Queer for Fear tantalizes with first episode

Horror has always been queer. Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein gave birth to the genre as we know it and bound queerness and horror indisputably together. It’s not necessarily that the story itself is explicitly queer — that lies in its subtext of feeling monstrous and ostracized by society for being different — it’s that Shelley, a bisexual woman, was the one to grandmother horror. Horror’s queer roots pervade like wildfire throughout the premiere episode of Shudder’s new docu-series, Queer for Fear, detailing not only Shelley’s fundamental formation of the genre but how Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Bram Stoker’s Dracula contributed to sculpting a deeper queerness into the format.

Running under an hour, the fist episode is that first sip of champagne. The bubbles tickle your nose and gallop down your esophagus. And you take another drink, this time a full-mouthed gulp. Executive produced by Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller, Kelly Ryan, Fangoria editor-in-chief Phil Noble Jr., and Steakhaus Productions, Queer for Fear‘s first episode is as entertaining as it is an essential crash course into horror’s unapologetically queer beginnings. The panel — which includes everyone from professor Dr. Harry M. Benshoff and Elvira herself, Cassandra Peterson, to drag queen Alaska Thunderfuck and Boys Don’t Cry and Carrie (2013) filmmaker Kimberly Peirce — excavates discussion about 17th and 18th century folklore being drenched in homosexual overtones, particularly in the depiction of the Devil as a sexual deviant.

A jumping off point, the conversation then flips through other early films, like Jekyll & Hyde (1920), Häxan (1922), and Faust (1926), that were so steeped in queerness that any reading is nothing short of overt text at this point. With queer people often eradicated in real life, particularly through physical torture and police raids of queer hot spots during this period, that representation of monstrosity prevailed in cinema. Even with Bela Lugosi’s performance in 1931’s Universal feature, Dracula, an oozing perversity mingles with the terror when those around him flee for their lives. His grotesque hunger for blood (which has its only homoerotic undercurrent) made him an aberration of society, as it has always done to queer people in real life. So, it’s no wonder it’s taken the better part of 100 years for queer stories to be told by queer artists. And we’re only just now getting started.

“Horror is outside of society,” remarks comedian and Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria. Therein lies the crux of queerness in horror. Queer is very much outside of society, too. Despite the literal origins of the genre lying squarely with a bisexual woman, you’d never know it. Fortunately for us, Queer for Fear is here to set the record straight, and it more than lives up to expectations.

Queer for Fear returns with three more episodes this spooky season, each premiering on Fridays in the coming weeks.

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