Step into the dark, erotic world of Todd Haynes and drink the ‘Poison’ of sexuality
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a rewatch.The Transcendent: PoisonDirector Todd Haynes announced himself as a brilliant, very queer auteur with this film that won the Sundance Grand Prize back in 1991.
Critics hailed it as a masterpiece of erotic surrealism, while key politicians including Ralph Reed and Dick Armey (go figure that they were all Republican) decried Poison as degenerate smut.Can both be true?Describing the plot of Poison isn’t easy: the film is a triptych, telling three different stories vaguely connected through themes and style.
Hero follows a seven-year-old boy that murders his abusive father, told in the style of Hard Copy-type tabloid journalism. Horror borrows from 1950s b-movies, telling the story of a mad scientist obsessed with an elixir of human sexuality.
Homo tells a prison love story that would make the characters in The Prince blush. Haynes weaves these three stories together, allowing them to comment on one another, sometimes with humor, others, with despair.
