Dark Descent Contributors

“It's not as if she were a maniac, a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.”

-Norman Bates, Psycho (1960)

As a child, I remember settling down on the sofa to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. I was young. Too young, perhaps. I was probably still in single digits. I remember the looming sign for the Bates Motel, the shower scene (of course), and I remember that eerie dissolve at the end when Norman’s face briefly turns to a skull. Most of all, I remember the real horror when it was revealed that the killer Mrs Bates had been Norman all along. I didn’t know that Norman was a cross-dresser. I didn’t know that Norman was mad…

Not much later, I watched The Silence of the Lambs (1991), a film bursting at the flesh-sewn seams with identity issues. Most people remember the charismatic Hannibal Lecter (who transforms his face to escape from custody) but what is often forgotten amidst the fava beans and chianti is that this film is also about a man who skins plus-sized women in a bid to stitch himself a ‘woman suit’. Here too, the horror of the film comes from the moment of knowing Buffalo Bill is a cross-dressing sociopath (and what he has in store for poor cis teen Catherine Martin).

There is a long history of the revelation of transgender identities being used to amplify the horror in films. That our sudden knowing of this person as trans makes their crimes all the more horrific. The ‘horror-of-the-trans-revealed’ trope can be seen in the deranged Bobbi (Dressed to Kill, 1980), the tone-deaf ‘Bride in Black’ (Insidious: Chapter 2, 2013), and the Norman Bates-esque revelation of Angela/Peter in Sleepaway Camp (1983). In each case (and there are many, many more), we are horrified as much by what they have done as we are by what they have been concealing. The transgressive nature of transgender identities is offered up as a reason for their ‘otherness’, which is itself a cause of their homicidal madness, leaving any woke sensibilities swirling down the drain like so much chocolate sauce. Into this troubled Coriolis stalks the rompy vampire film Bit (2019).

Bit draws its lifeforce from the same feminist spaces as Jennifer’s Body (2009) and Ginger Snaps (2000). This pseudo-sapphic story follows an all-female cadre of LA vampires for whom the golden rule is simple: “No. Fucking. Boys.” (though the sentence might equally be delivered without punctuation at all). When out-of-towner Laurel (Nicole Maines) is inducted into this clique, she wrestles with her new vampiric identity and with the patriarchal past of its mother-figure Duke (Diana Hopper).

Don’t get me wrong, Bit is a great popcorn movie with a healthy dose of feminism at its core, but the dialogue is sometimes clunky and the acting is highly variable (though Maines shines). Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), it isn’t. But, amidst the quippy, Buffy-esque throwaways and the libidinous lesbianism (this isn’t softcore porn, I swear), two strong trans differences stand out. The first is that this film does not conflate transgender with madness. When the male-titled ‘Duke’ eats the slivers of her former master’s heart, this consumption of the masculine is seen (problematically) to give Duke power. But not too much power, lest her master (re-)gain control of her. This biting is not born of madness, nor does the process drive Duke insane. She is perfectly calculating in her use of the masculine to constitute her identity. But this is not where the trans heart of this film lies.

This film was recommended to me by a trans friend of mine. Accordingly, and perhaps unfairly, I was continually waiting for the trans link. It wasn’t until about an hour into its 90 minute runtime that I Googled the actress Nicole Maines and learned she is transgender herself. For most of the film, there is no reason to believe that the character Laurel is anything but cis. However, at the end of the film and over a recently cut-to-black screen, Laurel breaks the fourth wall, proclaiming, “Well that was fun. I hope they make more of these. And I promise there’s no way I can get pregnant in the fourth one.” This revelation is played for comedy, not horror and – crucially – these laughs are had at the expense of another vampire franchise, and not at Laurel’s trans identity.

The revelation also suggests that Duke’s vampire corps accepts trans women and cis women alike, seeing past sex-assigned-at-birth and — unlike the U.K. Supreme Court this April — into the gender performatively constructed by individuals. Laurel is not the villain. Laurel is not mad. Laurel is just there. In an all-female space. Unquestionably. And there is nothing to fear about the knowing of her.