Gay horror director Clive Barker didn't origally wre Hellraiser's villa as male, but the Hollywood films ma so.
Contents:
- 'PASSAG' DIRECTOR NOUNC 'DANGERO' NC-17 RATG ON A FILM PICTG A GAY LOVE STORY
- ‘THEY/THEM’ FILM REVIEW: SHARP SCRIPT GIV BE TO GAY-CONVERSN CAMP HORROR STORY
'PASSAG' DIRECTOR NOUNC 'DANGERO' NC-17 RATG ON A FILM PICTG A GAY LOVE STORY
From Nosferatu to A Nightmare on Elm Street, LGBTQ+ viewers have long tected a queer unrtone many horror films. Now the genre is brgg s gay subtext to the surface * gay horror directors *
Over the next few years, var wags of Tumblr began to sist that the film’s eponymo monster – a towerg charal-sketched ghoul wh a stovepipe hat, icepick fgers and an ordate number of sharply rectangular teeth – was fact a gay in. In promotg his new documentary seri Queer for Fear, a history of queer horror cema currently streamg on the chiller-themed platform service Shudr, gay TV wrer Bryan Fuller (creator of the TV seri Hannibal) argued that an tn the genre n beg early life, wh somethg as nocuo as The Wizard of Oz. Irish thor Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carla, about a female vampire preyg on a young woman, effectively ed the lbian vampirism trope faiar later horror storytellg; long believed to have been a closeted homosexual, Bram Stoker load Dracula wh enough polysexual allns to keep amics by for over a century.
In 1922, closeted German film-maker FW Murn squeezed a good number of them to his unofficial, rampantly sire-fuelled adaptatn, Shelley’s siarly suoly load Frankenste, meanwhile, beme the source of one of Hollywood’s first nonilly queer horror films: gay English director Jam Whale’s five 1931 adaptatn is marked by a distctly queer empathy wh Boris Karloff’s socially vilified monster, prented as more vulnerably human than the vengeful villagers bayg for his bristle … Elsa Lanchter Bri of Frankenste. The rints of the hoe are scribed as “godls”, and d as sexually ee and viant; one, the tellgly named Horace Femm, is mply played to the rafters by gay actor Ernt Thiger. Psycho’s tone was a far cry om the gleefully rampant sexualy of a spate of Sapphic vampire B-movi om the 1970s – cludg Hammer Films’ own Carla adaptatn The Vampire Lovers, not to mentn Jús Fran’s self-explanatory Vampyros Lbos – and, of urse, the Rocky Horror the Aids panmic raged, more hostile queer reprentatns beme wispread: horror films rangg om W Craven’s Deadly Blsg to Brian De Palma’s Drsed to Kill to Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, serial killg was routely lked to homosexualy, transgenrism and/or past newsletter promotnafter newsletter promotnIf this turnaround was le wh the Aids panic, allyship me om sourc both highbrow and low.
– David Bowie, while 1985’s lurid edy Fright Night posed a suave pair of male suburban vampir as a gay uple challengg neighbourhood norms. Most unexpectedly, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge two years later ma the bart of efforts to hi s homoerotic gaze, while s closeted gay teen protagonist Jse (so-lled male scream queen Mark Patton, who would himself later e out as gay) emerg as a heroic survivor the mould of horror’s tradnal Fal Girl. And the leather-wrapped S&M genrqueerns of the mons gay wrer-director Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987) spoke for be them … Yann Gonzalez’s Knife + year’s Hellraiser remake, wh transgenr actor Jamie Clayton the inic Phead role, brgs much of s forenner’s LGBTQ+ subtext plaly to the surface – parg the two is an object lson how much queer horror has transformed the last few s.
‘THEY/THEM’ FILM REVIEW: SHARP SCRIPT GIV BE TO GAY-CONVERSN CAMP HORROR STORY
At the turn of the 21st century, we were still dancg around symbolic reprentatns of outsir sexual inty – see the implicly queer outst sisters of the lic teen werewolf tale Gger Snaps – or prentg homosexualy as an allurgly dangero threat, as Alexandre Aja’s thrillgly lurid but distctly sex-negative High, queer perspectiv are centred, by queer film-makers, whout shame or secrecy. Set the world of gay porn, Yann Gonzalez’s geoly grisly Knife + Heart is so heavily populated wh queer characters – vortg, killg and beg killed wh equal abandon – that they don’t have to symbolise anythg relatn to straight society.