Willow Catelyn Maclay
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willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Willow Catelyn Maclay
@willowcatelyn.bsky.social
13K followers 690 following 4.5K posts
Film Critic (Film Comment, Reverse Shot, Polygon etc). GALECA.

Co-Author of CORPSES, FOOLS AND MONSTERS: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF TRANSNESS IN CINEMA
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willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · Oct 17
Every time there's a Twitter purge, I share the link to my book. I co-authored "Corpses, Fools and Monsters" and it is about transness in cinema. People seem to like it!

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725695...
Corpses, Fools and Monsters by Willow Maclay, Caden Gardner: 9781914420580 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
A radical history of transness in cinema, and an exploration of the political possibilities of its future. In the history of cinema, trans people are usually murdered, made into a joke, or viewed as ...
www.penguinrandomhouse.com
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
I liked IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU. In this piece, I wrote about how the film uses the aesthetic legacy of ERASERHEAD to say something new. Go see it in the cinema if you can.

www.patreon.com/posts/143134...
November 8, 2025 at 6:33 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Last chance to vote in my patrons choice poll! There's about an hour left and we have a tie.
willowcatelyn.bsky.social Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 7d
We are going to be looking at movies from 1975 this month on my website. But which ones? In the running are a bevy of classics from THE MIRROR to SALO to DOG DAY AFTERNOON and more. Vote in the poll if you'd like.

www.patreon.com/posts/patron... (no paywall)
November 9, 2025 at 7:19 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
I liked IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU. In this piece, I wrote about how the film uses the aesthetic legacy of ERASERHEAD to say something new. Go see it in the cinema if you can.

www.patreon.com/posts/143134...
November 8, 2025 at 6:33 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
There should be 33 1/3 style books about specific wrestling feuds/stories/matches
November 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Writing about IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU, which I liked a lot. Review might be up later today
November 8, 2025 at 4:16 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Very excited to go to the local horror film festival this evening with my Twin Peaks bag and have everyone come up to me and say "oh my god, your Twin Peaks bag!".
November 8, 2025 at 2:44 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
It's so bizarre that DIE MY LOVE is playing at mall multiplexes. Get your M&Ms and watch the new Lynne Ramsay. Let's rock
November 7, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
I wish I liked Guillermo Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN more, because I tend to love adaptations of this story. I think it's only partially successful, because the monster's appearance and behavior don't create enough contradictions for our empathy to be challenged.

www.patreon.com/posts/142836...
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein features a dedication to Mary Shelley, Boris Karloff and James Whale. This story, and the 1931 film adaptation, are sacred to him, his sensibilities as an artist, and to the shape of his life. He’s been very open and honest about how that film, and Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)—a wartime picture set during the opening stages of the Franco dictatorship of Spain, and featuring a visit from The Creature—were fundamental in shaping the person that he became. Shelley’s story is a religion for Del Toro, and his fairy-tale belief in empathizing with monsters, while distrusting man, has become the dominant narrative focal point throughout his career. While watching Del Toro’s passion project I thought about religious pictures, and movies about Christ. Del Toro’s most tantalizing image connects that religious symbolism by showing The Creature hung on a cross before being shocked into life. Lazarus and Christ as one. Shelley’s story is so provocative because she manages to evoke sympathy in the reader through her examination of the unnatural perversion of sustained mortality in a creature who never asked to be born, but, importantly, shows us the violent capabilities of the monster too. Del Toro perhaps loves the monster too much, and it prevents the film from forcing viewers to be confronted with dual truths. In most films about Christ, he’s positioned as only God, but the Bible stresses that he was God and man. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1987) was a lightning rod of controversy, because it presented both sides of Christ’s condition, and because he did, it made the sacrificial crucifixion resonate with a genuine grappling of what it meant for his divinity. It’s a film that works whether you believe in God or not, because the human element that was cast aside is tied to the sacrifice, and it could realistically stand in as a moral tale for anyone. Del Toro’s picture comes up short... a still image from Guillermo Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN of Victor (oscar Isaac) working on the creature in his Gothic castle lab.
November 4, 2025 at 6:47 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
I wish I liked Guillermo Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN more, because I tend to love adaptations of this story. I think it's only partially successful, because the monster's appearance and behavior don't create enough contradictions for our empathy to be challenged.

www.patreon.com/posts/142836...
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein features a dedication to Mary Shelley, Boris Karloff and James Whale. This story, and the 1931 film adaptation, are sacred to him, his sensibilities as an artist, and to the shape of his life. He’s been very open and honest about how that film, and Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)—a wartime picture set during the opening stages of the Franco dictatorship of Spain, and featuring a visit from The Creature—were fundamental in shaping the person that he became. Shelley’s story is a religion for Del Toro, and his fairy-tale belief in empathizing with monsters, while distrusting man, has become the dominant narrative focal point throughout his career. While watching Del Toro’s passion project I thought about religious pictures, and movies about Christ. Del Toro’s most tantalizing image connects that religious symbolism by showing The Creature hung on a cross before being shocked into life. Lazarus and Christ as one. Shelley’s story is so provocative because she manages to evoke sympathy in the reader through her examination of the unnatural perversion of sustained mortality in a creature who never asked to be born, but, importantly, shows us the violent capabilities of the monster too. Del Toro perhaps loves the monster too much, and it prevents the film from forcing viewers to be confronted with dual truths. In most films about Christ, he’s positioned as only God, but the Bible stresses that he was God and man. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1987) was a lightning rod of controversy, because it presented both sides of Christ’s condition, and because he did, it made the sacrificial crucifixion resonate with a genuine grappling of what it meant for his divinity. It’s a film that works whether you believe in God or not, because the human element that was cast aside is tied to the sacrifice, and it could realistically stand in as a moral tale for anyone. Del Toro’s picture comes up short... a still image from Guillermo Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN of Victor (oscar Isaac) working on the creature in his Gothic castle lab.
November 4, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
cadenmgardner.bsky.social
Also if you haven’t read our book, there’s no better time than now to fix that.

bookshop.org/p/books/corp...
November 3, 2025 at 2:23 AM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
seantcollins.com
So as I usually do I'm keeping my eyes on my own paper for my upcoming project that may or may not be related, but @willowcatelyn.bsky.social has been writing about Twin Peaks for week after week and I know from experience that her work is worth your time
willowcatelyn.bsky.social Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 14d
My TWIN PEAKS series continues with Season 3, Episode 17. We approach the curtain call, and everything feels wrong.

www.patreon.com/posts/twin-p...
a still image from Season 3, Episode 17 of Twin Peaks: The Return. It's a wide angle image of Dale Cooper at the Twin Peaks sheriff station, and superimposed in the background is a frozen dissolve of Cooper's worried face. The final two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return aired together, and I felt a sensation of dread on the morning of the finale. It didn’t seem like there was enough time to get to where the series was going, and a final encounter between Mr. C and Dale Cooper (Both played by Kyle MacLachlan) was supposed to resolve what exactly? I began to question the impetus for the series, and the urge of viewers to go back to this place, and to experience more time with these characters. By dredging up the graves, what would come slithering out? David Lynch and Mark Frost exploited the assumptions of nostalgia to make bolder statements on topics of time, memory, and the traumatic underbelly of unresolved violence at a community, and global level. In the previous episode when Dale Cooper triumphantly regained consciousness and stated he was the FBI, and intended to go back to Twin Peaks to settle things, it felt ecstatic, and momentous and hopeful, but the status of those three letters in the body of a hero should have been read more closely. Cooper hadn’t done enough to earn that trust. It was evident in how Twin Peaks didn’t become a better place at the conclusion of the Laura Palmer investigation, and how it only bred more law enforcement, and more miseries behind locked doors for this logging town. Punishment instead of sympathy, and heroism instead of help, fell more victims. The original series ended with Cooper’s failure and his descent into monstrosity. It draped all over this community in the negative space of the years that we didn’t see, and Twin Peaks initially concluded in its entirety in 1992 with a film about Laura Palmer’s death. It was perhaps foolish to think that it could end in any other way.
November 4, 2025 at 4:38 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Beautiful
jamnpp.bsky.social Jason Adams @jamnpp.bsky.social · 6d
LOVVVE THIS clip of Diane Ladd talking about working with David Lynch (via www.instagram.com/p/DQo1NcAiEt-/)
November 4, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
littlepuss.net
Today is the LAUNCH DAY for
‼️GENDERTRASH FROM HELL ‼️
The zine that redefined transsexual culture forever

THAT'S RIGHT: GENDERTRASH IS NOW LEGALLY AVAILABLE WITHOUT AGE RESTRICTIONS

Get it from our website, or from all good bookstores. You can even ask your library to order it!

💥📕💏🫦💥
Gendertrash From Hell - ALL-NEW — LittlePuss Press
Long-lost and all-new zines revealing the secret history of contemporary transgender culture
www.littlepuss.net
November 4, 2025 at 4:24 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Thinking about Billy Ocean's incredible song "Nights (Feel Like Gettin' Down)", and the music video where he dances around a TIGER.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRmq...
Billy Ocean - Nights (Feel Like Gettin' Down) (Official HD Video)
YouTube video by BillyOceanVEVO
www.youtube.com
November 4, 2025 at 3:33 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
We are going to be looking at movies from 1975 this month on my website. But which ones? In the running are a bevy of classics from THE MIRROR to SALO to DOG DAY AFTERNOON and more. Vote in the poll if you'd like.

www.patreon.com/posts/patron... (no paywall)
November 3, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Just want to say thank you to everyone who has spread word of Caden and I's upcoming TCM appearances. We're very excited about it. Love y'all <3
cadenmgardner.bsky.social Caden Mark Gardner @cadenmgardner.bsky.social · 9d
On November 17 and 24, @willowcatelyn.bsky.social and I will be on TCM talking about films featured in our book. More details to come.
November 2, 2025 at 6:47 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Please help out Carol if you can. I cherish her, and she is a lovely, perfect angel. She's struggling atm and could really use a boost.
carolaverygrant.bsky.social Carol Grant @carolaverygrant.bsky.social · 8d
If any of you care, my venmo is [at]carol-grant-10 I could really use food money
November 3, 2025 at 3:06 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
TCM published an article about @cadenmgardner.bsky.social and I's upcoming program on their website.

www.tcm.com/articles/Pro...
Trans Images on Film
November 17 &amp; 24&nbsp;| 11 FilmsWith the recent publication of “Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema,” Turner Classic Movies sheds light on the various perspe...
www.tcm.com
November 2, 2025 at 7:46 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
Just want to say thank you to everyone who has spread word of Caden and I's upcoming TCM appearances. We're very excited about it. Love y'all <3
cadenmgardner.bsky.social Caden Mark Gardner @cadenmgardner.bsky.social · 9d
On November 17 and 24, @willowcatelyn.bsky.social and I will be on TCM talking about films featured in our book. More details to come.
November 2, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
cadenmgardner.bsky.social
On November 17 and 24, @willowcatelyn.bsky.social and I will be on TCM talking about films featured in our book. More details to come.
November 2, 2025 at 12:08 AM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
No matter what happens tonight, I am very proud of this Blue Jays team, and have been happy to root for them this season. It was one of the highlights of my year to go to a home game of theirs in early September.
November 1, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
theendofcinema.bsky.social
Here's a Halloween special for subscribers only. A look at a couple of cat-centric Hong Kong horror classics: Dennis Yu's Evil Cat, starring Lau Kar-leung and written by Wong Jing; and Lam Nai-choi's The Cat, starring Gloria Yip and Waise Lee.

www.thechinesecinema.com/evil-cat-den...
Evil Cat (Dennis Yu, 1987) and The Cat (Lam Nai-choi, 1992)
Celebrating spooky season with a couple of cool cats from Hong Kong
www.thechinesecinema.com
October 31, 2025 at 6:26 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
I should probably watch more from Peter Watkins. I've only seen EDVARD MUNCH, and I thought that was fantastic.
October 31, 2025 at 5:21 PM
willowcatelyn.bsky.social
We are concluding our month of John Carpenter with a look at PRINCE OF DARKNESS. None of Carpenter's movies from the 80s are underrated anymore, but this one remains a little elusive, and a little strange. I love it.

www.patreon.com/posts/patron...
Superstition and mumbo jumbo can go a long way with enough assertion of legitimacy. John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness doesn’t make a lick of sense, and when looking at the loose identifiers of the plot:“ancient cylinder, green goo, liquid, sentient embodiment of the anti-God...Satan, maybe?”, it doesn’t exactly strike fear into the heart. However, the film remains one of Carpenter’s scariest with its Lucio Fulci-esque descent into an apocalyptic inevitability, brought on by a forward momentum of images that immediately inform the viewer that it’s already too late. The very first image of the film is a wide frame of a Cardinal at the Vatican who has succumbed to disease on his death bed, and lying on his stomach is a small chest containing a message. “The sleeper awakens”. At the time of production, Carpenter was having his mind blown by Quantum mechanics, and he threaded those theoretical ideas around a story of science and religion becoming bedfellows to fight an inexplicable evil, but being a John Carpenter movie, the end of the world is certain. In a prologue over the opening credits, we see a constellation of images that tell us things are beginning to happen on Earth that are not right. A Jim Danforth matte painting of the sun and a half-moon in conjunction spells out an astrological riddle of looming extinction. Prince of Darkness uses numerous images of bugs gathering in wait to devour the human race. The creeping necrotic sensation of their desire to feast on the flesh of this ensemble of scientists and religious men is showcased through a battalion of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ants rushing over one another, and in another image of worms wriggling up the window-sills of a monastery. A group of young physicists and religious experts have gathered in an enormous old church to find the answer to the dead cardinal’s message in the form of an ancient book, and the arrival of a gigantic cylinder in the bowels of the place of worship. a still image from jOHN Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS of the basement of a church. The walls are brown, candles are lit everywhere and there's a large cylinder containing green goo on the right side of the frame
October 31, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Willow Catelyn Maclay
tjamesdobbin.bsky.social
In the mood for even more creepy cartoon viewings for Halloween? Here's my rundown on 24 animated shorts from the Fleischer studio. I have an immense love for the cartoons of Betty Boop, Bimbo and Koko, and ramble on for nearly 5000 words about it here.
Halloween Animation: Fleischer
Animators, filmmakers, inventors, producers, brothers Max and Dave Fleischer are best known for the animated works produced by the studio bearing their family name, but Fleischer Studios didn&#8217…
strawberrypenguin.ca
October 25, 2025 at 2:00 PM