Gordon Hickey | The Cure / 2021

a moral dilemma

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gordon Hickey (screenwriter and director) The Cure / 2021 [15 minutes]

 

If you’ve ever wanted a gay hero who one day suddenly realizes that there are evil forces in the world that are determined to see him dead, then The Cure is the movie for you. In 15 minutes, Hickey tells the exciting story of a man, Craig Gaffney (played by the author and director), a top researcher of what appears to be a cure for AIDS, who discovers that more than half of the patients who have been showing strong signs of being free from the disease have died overnight. The woman who reports this too him, the clinic head Tanya (Sally Elsbury), tells him that he has simply been too optimistic about the so-called “cure.” He should go home and rest.

   Shocked by the news, Gaffney determines to stay on at work and look further into what has inexplicably happened to the patients whose plasma had tested to be free of and immune to the the disease but suddenly turned positive overnight.

     A coffee break meeting with a friend Cillian (Conor Clear) reveals that a plane load of scientists on their way to an AIDS conference in Sydney, among them a group from Ireland where this film takes place, has just crashed over Armenia, killing all aboard. Cillian suggests the he should immediately illegally download all the data about his research, even though no one is permitted to take the data outside of the institute in which he works. There are obviously a great many pharmaceutical companies who would lose millions if a cure where to be found.

     Secretly, Gaffney downloads the data on a portable memory stick, hiding it in a piece of cake he has brought to work so that he get through the security check. He even offers the piece of the cake to the guard, who fortunately, worried about his weight, refuses it.

    But once he has returned to the streets he notices someone following him, and soon goes on the run, the hitman (Brian Moore) on the chase after him.

      After numerous blocks on the run, our hero darts into a parking structure, hiding between two cars as the hitman, now with gun in hand, carefully checks out the autos behind which Gaffney is hiding. Ultimately, Gaffney has no choice to but to grab the hitman and strangle him (we’ve watched our hero in training early in the movie). He kills the man, shocked and in tears by his own necessary actions.

      When the dead man’s cellphone rings, he answers it only to hear Tanya’s voice at the other end, checking up to see if the deed of killing him has been completed, forcing Gaffney to realize that his whole project has now been jeopardized by individuals within clearly determined to bring a stop to the possible salvation of gay men throughout the world.

      Back on the street again, his own cellphone rings, his lover Pablo (Joe Vivas) begging him to return home. Gaffney reports that he can’t currently do that, but a quick intercut to the caller shows him surrounded by men with a knife at his neck. Pablo responds: “They’re here.” And suddenly Gaffney with the thumb disk in one hand and the phone in the other is forced to make a decision between possibly saving his lover or saving gay men throughout the world.

    The credits immediately follow without resolving the impossible choice between love of an individual and love of mankind, the kind of choices forced upon us by fascists and men of hate since the beginning of time.

      This is a truly wonderful short film that should most definitely me remade into a full feature where its revelations might be played out in a more subtle and horrifying manner, the way Hitchcock and other great directors of action films slowly unveil the necessity of making such grand moral decisions as toy with audience awareness. But even at the unbelievably fast pace of this breathless 15-minute thriller Hickey has quite brilliantly caught our attention from the earliest scenes to the last seconds when the realization of the horrific decision with which the film’s hero is faced creates the moment of stasis when the picture must take a breath to force us to see precisely what is at stake.

      By film’s end, we know that there is now no capitulation: were Gaffney to return home, they would likely kill both him and his lover and end any possibility of a cure from the world-wide

epidemic. As film critic Vito Russo long made clear in his 1981 seminal study: in a world of homophobia, large or small, gay men are always destined to die.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).

 

Kyle Coffman | Groomsday / 2022

bad blood and mayhem

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kyle Coffman (screenwriter and director) Groomsday / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

I can’t quite imagine for whom this rather gruesome and sad film was really created or for what purpose.

    It begins after a couple, just married, have been severely beaten, the one, Connor (Dylan LaRay) awakening to find his partner Landon (Trystan Colburn) apparently dead. He struggles to go over to him and holds his head as he desperately calls out to him to come back to life.

    Unfortunately, their faces look as if ketchup were dripped upon them with dabs of mustard, making them appear very much like Heath Ledger’s version The Joker in the Batman series. Moreover, the movie falls into a predictable gear recounting their couple’s relationship from their first meeting, what was to have been a one-night stand, to their increasing comfort about being together, a bath in which their share their worst secrets (Connor had sex with his sister’s college boyfriend; Landon, working in the gym locker room was anally raped with a plunger by a couple of the school Lacrosse team members), and Connor’s disastrous attempt to make lasagna which ends with a Post-It note attached to Landon’s family recipe asking Connor to marry him.

    At least they’re not running down a beach, or swinging hands in the park. But, although the stories they tell are fairly fascinating they too are fairly dramatic and, in the one case, gory, suggesting that being gay just isn’t a lot of fun. Moreover, Coffman not only needs a better make-up artist, but a sound artist, since it’s terrible hard to hear the tales they tell. I had to listen to them at least three times to catch the drift of what they were conveying.

     But then we again return to the scene of the crime where Langdon lies either dead or dying, and for a few moments I was afraid that this gay film had repeated all the crimes against being queer that Hollywood had over the years, making sure that gay men were punished, in the case, for daring to marry. They are punished, in fact, but a stranger, happening to walk down this out-of-the-way spot just happens to have once worked as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) and somehow, soon after, Landon comes back to life.

     Still, what happened to this couple on their wedding day certainly doesn’t bode well for the rest of their marriage. If nothing else, we can say that Landon hasn’t been very lucky regard to the heterosexual world in young life.

      But that still returns us to my original question: for whom is this movie intended. Are gay men being warned to the dangers of homophobia? Is Coffman suggesting that if gays get married perhaps it’s best for them not to walk down a dark street wearing matching shiny blue suits? Was the director hoping for us to make the connection between blood-stained faces and left-over tomato sauce that the boys never used on the limp lasagna noodles?

      I have to say, I’m not a fan of gay horror movies. I feel the entire LGBTQ community has put up with enough bad blood and mayhem without needing to shed more or create it themselves.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).

Daniël Bakker | Mehmet & Tim / 2019

carted off

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marieke Swinkels and Ashanti Vreden (screenplay), Daniël Bakker (director) Mehmet & Tim / 2019 [5 minutes]

 

Before the credits of Dutch director Daniël Bakker’s moving drama, Mehmet & Tim we see an almost fully formally dressed Mehmet (Nur Dabagh) standing before the mirror, a kind of nosegay stuck in the collar slit as appropriate to a wedding, a look a stolid horror on his face, as if he were trying desperately to wipe away what he is facing.

    A moment later we see him riding in a kind of grocery and stroller cart, attached to which is a string of beer cans, being pushed by his best friend Tim (Silver van Sprundel), as they both go speeding by from screen left to right, laughing with utter pleasure. It is a kind of wedding itself, an image that we associated with the cars of just married couples behind which celebratory friends have attached objects to attract the attention to the newlyweds.

     The third scene of this very short, almost dialogue-free film, shows them on a small veranda, Tim standing, cigarette in mouth, Mehmet sitting while intensely involved with a Rubiks cube, as if he were caught up in thoughts far more complex than the issue of simply attempting to match up on the colors of the cubes in rows.

     Tim comes forward and bends over his friend, sticking his joint into the other’s mouth, a cloud of white smoke emanating from Mehmet’s next breath.

      Mehmet jumps off the veranda and moves forward, Tim running after, pulling him round from the shoulder and again forcing the joint into the other’s mouth, the two alternating puffs with smoke blown into one another’s faces, until unable to control themselves any longer, they begin to wrestle, Tim finally topping Mehmet and staring down into his face almost as if he might at any moment bend in for the kiss.

     In the fourth scenario, Mehmet is eating a sandwich with Tim sitting next to him. He takes a second bite, Tim suddenly pulling the other boy’s hand in which he holds the sandwich in his direction, taking a substantial bite. Mehmet takes a third bite, while Tim moves in for his second piece of the remaining sandwich.

     Suddenly we hear the voices of the two girls, Tim quickly rising and going over to them, hugging and talking effusively to one of them. A shift comes over Mehmet’s face as he moves from a slight smile to a serious stare, almost finding it difficult to swallow the last bit of food he has consumed. Suddenly Mehmet rises and runs over to the others, pulling Tim apart from the girl and slapping his face hard.

     The fifth “scene” in this short work of six acts, shows the two boys later at night standing on a bridge, the shopping cart of the second scene sitting between them. There is distance and tension in the long almost frozen frame in which no words are spoken and no incident occurs.

     We now return to the very first scene of the film, Mehmet standing with collar up, awaiting the affixing of his tie, a face full of terror has he readies himself for marriage. He is almost in tears as Tim enters without a tie, the mark of the slap still on his face. The appending marriage is obviously not between the two of them.

    Tim moves forward and begins to loop his friend’s tie into a knot, but it doesn’t work properly and the more he tries, the more he fails. Suddenly Mehmet turns toward him in a deep hug and tears while we hear the sound of the horns of approaching cars. Is it the other members of the wedding party? After a couple of continued hugs, and a gentle stroking of one another’s hair, Tim pulls apart, as Mehmet stands at attention, trying to regain his composure for the event.

    The screen goes dark.

  I have recently encountered several very dark movies about young gay boys being forced into heterosexual relationships or desperately trapped within them. Within a matter of a few hours, I watched the 2023 film Underneath in which a married man breaks down in tears after being married for 11 years because he realizes he is attracted a gay man. The same day I watched the 2025 movie I Love You, Bro in which two heterosexual boys obviously love one another, but one of them is so terrified of what that means that he cannot even comfortably say the words, “I love you” to another man. Perhaps in this current world of shifting notions of love there has arisen an even greater level of restrictions. Acceptance of gays and the LGBTQ+ community has even further terrorized those who live at its borders. 

    In Mehmet and Tim a decision has obviously been made for Mehmet’s future; but the question remains whether or not Mehmet has truly had any role in the matter. Obviously, his love for Tim would not be accepted by his family, and we can guess that his marriage was arranged. Yes, these are stereotypical notions of presumably an Arab family. But the evidence, whatever and however it has been decided, hints strongly that it was not the boy’s own choice. And we are left with the tears that declare his own entrapment in what will surely be an unhappy circumstance for all. Someday, he too may break down in sobs for a life not fully lived.

    I might also add, that usually when we see the terrors of arranged marriages, if this be one, it is from the viewpoint of the bride who has had no say in choosing her husband; here we see it from the groom’s point of view.

    All we have left of the remnants of joy in this man’s life were those lovely moments of being carted off on a symbolic marriage to Tim.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).