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My new video essay argues that underneath the fishnets and the floor show, Rocky Horror is a timeless story about sexual politics; specifically, about the cycle of radicalism and reaction that drives so much cultural history.

Rocky Horror is about liberation. But it’s also about the price of that “absolute pleasure: the backlash, the violence, the collapse. It’s like a microcosm of the sociopolitical pattern we keep living through, even as we navigate the present transition from the high woke era to the so-called vibe shift.

I’ve long had a soft spot for Hellraiser: Bloodline. It features my favorite cenobite, Angelique, and has always struck me as the franchise at its most narratively ambitious.

To this day, Hellraiser: Bloodline has a reputation problem. Pinhead in space, a troubled production, a director who took his name off the film. Critics and fans wrote it off at the time, and it’s been unfairly dismissed ever since. But viewed carefully — and through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis we’ve been using — Bloodline is hugely interesting, in my view, actually completes what the first two films started.

Because once you understand the paradox of desire, and once you’ve descended into the system that produces it, a final question naturally follows.

If desire can never truly be satisfied, and if the Real underneath it would annihilate us, how do we live with desire at all?

The answer, according to Lacan, is fantasy.

Not fantasy in the casual sense, but fantasy as a psychological structure: the fragile screen that gives desire a shape, shields us from the traumatic Real behind it, and allows us to keep going, to keep wanting, to keep living.

In Bloodline, this idea takes the form of a type of cenobite we haven’t seen before: Angelique.

This video concludes the philosophical arc that runs across three Hellraiser films. I’ve been a lifelong fan of these films, and even before I started Gutter Studies I always wanted to sit down and figure out what the series meant to me. These three videos are it. I hope these essays have contributed to your own enjoyment and understanding of these movies, some of the most distinctive and fascinating in all of horror history.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II expands the world of the first film in a way that’s easy to miss if you’re watching it as a typical horror sequel. Of co…

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In part one, I argue Hellraiser is not about demons. It's about desire, and best understood as mapping to a specific theory of desire from Jacques Lacan, one of the twentieth century’s most provocative and influential thinkers.

Over three video essays, I'll go deep into the Hellraiser franchise — not just as horror films, but as a surprisingly coherent philosophical argument about what it means to be a human being.

Each part focuses on a different entry (parts 1, 2, and 4). (I skip Hell on Earth because I don’t have anything interesting to say about that one.) In my reading, Hellraiser, Hellbound, and Bloodline each elaborates its own Lacanian concept.

Hellraiser is about desire.
Hellbound is about the Real.
Bloodline is about the role of fantasy.

The first talks about desire as a certain paradox: what happens when you actually get what you want? The second descends into the psychological system that produces desire. The third reveals the fragile illusion that allows us to live with desire at all.

The framework is Lacanian psychoanalysis — one of the twentieth century's most challenging and rewarding bodies of thought. But no prior knowledge required. If you love Hellraiser and want to go deeper, this is for you. And if you've always been curious about Lacan but didn't know where to start, it turns out Hellraiser is a fantastic entry point. 🧠

Takes this as an opportunity to revisit one of the most interesting horror films of all time.

Part two, covering Hellbound, drops in two weeks.

This is part Three of my continuing series on Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws. And while it follows naturally from the first two installments, it stands completely on its own — you don’t need to have watched the first two videos to watch and understand this one.

The subject is rape-revenge cinema. It’s a controversial and c…

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I can’t say I’m necessarily proud of making this. But I did make it, so here it is for your sick enjoyment.

In this audio-only episode, I’m joined again by Cynthia to count down the best horror movies of 2025. The conversation is 100% spoiler free—and I think also free of pretentious jargon!

WDYT - was 2024 or 2025 a better year for horror? Many are asking.

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The year 2025 marks the first full year of Gutter Studies on Substack. After the channel was banned on Youtube in spring of 2024, I relaunched here that following fall. Not only was I able to republish (and refine) my original run of content, but also enabled me to pursue the project on another level: with cleaner UX and content organization; more meaningful engagement with subscribers; and most importantly, full creative freedom.

As the year comes to a close, I thought I’d take a moment to offer a retrospective, as well as some tips on where/how to stream things.

Five-Part Jean Rollin Series

The major thing released this year was Voluptuous Melancholia, a five-part series on the career of Jean Rollin. The series covers all of Rollin’s major films, and divides his filmography through biographical narrative, context in film history, and my own critical analysis. Together, the five parts span a total runtime of 95 minutes.

Rollin is one of the most enigmatic and romanticized figures in film history. His work can be as impenetrable and confusing as it is intoxicating and beautiful. If you’re new to Jean Rollin, this is the perfect way to develop a thorough understanding of the man’s work, film by film.

In fact, you’re in luck. Criterion Channel is currently hosting a series of Rollin’s films available to stream now. The six films offered provide a great tour of his work, and can be perfectly combined with my series. Here’s exactly how to do it:

1. Start with part 1 of the series, Poetic Surrealism. This provides a general introduction to Jean Rollin and the artistic moment he was working in.

2. Watch Requiem for a Vampire on Criterion Channel. Pair this with part 2, which covers the first stage of Rollin’s career, his early vampire cycle.

3. Watch Lips of Blood (and The Grapes of Death for a bonus) on Criterion Channel. Pair these with part 3, In Search of Lost Time, which covers themes of nostalgia, eroticism, and loss in Rollin’s middle-stage career.

4. Watch Fascination and The Living Dead Girl on Criterion Channel. Pair these with part 4, Sorority of Sadness, which explores the major theme of female intimacy and doubling that dominated Rollin’s career.

5. Lastly, pair Lost in New York with the titular final part of the series, Voluptuous Melancholia, which covers Rollin’s postmodern turn toward meta-nostalgia and self-referentiality in his late-stage career.

Do this, and I can guarantee you’ll emerge with a thorough and meaningful understanding of Rollin’s work.

Expanded Nunsploitation Studies

Another major effort this year was to expand our content on nunsploitation. In many ways, Gutter Studies started as a book I was attempting to write on nunsploitation cinema. The project stalled as I came to realize nobody reads books anymore, and my tattoo artist suggested to me the new format of video essays. A few years later, the project has become something much bigger.

Still, nunsploitation studies still retain a major place in what I’ve been putting together here. It’s an niche genre in exploitation film history that is not only often overlooked, but just as often misunderstood and poorly elaborated. I’ve attempted to develop a more rigorous definition of what constitutes nunsploitation in the narrow sense. My interest is in isolating it as a specific and finite moment in international exploitation film history; a distinctive international film movement embedded within the more generalized “naughty nun” aesthetic that has been part of western culture for hundreds of years.

As luck would have it, Criterion is also running a curated series on nunsploitation. Due to the typical sloppy use of the term, here it’s even more important to narrow your focus:

1. Unfortunately, you’ll need to get your hands on The Devils. It was originally included in the Criterion series, but has since been removed. In many ways, it’s just as well. The version they had up was the heavily cut and censored British release. This not only removed the most notorious scenes that caused such outrage in 1973, but also removed all depictions of pubic hair (how Japanese of them). You’re better off seeking out a bootleg or pirated version somewhere. Once you do, pair it with Carnal Catechism, which offers a critical introduction to nunsploitation cinema and a close reading of Ken Russell’s foundational film.

2. Next, watch Alucarda and Killer Nun on Criterion Channel, paired with our video Four Key Nunsploitation Films. These are two of my favorites and provide great next steps after The Devils. Alucarda gives you an unforgettable taste of Latin American nunsploitation, and Killer Nun provides one of the most psychologically interesting examples of Italian nunsploitation.

3. As for the others in the Criterion series, I’d consider them optional. Other than Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven’s excellent neo-nunsploitation effort, the others aren’t really nunsploitation movies, but merely movies featuring nuns.

For advanced studies, our coverage has also been expanded to cover Bruno Mattei’s concurrently filmed pair of surrealist nunsploitation films, as well as part one of a two-part study on Japanese nunsploitation.

But wait there’s MORE!

Below you’ll find the one-off videos that I put out this year, along with suggestions for where to stream them.

You can currently stream The Witch on HBO Max and Antichrist on Mubi.

You can currently stream Possession on Criterion Channel and Shudder.

You can currently stream Nosferatu on Amazon Prime Video.

You can currently stream Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! free on Roku Channel.

You can currently stream Witchboard on Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, and Shudder. Hopefully you’ve already seen The Exorcist.

Part one focused on Clover’s classic reading of the slasher film and her coining of the term Final Girl. Part two explores so-called “occult horror,” which includes ghosts, demonic possession, black magic, and the like. Clover’s take on occult horror is a useful complement to her analysis of slasher films, exploring the way male-driven arcs reflect the same underlying tendency we see in the female-driven spectacle of slasher films.

These two currents defined horror movies in the 1970s and 80s, and Clover argues that both draw on the same underlying anxiety: an unconscious fear the two sexes are one.

0:00 - introduction

1:45 - Don’t Look Now (dir. Nicolas Roeg 1973)

2:32 - white science and black magic

3:27 - the too-open female vs. the too-closed male

4:40 - sex in slasher films vs. reproduction in occult horror films

5:54 - The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin 1973)

7:20 - Witchboard (dir. Kevin Tenney 1986)

9:44 - Possession (dir. Andrzej Żuławski 1981)

10:40 - summary and critique of Carol Clover’s analysis

14:08 - conclusion - slashers compared

I started this project a while back now, and do plan on finishing it out with two more installments. For a change of pace, the next installment will focus on Clover’s chapter on rape revenge films. You can expect a content warning!

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My previous video on nunsploitation provided an overview of four films that I thought represented the best of the genre. I still think that the geographic and chronological structure of that video provides a thorough picture. But since making that video, I realized that Mattei’s True Story absolutely needs to be part of that category. Other than The Devils, this one has become for me the epitome of the genre.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a common take. If you have a chance to watch this one, I’d like to know what you think.

I’m reposting this one from the Gutter Studies vault in honor of Tura Satana’s birthday last week. Tura is best remembered today as the star of Faster Pussycat, and she remains an icon in exploitation film history.

This was actually the very first video essay I did as part of the Gutter Studies project. I’ve taken the opportunity to clean it up a bit, but it’s overall the same video. I’d love to do more videos on Russ Meyer. He was definitely my gateway to exploitation film, and I’ve seen just about every one of his movies.

Let me know in comments, email, messages if you’d like to see more Russ Meyer on here. In particular, I’d love to do a deep dive on his roughie masterpiece Lorna (1964) and to revisit his big-budget Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Looking back, he didn’t always have the most consistent career, but when he was interesting he was interesting.

In the meantime, check out my Letterboxd list: Lust and Profit: Russ Meyer ranked.

Sources

Dean DeFino - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Cultographies)

Jimmy McDonough - Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film

0:00 - Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia

2:51 - Streets of Bangkok

4:22 - Lost in New York

7:06 - Fredric Jameson’s theory of postmodernism and the significance of nostalgia

9:53 - self-reference in Killing Car, Two Orphan Vampires, and Dracula’s Fiance

11:02 - Night of the Clocks

13:22 - conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, I want to say thank you. This has been my most challenging project so far, but it’s also turned out to be some of my proudest work. I hope that the series contributes to the broader conversation on Jean Rollin, both by helping new viewers approach Rollin’s work for the first time, and perhaps to enable new meanings for seasoned fans.

If you enjoyed the series, please consider making a donation and sharing the series with others. A project like this depends entirely on word of mouth, so please help put it in the fans of Jean Rollin fans everywhere.

As for what’s next: I have a few straggler videos that I’ve been wanting to finish, including more nunsploitation, as well as a return to Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws.

Longer-term, I want to do videos on Hellraiser, Jess Franco, Joseph Sarno, Nazisploitation, Paul Naschy, Lucio Fulci…and much more. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see, don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know via email or Instagram.

But in his more mature work, Rollin explored a s…

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The discussion here is a sequel…

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Following his early vampire cycle, Rollin’s work took a new direction. His work became more intensely personal, as he struggled to express something profound about the human condition. Across three key films—The Iron Rose (1973), Lips of Blood (1975), and Night of the Hunted (1980)—we see characters experience an inarticulable sense of incompleteness and loss, a gap in their soul that leads them in search of a lost object to fill it.

But such completeness is elusive, and instead we see a turn toward oblivion, death, and the dissolution of fixed identity. In my view, these visions of darkly romantic fatalism embody the very essence of Jean Rollin’s work.

This segment also explores the more unseemly side of Rollin’s career, namely his detour through sexploitation film and eventual banishment to hardcore pornography in the late 1970s. As we’ll see, his most artistically pure films were always his biggest financial failures. The closer he came to saying what he wanted to say through film, the more he needed to debase himself as a filmmaker. This inextricable link between his proudest work and most humiliating failures is another of the most important things to understand about Rollin’s life and career.

Timestamps

0:00 - introduction

0:33 - The Iron Rose (1973)

8:23 - sexploitation features Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (1973) and Fly Me the French Way (1974)

9:37 - The Demoniacs (1974)

11:45 - Phantasmes (1975) and Rollin’s hardcore work

13:38 - Lips of Blood (1975)

20:13 - The Grapes of Death (1978)

21:47 - Night of the Hunted (1980)

In this segment, we dive into the first phase of Rollin’s career, which was comprised of four vampire films in a row. We’ll see his style emerge almost fully formed from the very beginning, beginning with the chaotic Dadaism of his first feature Rape of the Vampire (1968), through to the more patient and elegant style achieved in his fourth film, Requiem for a Vampire (1971).

After these first four films, Rollin was forever associated with vampires. But after these four, Rollin largely left vampires behind, as his career unfolded in a number of new directions.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Rape of the Vampire (1968)

4:02 - The Nude Vampire (1970)

8:21 - Shiver of the Vampires (1971)

11:38 - Requiem for a Vampire (1971)

In the third segment, we’ll explore the middle portion of Rollin’s career, which features some of his finest work and most important artistic themes.

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Our first installment provides a thorough introduction to Jean Rollin, and is appropriate for both beginners and those already familiar with Rollin’s work. The video introduces some biographical background on Rollin, as well as a discussion of the French film culture that he emerged from in the 1960s. As we’ll see, a confluence of influences resulted in his distinctive style, which we can identify with the term poetic surrealism.

Lastly, the video provides some tips and caveats on Rollin’s work. Nobody made films like Rollin, before or since, and it’s best to understand that going in.

Timesamps:

0:00 - introduction and personal note

2:09 - biographical background

3:15 - French New Wave, poetic realism, and surrealism

6:35 - is it horror?

7:45 - contextualizing the erotic dimension

9:10 - narrative style, or lack thereof

9:54 - emotional viewing and interpretation

This was a challenging series to research and assemble, not least because of the inherently enigmatic and remote nature of Rollin’s work. His movies are sometimes challenging, and it can be even harder to write about them, let alone understand. The series is a humble attempt at doing all of the above, and I hope you’ll join me and offer your own perspectives on this remarkable, odd, fraught, and painfully unique filmmaker.