Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures" is one of my favorite queer horror films. Based on true events, the movie concerns a murder carried out by two young girls (ages 15 and 16) who used a rock to crush the skull of one of their mothers. The girls served 5 years in prison before getting paroled - under the condition that they never meet again. The Parker Hulme Case is well known in New Zealand, occupying a prominent place in the nation's history of notorious crimes.
Jackson decided to dramatize the story because he felt it was gravely misunderstood. When the murder happened back in 1952, criminal psychology was still a primitive science in New Zealand. Lacking a rational explanation for the girls' actions, the media branded them as evil, lesbian psychopaths - a stigma that endured for decades. Jackson's film discredits that stigma, portraying the girls as two young outsiders, both highly intelligent with active imaginations, who lean on each other to cope with unhappy realities in their lives (clueless parents, tyrannical teachers, stifling social norms). The girls share a powerful bond, punctuated by long embraces and awkward kisses. Whether that bond is sexual or platonic in nature should be nobody's business. Unfortunately, it was a different time. Young women who engaged in socially unacceptable sexual activities - including lesbian practices - could be punished (e.g. Lesbians were sometimes sent to psych hospitals for frontal lobe surgery, which essentially turned them into vegetables and destroyed their lives). Disturbed by their closeness, the girls' parents decided to separate them for "their own good." Only then, when faced with the terrifying prospect of losing each other, did the girls plan and commit murder.
This movie really moved me. Perhaps because I see so much of myself in its lead characters. I was a loner and a dreamer, and I was bullied for being gay. Still, my situation wasn't so bad. I had a supportive family and small circle of friends. Plus, prevailing attitudes about homosexuality were much more accepting than what existed in the 50s. If I'd been born in a different time, and subjected to the right mix of circumstances, I'm sure what happened to these women could've happened to me.
Jackson decided to dramatize the story because he felt it was gravely misunderstood. When the murder happened back in 1952, criminal psychology was still a primitive science in New Zealand. Lacking a rational explanation for the girls' actions, the media branded them as evil, lesbian psychopaths - a stigma that endured for decades. Jackson's film discredits that stigma, portraying the girls as two young outsiders, both highly intelligent with active imaginations, who lean on each other to cope with unhappy realities in their lives (clueless parents, tyrannical teachers, stifling social norms). The girls share a powerful bond, punctuated by long embraces and awkward kisses. Whether that bond is sexual or platonic in nature should be nobody's business. Unfortunately, it was a different time. Young women who engaged in socially unacceptable sexual activities - including lesbian practices - could be punished (e.g. Lesbians were sometimes sent to psych hospitals for frontal lobe surgery, which essentially turned them into vegetables and destroyed their lives). Disturbed by their closeness, the girls' parents decided to separate them for "their own good." Only then, when faced with the terrifying prospect of losing each other, did the girls plan and commit murder.
This movie really moved me. Perhaps because I see so much of myself in its lead characters. I was a loner and a dreamer, and I was bullied for being gay. Still, my situation wasn't so bad. I had a supportive family and small circle of friends. Plus, prevailing attitudes about homosexuality were much more accepting than what existed in the 50s. If I'd been born in a different time, and subjected to the right mix of circumstances, I'm sure what happened to these women could've happened to me.