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Horror Pride Month: Actor Michael James Daly

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Michael James Daly

Michael James Daly entered the world as an unexpected and happy addition to his family which, oddly enough, set him up as a horror fan from a very early age.

With much older brothers and sisters who were already established horror movie buffs, he ended up watching the movies they watched and at the ripe young age of six or seven, he was introduced to the movie that would, in many ways, change his life.

“I distinctly remember watching Friday the 13th Part 2 with my older sister and immediately being obsessed with horror movies,” the actor recalled in a recent interview for iHorror’s Horror Pride Month. “I was one of those guys who was just gay from the get-go, and there was something about those badass women like Amy Steel. They were my idols.”

It wasn’t a passing fad for the actor, and he admits that as he got older it was the lessons that he learned from those final girls that helped him navigate the bullying that is sadly almost inevitable for an overweight gay kid in as they grow into adulthood.

“In high school, I weighed 300 pounds and I was gay and even though I wasn’t out, I think it was pretty clear to everyone that I was gay,” he explained. “I would walk down the hall with this image of Nancy [from A Nightmare on Elm Street] in my head. That’s how I got through the hallways. I would imagine them and how they would handle it.”

He also recalls Lisa Wilcox’s Alice in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and her mind-over-matter mantra in those difficult situations, and it carried him right into his acting career.

Along the way, he says he’s also come to understand and appreciate some of the films that he initially didn’t connect with when he saw them as a child. Films like The Exorcist and Carrie, for example, just took on more meaning because of the elevated level of acting.

Photo by Jenn Cady

“Watching Ellen Burstyn and seeing her method for bringing her character to life in The Exorcist is fascinating to me,” Daly said. “It’s one of my favorite movies, now. That’s also why I love watching Lili Taylor in The Conjuring. She’s amazing!”

Daly recently worked on a film with director Tommy Faircloth (Family Possessions) called A Nun’s Curse. On the set, he got to meet and work with Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) which, he says, was a dream come true.

“It’s funny because I don’t think a lot of them realize the impact they had on young gay men,” he said, “and I was able to sort of pull her aside and tell her. They’ve gotten a lot of us through a lot of hard times.”

He also had the chance to play a role in Michelle Iannantuono’s Livescream, a film that’s been taking the indie festival circuit by storm for its inventiveness and the sort of claustrophobic terror it invokes.

In the film, a man by the name of Scott is a game streamer with a devoted following who finds his joy in the connections he’s made online. When a fan sends him a supposedly haunted game, he finds himself trapped in a web with his own life and the lives of his fans in peril.

“Michelle is incredible,” he said. “She designed all of those games in that film it was just amazing, but she’s also a really great director which is something every actor needs, regardless of how talented they are. I’ve seen films with Anthony Hopkins where I could tell there was no real direction behind the scenes. Michelle let me kind of play around in the role, but she knew what she needed and she got it.”

When it comes to queer representation in the horror genre, Daly, like so many I’ve spoken to in this series, laments the way that characters are being written when they’re included at all and he recalled a recent example.

“There was this movie I saw at a film festival recently,” he said. “About halfway through the film one of the characters was revealed to be gay, which was really cool. Then suddenly, even though he’d not been like this through the whole film, he was flamboyantly gay. They jumped right onto that stereotype.”

While this characterization is certainly not new–flamboyantly gay is about the only way many writers know how to handle a gay character–neither is the fact that it remains insulting, especially in an instance where just being outed suddenly changes a character completely.

Despite of and in some instances because of this, Daly continues to work, not only as an actor, but also writing scripts that better represent the queer community within the genre space.

“I’d like to get a script where I could be more myself,” he said. “In my daily life, I am somewhat more effeminate at times but I am also other things. And this script I’ve written expresses that.”

For more on Michael James Daly’s work, be sure to check out his IMDb page and stay tuned to iHorror for more Pride Month coverage.

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Another Creepy Spider Movie Hits Shudder This Month

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Good spider films are a theme this year. First, we had Sting and then there was Infested. The former is still in theaters and the latter is coming to Shudder starting April 26.

Infested has been getting some good reviews. People are saying that it’s not only a great creature feature but also a social commentary on racism in France.

According to IMDb: Writer/director Sébastien Vanicek was looking for ideas around the discrimination faced by black and Arab-looking people in France, and that led him to spiders, which are rarely welcome in homes; whenever they’re spotted, they’re swatted. As everyone in the story (people and spiders) is treated like vermin by society, the title came to him naturally.

Shudder has become the gold standard for streaming horror content. Since 2016, the service has been offering fans an expansive library of genre movies. in 2017, they began to stream exclusive content.

Since then Shudder has become a powerhouse in the film festival circuit, buying distribution rights to movies, or just producing some of their own. Just like Netflix, they give a film a short theatrical run before adding it to their library exclusively for subscribers.

Late Night With the Devil is a great example. It was released theatrically on March 22 and will begin streaming on the platform starting April 19.

While not getting the same buzz as Late Night, Infested is a festival favorite and many have said if you suffer from arachnophobia, you might want to take heed before watching it.

Infested

According to the synopsis, our main character, Kalib is turning 30 and dealing with some family issues. “He’s fighting with his sister over an inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a shop and brings it back to his apartment. It only takes a moment for the spider to escape and reproduce, turning the whole building into a dreadful web trap. The only option for Kaleb and his friends is to find a way out and survive.”

The film will be available to watch on Shudder starting April 26.

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Part Concert, Part Horror Movie M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Trap’ Trailer Released

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In true Shyamalan form, he sets his film Trap inside a social situation where we aren’t sure what is going on. Hopefully, there is a twist at the end. Furthermore, we hope it’s better than the one in his divisive 2021 movie Old.

The trailer seemingly gives away a lot, but, as in the past, you can’t rely on his trailers because they are often red herrings and you are being gaslit to think a certain way. For instance, his movie Knock at the Cabin was completely different than what the trailer implied and if you hadn’t read the book on which the film is based it was still like going in blind.

The plot for Trap is being dubbed an “experience” and we aren’t quite sure what that means. If we were to guess based on the trailer, it’s a concert movie wrapped around a horror mystery. There are original songs performed by Saleka, who plays Lady Raven, a kind of Taylor Swift/Lady Gaga hybrid. They have even set up a Lady Raven website to further the illusion.

Here is the fresh trailer:

According to the synopsis, a father takes his daughter to one of Lady Raven’s jam-packed concerts, “where they realize they’re at the center of a dark and sinister event.”

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Trap stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills and Allison Pill. The film is produced by Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock and M. Night Shyamalan. The executive producer is Steven Schneider.

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Woman Brings Corpse Into Bank To Sign Loan Papers

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Warning: This is a disturbing story.

You have to be pretty desperate for money to do what this Brazilian woman did at the bank to get a loan. She wheeled in a fresh corpse to endorse the contract and she seemingly thought the bank employees wouldn’t notice. They did.

This weird and disturbing story comes via ScreenGeek an entertainment digital publication. They write that a woman identified as Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes pushed a man she identified as her uncle into the bank pleading with him to sign loan papers for $3,400. 

If you’re squeamish or easily triggered, be aware that the video captured of the situation is disturbing. 

Latin America’s largest commercial network, TV Globo, reported on the crime, and according to ScreenGeek this is what Nunes says in Portuguese during the attempted transaction. 

“Uncle, are you paying attention? You must sign [the loan contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, as I cannot sign on your behalf!”

She then adds: “Sign so you can spare me further headaches; I can’t bear it any longer.” 

At first we thought this might be a hoax, but according to Brazilian police, the uncle, 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga had passed away earlier that day.

 “She attempted to feign his signature for the loan. He entered the bank already deceased,” Police Chief Fábio Luiz said in an interview with TV Globo. “Our priority is to continue investigating to identify other family members and gather more information regarding this loan.”

If convicted Nunes could be facing jail time on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and desecration of a corpse.

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