Gay thriller films

(Photo by © Altered Innocence / Courtesy: Everett Collection)

As prolonged as there hold been horror films, there have been queer horror films. Before homosexuality was formally legislated out of existence in Hollywood by the Production Code — commonly referred to as the Hays Code, which established mandates for “moral standards” in motion pictures and banned depictions of “sexual perversity” — the mythical filmmaker James Whale was building the foundation for American genre cinema with films like Frankenstein, The Old Dim House, and The Invisible Man. Here was Whale, a gay man, building horror in his own image and having astounding box office success as some groups were lobbying Hollywood to censor queerness out of existence. Fortunately, they weren’t creative enough to drive the big bad Other away.

In the century since America became the world’s commander in horror motion picture production, the genre became a bastion for the outsiders, the marginalized, the people made monsters by self-appointed adjudicators of sin, and who saw themselves in the supposed “villains” at the center of stories like Dracula’s Daughter. On rare occasion, queer folk