CYou go to a show called Gay Witch Sex Cult and you don’t expect a host like him. Kaelan Trough is a real estate agent, dressed in a suit and tie, smug, preparing a gender reveal party for his new baby. OK, the baby is being raised by Kaelan and his partner Jeremy: gay, we can imagine. But witch sex cult? Well, we’re not allowed to talk about that, says Andrew Doherty’s campy and narcissistic alter ego, who prefers to brag about how much sex he has and reveal his misogyny in condescending remarks about the baby’s surrogate mother.
You can’t help but love him. Doherty (former partner of This Is Going to Hurt star Ambika Mod) has created a compelling comic monster here: silly, self-centered, but also stupid and vulnerable, not least to the occult forces that come into play once the party’s backstory is revealed. In episodic flashbacks, Kaelan recounts a boat trip to a deserted island, where the ferryman utters Gnostic prophecies along the way. There, a row of lonely trees look eerily like women, an axe-wielding madman runs amok, and a cave is littered with the skeletons of human babies. All warning signs of folk horror that our host is usually too stupid – too busy getting all frisky or gossiping – to notice, let alone piece together into a coherent whole.
It’s a ticklish treat that gets creepier as it goes on: Doherty shows that a cheerfully subtle and silly sense of humor is no barrier to full-blown scares. His performance is a delight: eye-rolling, grimacing at the audience, and his tongue popping out of his mouth when he gets excited. And the show is peppered with silly jokes, some of which miraculously build tension too: maybe not the big visual gag about the fight for the axe, but certainly the fate that befalls Kaelan’s crab companion Gonzalo.
There are still a few loose ends as Doherty’s storyline comes to a close; the journey here is more satisfying than the destination. But Gay Witch Sex Cult remains the best horror pastiche I’ve remembered since Garth Marenghi’s creepy Fringe climax.
