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Enemies of Dorothy are Making the Queer Horror Parodies We Didn’t Know We Needed!

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This morning as I sat contemplating my day, a Facebook video from a page called Enemies of Dorothy popped up with a title that commanded my attention: Social Justice Strangers.

I haven’t been so happy to have watched a Facebook video in a long time and I was immediately on the hunt to track down the men behind the satire.

Their names are Christopher Smith Bryant and Ryan Leslie Fisher, a real life couple with a flare, if I do say so myself, for poking just the right amount of fun at the world around them. Not surprisingly, they had a story to tell and a real reason behind their video projects.

“After Trump [was elected] and all the political changes we were seeing,” Christopher says. “both of us felt like we had a lot to say, and we both deal with our emotions through humor and comedy which is why we started Enemies of Dorothy.”

For those who don’t know, Enemies of Dorothy is a play on “Friends of Dorothy” a mid-twentieth century code phrase for being gay that simultaneously paying tribute to gay icon, Judy Garland and her iconic role in The Wizard of Oz. It was a time when being gay was still punishable with jail time and worse, and “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” was just one of the many ways gay men could identify themselves without drawing unwanted attention.

One of the most hilarious and bumbling stories from our nation’s military history involved this very phrase. The leaders of the U.S. Navy were trying to crack down on the “gay problem” they were having, and upon hearing the phrase “friend of Dorothy” repeatedly, they assumed that a woman named Dorothy was at the center of a “massive homosexual conspiracy” in the Navy.

They spent months trying to track her down! But, I digress.

Christopher, a stand-up comedian in the Los Angeles area who has been listed on Pride.com as one of the top 10 LGBT comedians you need to know, and Ryan, an actor with credits on “The Mentalist” as well as his original series “Openly Jake,” dropped their first horror parody some time ago with a video in which Pennywise the Clown and the Babadook announced their engagement.

The video, directed by Michael Varrati, came in the wake of the Babadook grabbing queer iconic status after a mix-up over at Netflix. It was a viral hit and the couple never looked back.

Since then, there have been a host of new videos including Gay Hell and Gay Beast Friends, each with its own satirically funny flare with a dose of social commentary thrown in for good measure.

But where and how did Social Justice Strangers come to be?

“Our friend Zack Ogle came over for one of our monthly “Werewolf” (the board game) nights, and immediately spat out this idea,” Ryan says. “It just clicked. We sat down and wrote it together. Then we got Michael Varrati on board to direct and it was a recipe for success!”

In their version, the three terrifying killers from the popular film The Strangers show up to murder the two men only to be flummoxed when its discovered that the men are gay, and hilarious worry sets in that they might be committing a hate crime.

One thing is certain: we have not heard the last of these two.

The Enemies of Dorothy, or as I like to call them “The Ambitiously Gay Duo”, have a lot more tricks up their sleeves, and I for one can’t wait to see them come to fruition.

Check out Social Justice Strangers below, and if you like what you see subscribe to their Facebook Page and their YouTube channel!

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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