Every year when Halloween rolls around I’m the most popular guy on the block

… and it’s not because I give out the best candy.

I’m a horror nut. A gorehound. A slasher fan. And a gay one, to boot … which

places me somewhere between the Drama Queens and the Future Psychopaths of

America in the school cafeteria. I’m the pigeonholiest of the pigeonholed: a

Horror Homo.

Sure, from a casual moviegoer’s point of view, a genre whose tentpoles are

blood, breasts and beasts (thank you, Joe Bob Briggs) doesn’t on the surface

seem to scream “Gays come here! We have goodies for you!” But the truth is, the

horror genre has both a lot to offer a gay viewer and a long and involved

history with gay filmmakers, actors, writers and talent. These days gay horror

fans like myself are coming out of the closet in droves, and there’s never been

a better time to be queer for fear.

In honor of Halloween, we’re taking the opportunity to look at the

contributions gay men have made to the horror genre over the years, and

recommend some of the gayest horror flicks out there.

Grab your tricks and get ready for some treats (or is it the other way

around?) as we take a haunted tour through homo horror history.

“It’s alive!” 

When I say “horror movies”, you might not immediately think “creative

playground of gay artists”. But horror movies have always been a place where

gay writers and directors have felt comfortable carving out their creative

identities.

Let’s go back to the very beginnings: for our purposes, Universal’s classic

horror film Frankenstein (1931). As the biopic Gods and Monsters

wonderfully illustrated, both Frankenstein and its excellent (I’d say

superior) sequel Bride of Frankenstein were directed by James Whale, who

lived his life as an openly gay man in Hollywood.

Director James Whale (right)

The whole “nonsexual procreation” theme is pretty queer in its own right,

and with Bride in particular, Whale drew praise for injecting a certain

dark humor into his horror (also evident in The Old Dark House, whose

formula would be resurrected decades later for The Rocky Horror Picture Show),

and a certain “camp” sensibility that appeared to find twisted glee in all the

chaos and bloodshed on the screen.

It was an arch, playful kind of anarchy that would transform the genre and

capture the imaginations of generations of gay horror fans and gay horror

filmmakers to come.

Unfortunately, the golden age of Hollywood

was not terribly hospitable to out gay men (as opposed to today, I know) and

Whale was quite out-of-the-ordinary in his openness. While there were doubtless

scores of gay men behind the camera throughout the first golden age of horror

and the drive-in-friendly B-movie boom of the 50’s and 60’s, we don’t know much

about them that isn’t hearsay (not surprising given the relative conservatism

of the time).

It wouldn’t be until the sexual revolution and rise of experimental and

arthouse film that we’d see a wave of openly gay filmmakers pushing the

envelope once again.

The Ghastly Ones: Gay provocateurs spin the genre.

In the 1960-70s the rise of the American independent film injected new life

into the flagging cinema landscape. Fresh new voices shook up the status quo

and artists who had grown up on studio fare reinterpreted and redefined the

standards.

This was also true for horror movies. And three gay men in particular lent

their considerable enthusiasm and occasional talents to the form.

The first is Andy Milligan, probably the most prolific gay filmmaker you’ve

never heard of.  Between 1964 and 1989, the Staten Island-based Milligan

made 28 films, most of which were horror movies.

Andy Milligan

Cheap, garish, and surprisingly arch for no-budget horror, the titles of

Milligan’s films (The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here!, The Ghastly

Ones, Bloodthirsty Butchers) were usually far more graphic than the movies

themselves, which oddly felt more like Victorian drawing-room pieces than

horror films.

Milligan also directed one of the first straight-up “gay movies”, 1965’s Vapors,

which was played in the 42^nd Street porno theaters despite being a

rather serious meditation on gay life at the time. He also had a reputation for

“rough trade” and hustlers, and his offscreen life was probably more shocking

than what made it onto the screen in his talky, stuffy horror movies.

Cut from the same cloth but certainly more progressive in his finished

products was gay filmmaker Curt McDowell, a San Francisco-based artist who made

a series of short (some pornographic) films (Weiners and Buns Musical,

Stinkybutt) before producing what is probably the most ambitious and

outright bizarre film that will be mentioned in this article: 1975’s horror

porn comedy opus, Thundercrack!

A scene from Thundercrack!

In Thundercrack! McDowell takes the classic “old dark house” setup

(thank you, Mr. Whale) and throws it into a blender with hardcore sex (of gay,

straight, interspecies, and vegetable varieties), comedy, and brilliantly

inventive no-budget filmmaking tricks. The result is a very entertaining parody

of horror movies and sexual relationships that truly has to be seen to be

believed. (It’s also worth noting that two of the male characters who end up

sleeping together are named Chandler

and Bing … coincidence?)

And of course there’s trash god John Waters. Granted, Waters’ movies have

always fallen more on the side of comedy than horror, but the transgressive

filmmaker has been employing horror elements since Divine was raped by a giant

lobster in 1970’s Multiple Maniacs. Waters’ love of horror movies would

inform all of his films (especially the brilliant Serial Mom), and in

2004 he would even appear as a gossip columnist in the horror film Seed of

Chucky.

John Waters in Seed of Chucky

But it would take a man with a mask and a taste for pointy objects to really

kick the American horror genre back into gear, and lucky for us, he was just

around the corner.

The men behind the masks.

It wouldn’t be until the real golden age of American cinema – the

slasher boom of the 1980s – that gay horror filmmakers really shook their skeletons

out of the closet.

Take Tom DeSimone (aka gay porn director Lancer Brooks), director of the

classic Halloween slasher Hell Night, starring Linda Blair. Or Child’s

Play’s killer doll Chuckiy the evil plastic brainchild of gay writer Don

Mancini (who would pen all of the Child’s Play films and go on to direct

the final installment, Seed of Chucky).

Tom DeSimone

Or horror heavyweight Clive Barker, who has not only written some of the

most memorable horror novels and stories to date but who as the director of Hellraiser

unleashed one of the genre’s most startling mythologies (and made an entire

generation afraid of Rubik’s Cubes).

And let’s give credit where credit is due: The American horror movie was

given new life – Dr. Frankenstein-style – when gay screenwriter Kevin

Williamson wrote Scream, one of the most successful horror franchises of

all time (not to mention I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty

and Cursed … actually, let’s not mention Cursed). The slasher

movie was reborn (albeit with a rather annoying self-awareness that tired

quickly) and the teens started lining up for horror films once again.

Clive Barker (left) & Kevin Williamson

Even gay Hollywood A-listers like Bryan Singer and Gus Van Sant have dabbled

in the genre, Singer tackling Stephen King’s Apt Pupil as a follow-up to

his smash hit The Usual Suspects and Van Sant doing a shot-by-shot

remake of Hitchcock’s gender-bending horror classic Psycho. Out

filmmaker Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) wrote a heroic gay character into

his 1992 screenplay for Single White Female.

And before Oscar nominee Bill Condon directed Gods and Monsters and Dreamgirls, he wrote horror movies like Strange Behavior and cut his teeth by directing Candyman 2.

Gay filmmakers are working in the genre today more than ever. Tim Sullivan

brought us 2001 Maniacs and Driftwood, both of which are

mainstream horror films that feature gay characters and themes. This year’s

big-budget horror film The Ruins was helmed by out gay director Carter

Smith (Bugcrush) and out director Andrew Fleming (Dick, Threesome,

Hamlet 2) has written and directed several horror movies, including the

enormously successful teen witch flick The Craft.

Carter Smith (left) & Andrew Fleming

And in recent years some gay directors have even brought us straight-up “gay

horror movies”. Paul Etheredge brought us the full-on gay slasher Hellbent

in 2004, and gay schlockmeister Dave DeCoteau has been delivering his singular

brand of boys-in-undies homoerotic horror (Voodoo Academy,

The Brotherhood, Leeches) for more than a decade.

A scene from Dave DeCoteau's Leeches

But it’s not just out men behind the camera who are shaping the genre. The

foundational imagery of horror movies has been closely intertwined with the

“queer” (for better or for worse) since the beginning. And though these days

the idea of a “killer queen” is a bit passé, it’s been a long road to get to

the point where gay characters are just a part of the horror landscape.

We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Going To Eat You.

From the moment that James Whale cast noted camp figure Ernest Thesiger as

the evil Dr. Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein, horror films and queer

iconography began a curious courtship. Which is entirely appropriate, given

that Bride itself was Whale’s clever attempt at subverting the

hetero-norm through horror film (Bride is really more of a satire or a

dark comedy about gender roles than a horror film).

Ernest Thesiger as "Dr. Pretorius"

Social commentary aside, one of the most lasting images of Whale’s

experiment was that of the insidious “killer queen”, a single and presumably

gay man whose apparent sexual frustration and loathing for the hetero-dominated

world has driven him to acts of madness and destruction. Granted, at this point

the only other gay images making their way into films were those of dandies and

prancing queens … wouldn’t a prancing queen hell-bent on world domination at least

be a step up in terms of ambition?

For decades the killer queen character (and killer lesbian counterpart,

thank you very much Dracula’s Daughter) would hover at the fringes,

giving the cinema’s masterminds a hint of a lisp or an extra arch to the eyebrow.

(In Ed Wood’s classic disaster Plan 9 from Outer Space, the evil Ruler

of Mars is played by John “Bunny” Breckinridge, a man whose sex change attempt

was cut short by an auto accident.)

John “Bunny” Breckinridge in Plan 9

Following a mostly dark period for horror in which cheap B-movies were

churned out like so many processed cold cuts throughout the 50s and 60s, a

little movie called Psycho reinvigorated the genre by popularizing the

concept of the Freudian psycho killer … and messing with gender roles in the

process.

Now, Norman Bates was not gay (far from it), and Alfred Hitchcock went to

great lengths to make this clear to audiences. But whether the gay-seeming

image of a man in a dress (holding a knife) was too powerful for straight

audiences to ignore or actor Anthony Perkins’s real-life struggles coming to

terms with his own sexuality seeped into his character, many people still view

Bates as a repressed homosexual.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates

It’s categorically false, but the image of a bona fide “killer queen” (i.e.,

“man in a dress”, which was what gays were to most people at the time) stuck,

and a new kind of monster was born. Knockoffs like William Castle’s hilarious Homicidal

followed (with a woman in drag as a man), and the trickle-down gave us such

classics as Dressed to Kill and Sleepaway Camp (which also features a shocking gay dad subplot, quite something for the time) and lesser efforts

like Switch Killer, Fatal Games and Cherry Falls.

Surprisingly, horror films – particularly the formulaic slashers of the 70’s

and 80’s – have a long history of gay inclusion, and were in fact in some cases

leagues ahead of mainstream film in terms of presenting gay characters that

were reasonably well-rounded and well-realized.

The only problem is, hardly anyone actually saw any of these movies.

And of course, we did have to suffer through a heaping helping of

easily-dispatched sissies along the way…

Theatre of Blood, (1973) probably one of Vincent Price’s most

entertaining B movies, featured both a queeny theater critic names Meredith

Merridew who dotes on his pink poodles … until they are baked into a pie and

he’s force-fed to death with them. (Price also goes incognito as a gay

hairdresser named “Butch” in order to murder Coral Browne who would later marry

Price in real life). And of course Price became a horror legend for his effete

brand of horror villainy, which he contributed to dozens of films.

Vincent Price (left) in Theater of Blood

Greek import Island of Death (1975) actually features a gay wedding …

although the wedded couple is then brutally murdered with a sword by the main

couple, who are in fact a homicidal, incestuous brother and sister duo.

A scene from Island of Death

By about this time gays were becoming a bit more trendy, and gay characters

started popping up in horror films as a “sign of the times” … for better or for

worse. Thanks in part to the whopping success of The Texas Chain Saw

Massacre (1984), which mined post-Vietnam alienation and distrust with our

own country as inspiration for its horror, films about progressive views and

morals often used gays as a stand-in for “liberal” or “new” … which of course

generally put them in harm’s way.

The 1978 classic Eyes of Laura Mars is a tribute to the excesses of

modern culture, and the bankrupting of violent imagery. And what better way to

cast controversial photographer Laura Mars (played beyond the hilt by Faye

Dunaway) as “modern” than to give her a gay agent? Donald (Rene Auberjonois) is

a tough son-of-a-gun and one of the stronger and more accessible gay characters

to hit big screens in this kind of film at the time … although of course when

he dresses up in Laura’s clothes to help her evade the cops, he’s in deep trouble.

Rene Auberjonois in The Eyes of Laura Mars

1977’s Deliverance knockoff Rituals, starring Hal Holbrook,

put five wealthy doctors on a wilderness adventure that goes very wrong. One of

the doctors is gay, and although his friends are supportive of him, the man is

an utter mess, having become an alcoholic because of his inability to deal with

his sexuality and ultimately suffering a painful death.

The Deliverance horror knockoff, Rituals

The 1978 slasher cheapie Class Reunion Massacre (aka The Redeemer:

Son of Satan!) actually features gay and lesbian characters … who of

course fall under the killer’s blade when a group of high school friends are

reunited at the abandoned school by a religious zealot classmate (or is it?).

Again, the gay characters are there to represent some kind of evolving (or

disintegrating, depending on how you interpret the movie) of American

values.

Similarly, 1979’s Savage Weekend (aka The Upstate Murders)

cast a gay role in order to tie its story of city dwellers being besieged by

rural folk to the here-and-now. Among the group of friends is no-nonsense

Nicky, a wispy slip of a fella who can hold his own in a barfight, which he

proves when a few rednecks gay-bait him and he kicks the crap out of them. Of

course, it ultimately doesn’t end well for Nicky, but c’mon … this is a horror

movie. It doesn’t end well for pretty much everyone! (This one’s also worth

noting for an early performance by Newhart’s William Sanderson as the

Alpha Redneck.)

1981’s colossally bad Lauren Bacall slasher (yes, you just read that right) The

Fan also threw a gay man in harm’s way (or a few, depending on how you look

at it). A deranged stalker is hacking up screen legend Sally Ross’s friends

(including her dancer “boyfriend”, who is slashed underwater at the YMCA), and

when the killer (a young Michael Biehn) decides to fake his own death, he does

what any enterprising straight psycho would do: He goes to a gay bar, picks up

a guy his size, and takes him to a rooftop where he lets the guy get frisky

with him below the belt before killing him and setting him on fire.

Michael Biehn in The Fan

Happy to help, Hollywood!

And likewise, 1981’s jaw-droppingly bizarre Fear No Evil has a school

bully actually kissing lead nerd Andrew in the school shower as their naked

classmates egg him on (as some sort of public shaming?) … that is, until

Satan-in-training Andrew sucks the guy’s lifeforce out through his mouth. Talk

about a bad kisser!

Of course, 1980’s Cruising is a category unto itself for its

immersive approach to horrifying any and all viewers by anything remotely gay …

and by “remotely gay” I mean the image of Al Pacino dancing on poppers. The

film is a relentless assault on male heterosexuality via a ridiculous gay

minstrel show of queer aggression. We’re both the victims and the aggressors

here, and we’re also lurking in the backs of the minds of straight men everywhere,

waiting to strike!

Al Pacino in Cruising

Over time, though, the novelty of having more shocking gay characters wore

off a bit, and gay characters started becoming just part of the gang, or were

at least treated with a modicum of sympathy or understanding.

1981’s Night Warning (aka Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker) is a

truly shocking film … not because of its tawdry plot of incest and obsession

and violent murders, but because the film features several gay characters who

are actually allowed to have a relationship and inspire sympathy. As the insane

Aunt Cheryl Susan Tyrrell steals every scene from young Jimmy McNichol and

Julia Duffy, but it’s the sad story of Jimmy’s gay basketball coach and his

murdered lover that really makes this one stick.

The wonderfully clever 1985 horror comedy Fright Night has gay all

over it. Not only does out lesbian Amanda Bearse play the lead girl and gay

pornstar-to-be Stephen Geoffreys play “Evil Ed”, but main vamp Jerry Dandridge

(Chris Sarandon) actually goes undercover with his manservant as an

antiques-dealing gay couple in order to fit in in suburbia.

Scenes from Fright Night

Jason Lively (left) & Steve Carpenter

The oft-overlooked 1986 horror/sci-fi comedy Night of the Creeps also

deserves some attention for its handling of an unexpected bromance between lead

friends Chris (Jason Lively, brother to Gossip Girl’s Blake) and JC

(Steve Carpenter). In the emotional centerpiece of the film, JC learns that he

has been invaded by alien slugs, and leaves a taped message to Chris telling

him that he loves him.

The trailer for Night of the Creeps

In Bride of Chucky, the heroine’s best friend is gay, and he helps

the star-crossed lovers escape their disapproving parents … until a certain

killer doll gets in the way. It’s also worth noting that gay ally Katherine

Heigl had her first leading lady part in this gay-friendly flick … and Nick

Stabile washes his car shirtless!

Nick Stabile in Bride of Chucky

Neo-slasher Cherry Falls (2000) finds Brittany Murphy and her

virtuous friends targeted by a killer who only kills virgins … and for once it

would have served her gay BFF (played by Keram Malicki-Sanchez) to whore it up

a bit to avoid being on the business end of something pointy. But the film is

careful not to suggest that the character is killed because he’s gay … it’s

just the unfortunate side effect of being “the only gay in the village” that he

also happened to be a virgin, too. And to top it off, the killer’s in

drag!

Brittany Murphy in Cherry Falls

In 2003 Victor Salva followed up his breakout horror sleeper with the

entertaining romp Jeepers Creepers 2, or as I like to call it,

“Shirtless teen guys on a bus getting eaten”. Seriously, it’s the most

homoerotic thing since Freddy’s Revenge … and it also has a closeted gay

character named Izzy (“… or isn’t he?”) whose sexuality is a bone of contention

with some of the other boys.

A scene from Jeepers Creepers 2

Wes Craven’s 2005 flop Cursed (with a script by gay writer Kevin

Williamson) used the werewolf double-identity shtick to play with sexual

identity when the recently-bitten Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) finds himself

awkwardly come out to by school bully Bo (pre-Heroes Milo Ventimiglia).

Bo remains gay and survives the film, and we’re led to believe he’s going to

lead a happy, out life.

Not quite so lucky is Grady (Rocky Marquette), the gay teen in Tobe Hooper’s

wacky horror comedy Mortuary (2005). A heroic gay kid, Grady sadly dies

while helping his friend, but we’re at least encouraged to like the kid and his

friends clearly mourn his passing … for as long as they have themselves,

anyway!

The Future of Gay Horror?

As it stands, gay horror is still an incredibly lean subgenre. There have

been a slew of low-budget cheapies thrown into the market (Gay Bed and

Breakfast of Terror, Scab), but none has made much of a mark beyond Hellbent,

which is far better than its budget wanted it to be, In the Blood, a

clever gay take on the psychic horror subgenre, and the just-released Cthulhu,

which brings a gay bent to a classically chilling H.P. Lovecraft mythology.

Actor Tyler Hanes from In the Blood

Is there anywhere to go with “gay horror” at this point, when gays and

lesbians are increasingly part of the broader discussion in the mainstream? I’m

sure there is. But horror has long been about the zeitgeist, about the here and

now and the demons that plague our generation. And perhaps we should be

thankful that in these times, when gay civil rights struggles are a daily

front-page item, we don’t necessarily need horror films to exorcise

those demons or give those causes a voice.

Sure, we could have horror movies about gay marriage just as well as we can

have horror movies about straight marriage, with gay bowling-pin teens as well

as straight ones. But as the trail of dead you’ve just dragged yourself through

proves, only quality films with memorable characters and performances will

ultimately stand the test of time. Until some idiot like me goes and digs them

back up again.

Dylan Fergus in Paul Etheridge's HellBent

So until our next Clive Barker or Kevin Williamson makes his mark, spend

some time with the homos of horror past. They have much to teach us about where

we’ve been ... and, if we let ourselves get caught alone on a dark and stormy night, where we may end up.

Mwuahahahahaha!