A little over a year after Hollywood gave the Best Picture award to a depthless piece of crap rather then let a film about two-gay cowboys win, the Psychotic Homosexual Villain Who Must Die Horribly is making a comeback .  Quelle Surprise…

The villains weren’t there as a nod to the gay community or to add diversity, of course. They were coded gay to heighten their wickedness and make it that much more satisfying for straight audiences when they met their usually violent death at the hands of the hero. After all, as Zack Snyder, director of 300, said about his movie’s version of the villainous god-king Xerxes, “’What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?”

Oh…I dunno…  A roving pack of gay bashers walking up behind you and shouting "Hey Faggot"….?

The new film 3:10 to Yuma delivers yet another coded gay villain to add to the already crowded pantheon. A remake of the 1957 film starring Glenn Ford, Russell Crowe plays the role of outlaw Ben Wade. Christian Bale co-stars as Dan Evans, the down on his luck Civil War veteran desperate enough to try to bring Wade to justice despite the near certainty he’ll die trying. And Ben Foster stars as Charlie Prince, Wade’s villainous henchman and second in command who oozes gay subtext.

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When we first see Charlie Prince, he is astride his horse, one hand draped delicately over the other with the limpest wrist this side of the Mississippi river. He is by far the nattiest dresser in the entire cast, and if that isn’t mascara he’s wearing when we first meet him then I’m Buffalo Bill.

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Within the first five minutes of Prince’s appearance onscreen, one character refers to him as “missy” and “Charlie Princess,” a nickname usually not uttered to his face, but apparently widely used behind his back. Naturally, Prince is utterly ruthless, killing anyone who gets in his way, and showing no emotion at all – not unless he’s interacting with Ben Wade, who clearly makes Charlie swoon.

The Ben Foster character has a thing for his outlaw boss.  But in the end decent family values prevail, and the outlaw learns what it is to be a Real Man from decent family man Christian Bale character who was sent out to apprehend him…

Shortly thereafter, Wade is captured and Christian Bale’s Evans signs up to help convey Wade to the town of Contention where he’ll be put on board the 3:10 to Yuma, a prison train. Prince pretty much disappears from the middle part of the film, except for long shots that show him glowering menacingly at Wade’s captors or ruthlessly shooting or burning to death anyone standing between him and his beloved Ben Wade.During this section of the film, Wade and Evans get to know each other and even bond, although without any of that icky homoerotic subtext. Rather, this is two men getting to know and, to a certain extent, respect each other as real men ought to do. Crowe’s outlaw especially comes to admire this determined family man trying to bring him to justice in order to keep safe his wife and two sons back on the farm. In fact, Wade admires Evans so much that he ends up helping him complete his quest.

This fits so nicely pat with the current crackpot theories about homosexuality now being peddled by the ex-gay movement that it’s hard not to wonder if director James Mangold or writers Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt and Derek Haas didn’t ask Richard Cohen to help them research the characters of Wade and Prince.  But this is a story as old as the first fag bashing on the silver screen.  Just as every lesbian needs a Real Man to make a woman out of here, every wild and reckless young man needs a Real Man to teach him how to deal with a faggot.  Especially one that has a crush on him…

The film’s climax is appropriately dire, with bullets flying every which way. Of course, the odds against Evans’ succeeding seem impossibly high, and I won’t give away the ending (except to say that it is improbable at best), but of course Charlie Prince does figure prominently.

He arrives at the very end, riding in to rescue Wade from Evans’ heterosexual clutches. Naturally, that involves putting a bullet into Evans, an act that so infuriates Wade that he in turn pumps Prince full of bullets himself. Shocked at the actions of the man he adores, the dying Prince looks like nothing so much as a dog being put down by his master.

And what is the moral of the story children…?

As Wade watches Prince die, I couldn’t shake the feeling that thanks to the influence of Evans, he now sees Prince clearly for the first time. It is only then that he understands what friendship between two men should be like and it doesn’t involve what Prince yearned for. He may have been an outlaw and a murderer, but make no mistake – that isn’t the reason Prince has to die at the end of the film.

But it gets Even Better.  3:10 to Yuma is a remake of a 1957 film starring Glenn Ford as Wade, Van Heflin as Evans and Richard Jaeckel as Prince.  And in That prior version of the story, there was no gay subtext.  None.

In the original movie, Prince is played by character actor Richard Jaeckel (The Dirty Dozen, Starman). At no point is his character called “missy” or referred to as "Charlie Princess". In the saloon scene where Wade flirts with Emmy, Prince also spends time talking with her. Nor is it made to seem that Prince is pining over his boss, jealous over the attention he gives to others. At one point, he even discusses his having a wife.

One thing does remain the same in both movies: Prince dies in each, but in the 1957 version it’s at the hands of Evans, not Wade. Thus there is no message sent that Prince is being punished for his “queer” transgressions against Wade (which aren’t even present).

Dig it.  Less then two years after Brokeback Mountain, about the lead time for these major Hollywood films, we have the loathsome faggot character back front and center in the Hollywood’s toolkit, dying horribly so the film’s star can avenge his heterosexual manhood.  Teenage boys and young men will leave the theaters where this film is playing, knowing that real men pump faggots who have a crush on them full of lead.  And James Mangold, like every other gutter crawling maggot willing to exploit the anti-gay fear and loathing of their young male audience for a buck, gets a little richer, thanks in part to the labors of all the gay people they personally know who work in Hollywood.

See how groundbreaking Brokeback Mountain was?  Oh look…John Wayne isn’t rolling in his grave anymore…

[Edited a tad…]