I was finding that queer characters in horror, and particularly women, had two destinations.
It was either getting murdered or being the psychotic killer."
This realization prompted Richards to write last year’s indie-horror filmThe Retreat.
‘The Retreat’.Quiver Distribution
“My wife and I stayed in this cabin in rural Australia,” says Richards.
It was this nice gesture but was kind of creepy.
That was the beginning of the idea.
‘They/Them’.Josh Stringer/Blumhouse
The Retreat’s killer twist?
(Spoiler alert!)
Neither of the film’s protagonists turn out to be psychos.
Mark Patton in ‘Swallowed’.
The arrival of these films is part of a multi-platform rise in queer horror.
Most recently, the first season ofChuckyhinged around a gay teenager and his battles with the titular killer doll.
There has also been a proliferation of podcasts that examine horror through a queer lens.
‘Seed of Chucky’.Rogue Pictures
“Initially, our first year, there were, like, five queer horror podcasts.
Now there’s nearly thirty of us.”
“Dragulacelebrates everything that we love about horror,” says Swanthula Boulet.
Amandla Stenberg and Maria Bakalova in A24’s ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’.Eric Chakeen/A24
“It can be scary but it can also be fun.
Ultimately, it’s a celebration of all things glamour, other, freaky, strange.”
It premieres in the fall.
The Boulet Brothers on the cover of Fangoria.Boulet Brothers/Twitter
“It slowly evolved into less of a movie, likeHorror Noire, and more of a series.
It just seemed that the project is so sprawling.
This really cannot be contained into an 80- or 90-minute narrative.”
Fuller certainly has a lot of ground to cover, given the long relationship between horror cinema and queerness.
“I wasn’t out yet but I was just hearing it all around me.
Patton and his appearance inFreddy’s Revengewould be the focus of a 2019 documentary,Scream Queen!
My Nightmare on Elm Street, and Smith subsequently cast Patton as a queer drug dealer inSwallowed.
The love shown by the queer community for the horror genre has often seemed like a one-way street.
“It also ignores the reality that most violence against women is committed by heterosexual males.”
John Logan admits that the queer community’s affection for horror has not always been reciprocated.
“But it’s a really problematic genre for gender, for sexual identifications, for sexual politics.
It’s very complicated and it always has been.”
“No one would have done it,” he says.
The queer allegory could hardly have been clearer.
“Clive’s movies left a deep mark on my young mind,” saysDragulahost Swanthula Boulet.
The release ofScreamin 1996 revived the horror genre as a whole after a period of doldrums.
“You’re watching this girl survive the night and survive the trauma she’s enduring.
Subconsciously, I think theScreammovies are coded in gay survival.”
Mancini joined in that moment with 1998’sBride of Chucky, the fourth film in hisChild’s Playfranchise.
“I was in my early thirties when I wrote that,” says Mancini.
So for me, it was partly: How do I keep this interesting?
Well, how about having a gay character?
The studio was very supportive of that and it seemed to go over well.”
“TV shows are like the Wild West.
“People were wanting theHostelsand theSawsso that created a space for queer expression in television.
That really brought it to life.”
When John Logan finished his script forThey/Them, the first executive he called was Blumhouse founder Jason Blum.
“No one knew I was writing it it was a complete labor of love,” says Logan.
Thank goodness he really enjoyed it.”
I think there’s a lot of fodder for comedy there."
But over time, the tale’s titular top-hatted monster would achieve gay-icon status.
For many LGBT people, that’s what it feels like to be in your own families sometimes."
Factory releaseda special rainbow-covered Blu-rayofThe Babadook.
“I feel it’s really quite beautiful, but I still have no idea why.
I mean, I kind of do.
I guess he’s an outsider of sorts.”
Want more evidence of queer culture’s increasing ease within the horror genre?
“It was a really big moment for us,” says Dracmorda Boulet.
“We’ve been fans of the magazine since we were children.
So it was a full-circle moment to actually be on the cover of it after all those years.”
The Boulet Brothers cover was the fastest-selling issue ofFangoriasince the magazine was relaunched in 2018.
Yet the director bridles slightly when asked if they feel more welcomed by the industry.
“I don’t know if I would use the word ‘welcome,'” they say.
“It took a lot of time to raise money for it.
What if one of the womenwasactually involved with the killers?’
That came up so many times, I can’t even tell you.”
