Fag Noir

BORN TO KILL (1947)

and then there’s—

elisha cook’s slavish, faggy

cocksucker devotion to his

butchy, handsome killer

hoodlum loverboy which

defines perfectly the male

femme fatale aesthetic of

the fag noir gangster style

lawrence tierney is trouble—

from the word go even tho

fem miss cook tries to reason

with the psychopathic hunk

covering the killer’s tracks,

creating alibis & getting rid

of eye-witnesses, like nosy

old landlady esther howard

and skuzzy detectives like

sleazy walter slezak

but tierney single-mindedly—

zeros in on claire trevor, no

angel herself, resulting in elisha

cook getting killed on a lonely

beach by his crazy deadly lover

instead of the ratty wretched

landlady esther howard who

hired the sleazy slezak all of

which ends up with claire trevor

double-crossing tierney so she

can off her rich sister & inherit 

all the family fortune

this grim complicated version—

of the RKO quintessential fag noir

style of the 1940s uniquely

synthesizes the expressionistic

style of welles & the moody,

gothic atmosphere of lewton to

create an excellent example of

not only RKO style but also the

offhand depiction of a new genre

of perturbing gay sexuality and

troubling tough-guy S&M cinema