Featuring lazy stereotypes, lezploitation, homophobia, unfunny jokes, tragic acting and patronising plots, this list of LGBT movie moments will leave you cringing.

Sure, it’s important to raise awareness of the great gay-themed films out there, but it’s also good to be aware of the god-awful ones as well.

The movies listed below are not here because they feature bad things happening to GLBT people – tragedy and trauma are two key ingredients to a good story – but because they portray gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people in a stereotypical or homophobic way.

So here are ten films which don’t do us any favours…

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

2007 comedy starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James.

This movie is very similar to the Australian comedy Strange Bedfellows starring Paul Hogan and Michael Caton. Basically the characters of Sandler and James pretend to be a gay couple so the latter’s children can have some financial stability in the event of his death. What follows is a cheap exploitation of the very real issue of equal marriage rights and homophobia for a few laughs, but sadly there are none of them to be had, and throughout you sit there thinking “You should have quit at Happy Gilmore, Adam.”

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything – Julie Newmar

1995 comedy starring Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

If I wanted to see drag queens on a road trip then I’d watch Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Although the film stars Patrick Swayze (rest his soul) it just doesn’t match up to its Australian counterpart, even though the premise of the two are basically identical (Leguizamo’s character is a mirror image of Guy Pearce in Priscilla).

On the way to New York three queens become stranded in a hick town after their car breaks down. What follows is a cringe-worthy clash of small minded town folk with the three exuberant dudes in drag, with the town learning to love their camp way of life. And unlike the queen of all drag films, there isn’t a ping pong ball in sight.

Lesbian Vampire Killers

2009 British comedy starring James Corden and Matthew Horne.

Another comedy that’s just not funny, this flick gives new meaning to the term ‘lezploitation’. We follow two potty-mouthed dim-wits who encounter a gang of blood-sucking vampy Sapphic vampires in skimpy outfits. Cheesy nonsense which relies on outdated lesbian stereotypes. What a shame this sort of film can still get made!

50 Ways of Saying Fabulous

2005 drama from New Zealand, starring Jay Collins.

This one is a total shocker. It’s not homophobic per se; it’s just a really bad movie with bad actors, bad writing and bad directing. The main character is a young New Zealand boy who constantly fantasises about escaping his redneck farming town in his space ship. He struggles with his emerging homosexuality, being called “poofta” by his classmates and experimenting with the local oddball in a shack out in the woods.

What could have been a potentially good coming of age story of substance is instead a poor film that makes homosexuality seem just as strange and unappealing as its main character.

Silence of the Lambs

1991 thriller starring Anthony Hopkins and Jody Foster.

This is one of my favourite movies of all time. It won the big five Oscars (the first film to do so since One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975) and it is a classic in every sense of the word. But it’s on this list because of its portrayal of homosexuality and transgendered people.

The main character, Buffalo Bill, is a pre op transsexual who kills overweight women so he can wear their skin. Even the iconic Hannibal Lecter, one of the most famous characters to ever grace the screen, is homosexual, and like Bill he too has a rather nasty habit of murdering people and wearing their skin (the skin he didn’t eat, anyway).

Although the movie was a landmark for cinema upon its release, it didn’t do much for people’s perceptions of the LGBT community.

Freshman Orientation

2004 comedy starring John Goodman, Sam Huntington and Marla Sokoloff.

This is the film that made me lose all respect for John Goodman. He plays a cameo role as a gay bartender who schools a young straight guy in the ways of gay life (this guy pretends to be gay because some heaps hot sorority girl thinks he is, she on the other hand needs to bag herself a “faggot” in order to win a bet).

The movie is supposed to be a comedy but again it just isn’t funny. The straight guy’s transformation into a gay man is complete when he is fitted with a fishnet singlet, see through orange glasses and can name the Queer as Folk actors from flashcards bearing homosexual stereotypes. I don’t know about any of you, but I’d like to think that there’s a little more to it than that.

Basic Instinct

1992 psychological thriller starring Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas.

This is another entry to the list that is, in all other respects, a good movie. Like Silence of the Lambs, Basic Instinct is on here due to the very close association between homosexual and homicidal maniac. Besides the fact that the film makes sure we all know that the villain is bisexual, the lesbian lover of Stone’s character goes mental when she realises that ol’ Shaz might be going straight, so she does what any normal person would do – tries to run down Michael Douglas in a shit hot sports car but ends up driving off a cliff.

Wild Things

1998 thriller starring Neve Campbell, Denise Richards and Matt Dillon.

“Hey, let’s like, pretend our teacher like, raped one of us and then like, sue him and like take all his money and then lets like, start fighting in the swimming pool and then we can like totally make out.” That’s pretty much the plot for this movie. Wild Things once again links homosexuality to murder and features gratuitous lesbianism, all for shock value.

Another Gay Sequel

2008 comedy starring Johah Blechman, with guests RuPaul, Perez Hilton, Amanda Lepore and Brent Corrigan.

Another Gay Movie was an outrageous and sexy romp, a bit of a ‘breath of fresh air’, you might say. But its sequel, which most of the original cast wisely chose not to return for, was a puerile, stupid, and downright disgusting mess.

Featuring scenes showcasing vomit, incest, singing genital crabs and lube replaced with glue, we wonder how many twinks this film has sent back into the closet. And of course there was only one way this clusterfuck of a movie could end – with an actual clusterfuck. A dignity-shredding man-mountain! Hide this DVD from your family at all costs.

Teen Wolf

1985 American comedy starring Michael J Fox.

Some of you may be wondering what this is doing on here – this isn’t a ‘gay’ movie at all. But… in one scene Fox’s character is about to tell his best friend he is a werewolf. Upon hearing he had a secret to tell him, his best friend asks “Oh my god you’re not a fag are you?” to which Fox’s character scoffs and says “No I’m not a fag!” as if it’s the most despicable thing in the world.

The offhand, matter-of-fact way in which it was said echoes the homophobic mood of the time, especially in films targeted at teenagers, and it pissed me off quite a bit.

Which other gay, lesbian or transgender video nasties could have made this list? If you know any more examples of gay celluloid atrociousness, let us know below.