They/Them Film Review: Sharp Script Giv Be to Gay-Conversn-Camp Horror Story

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

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.

‘THEY/THEM’ FILM REVIEW: SHARP SCRIPT GIV BE TO GAY-CONVERSN CAMP HORROR STORY

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. 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.