![]() ![]() ![]() When house matriarch Rebecca (Eva Moore) chastises the young and beautiful Margaret (Gloria Stuart) for her confident sexuality, the subtext of Rebecca’s own desire and envy to be like (or with) Margaret is clearly evident. While Whale was known for not shying away from the taboo and what would be deemed as “acceptable” to put on screen at the time, the queer coding in each character of the film has been heavily dissected throughout the decades. ![]() Filled with queer camp and flair, The Old Dark House would serve as inspiration for other cult classics such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Bride of Frankenstein. Table of Contents Queer horror movies 1932-1963 The Old Dark House (1932) Director James Whale’s films have historically been read for having queer undertones.įive strangers seek shelter from a storm together at a creepy old house in the Welsh countryside. In a collection of essays about horror movies from queer writers, It Came From the Closet, Carrow Narby argues that The Blob (1988) can be considered a queer horror movie because “the blob” is a relatable character to queer people, “I don’t know what could be more queer than being narratively positioned as a threat to family values, particularly to children.” Going further, Zefyr Lisowski argues in the same book that “If there isn’t a supremacist culture to view things through, does monstrosity even exist?” Queer horror movies can be those that follow an LGBT protagonist, those that have a queer writer and/or director, or even movies that just feel thematically familiar to queer audiences. A married lesbian couple (Hannah Emily Anderson and Brittany Allen) encounter horror at a cabin in the woods in What Keeps You Alive (2018). This makes the genre fertile territory for anyone curious about tracing taboos through the decades of Hollywood (or any culture’s film catalog) history. For instance, horror movies do this by what they choose to present as “monstrous” or scary. Movies are a mirror that reflect cultural values back at the viewer. ![]()
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