree to put up a false straight front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancé’s conservative moralistic parents.
Morocco
TCL Chinese Theaters
The first American film from bisexual superstar Marlene Dietrich features an iconic gender-bending cabaret number in which Dietrich performs in a tuxedo and kisses a woman at the end.
Mogador, Morocco. Late 1920s. A complex romance develops between a womanizing Legionnaire and a disillusioned Parisian cabaret singer.
The Big Combo
TCL Chinese Theaters
Restoration World Premiere
This film noir classic made the censors sweat, given just how many sexual implications director Joseph H Lewis fit in--including two mob henchmen who are almost certainly lovers.
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster’s girlfriend.
The Ritz
TCL Chinese Theaters
Rita Morena co-stars in this adaptation of gay playwright Terrence McNally's "The Tubs," about a straight man hiding out from the mob in a gay bathhouse.
To escape from a mobster, businessman Gaetano Proclo orders a cab driver to take him to a place where he can’t be found. Unfortunately for Gaetano, the place turns out to be a gay bathhouse.
TCM Classic Film Festival
PAST SCREENINGS
Suddenly, Last Summer
TCL Chinese Theaters
Despite being made under the Hays Code, this movie is uncharacteristically clear about its gay themes. Based on the Tennessee Williams play and adapted to the screen by Gore Vidal, Elizabeth Taylor plays a young woman who is institutionalized in order to keep the (gay) secrets of her recently-deceased cousin.
The only son of wealthy widow Violet Venable dies while on vacation with his cousin Catherine. What the girl saw was so horrible that she went insane; now Mrs. Venable wants Catherine lobotomized to cover up the truth.
