What's So Gay About Horror Movies?

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.