Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror

4 episodes · 2022

Queer gothic writers Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker invent the horror genre with "Frankenstein," "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Dracula"; when cinema arrives, queer director F.W. Murnau shocks the world with his queer-coded "Nosferatu."

Gay director James Whale makes four classics that pave the way for all Hollywood horror movies after, but his career was dimmed by anti-gay sentiment; Alfred Hitchcock uses queer characters and queer coded stories to keep audiences in suspense.

Werewolves, cat people, body-snatchers and doppelgängers are uniquely queer metaphors; from the classic "The Wolf Man" to queer-authored "Cat People," the monsters of the 1940s express shame and seek to rid themselves of the secret self.

The dangerous queer woman has been terrorizing horror audiences since before the dawn of cinema; the lesbian vampire sucks the lifeblood from women and men alike in the gothic novella "Carmilla" and films like "Dracula's Daughter."