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
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* queer horror movies 2022 *
— Mathew RodriguezThe InspectnActor Jeremy Pope has been stealg scen both on stage (Choir Boy) and on screen (Hollywood) for several years now, but never have his talents been ployed as brilliantly as they are The Inspectn, Elegance Bratton’s tobgraphil feature but about his young adult years, when he joed the Mar to pe homelsns and try to rekdle his actured relatnship wh his homophobic mother. A Jarhead-style trag film that foregrounds the homoeroticism that has always unrgird ary spac, The Inspectn is a dazzlg g-of-age tale about trma, rilience, faial strife, and personal growth. If LGBTQ+ media reprentatn had reached s current levels , say, 2007 stead, I’m nvced Billy Eichner’s gay rom- would have been a box-office smash.
Basilly, image the moviegog experience of the 2000s wh none of the sual homophobia and that’s what was like to watch Bros a crowd theater.
2022 was a great year for gay horror fans. * queer horror movies 2022 *
The film jumps between World War I memori, a stt a mental stutn, a seemgly endls stream of gay love affairs, and one sexls marriage to pat a vividly plex portra of an unr-acknowledged but unniably signifint queer hero. — Rendy JonCloseAfter the ntroversial misstep that was Las Dhont’s 2018 but Girl, the 31-year-old director has ma a triumphant rebound wh his sophomore effort Close — a heartbreakg, timate tale about the makg and breakg of young iendship.
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.
The spookit, and gayt, time of year is here! * queer horror movies 2022 *
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. The moody 2017 ghost story Rift foc on the hntg of a young gay uple by memori and trma – that mastay of morn art-horror – but you n image much the same film beg fashned around a pair of the recent Netflix phenomenon Fear Street and Hala Reijn’s grimly funny slasher edy Bodi Bodi Bodi are built around the nscient sexual fluidy of generatn Z: their queer characters are warmly accepted, even when they are executed. We fally got the fully gay versn of Anne Rice's classic novel about one vampire scg a young man and takg him unr his vilish wg.