Spooky and Gay: A Few Queer Halloween Delights

You never know where LGBTIQ people might turn up next. We are your teachers, your grocers, your vampires, and your mad scientists. LGBTIQ people are indeed everywhere, even in the Crypt of the Living Dead.

Here are a few classic queer horror titles, all available on DVD for your Halloween viewing.

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

In 1931, director James Whale (1889–1957) terrified the world with his take on Mary Shelley’s classic tale Frankenstein. The film was actually a bit of a collaboration between the filmmaker and a then-unknown actor named Boris Karloff, who played Dr. Frankenstein’s tragic creation — together they created a character who was a sympathetic man-child trapped in a monster’s body.

The poor creature never understood why people were so afraid of him — some film historians have speculated that the monster was a metaphor for Whale’s life as a closeted gay man.

In Bride of Frankenstein, Whale stepped out of the closet a bit. Audiences were introduced to Dr. Praetorius (Ernest Thesiger), with whom Dr. Frankenstein creates the Bride, a female monster. Dr. Praetorius was a screaming, effeminate queen who stared lovingly at his much-younger pupil, and the stage-trained Thesiger played the role in all it’s giddy, limp-wristed, lisping glory.

Though the “word” was never said, it’s clear today that Dr. Praetorius was a gay man. Though he’d now be seen as a negative stereotype, Praetorius was quite a daring character for 1935.

Whale and Thesiger pulled it off beautifully.

Voodoo Island (1958)

Another of horror-icon Boris Karloff’s many films. This low budgeter is the type of B movie which was enormously popular in drive-ins during the 1950s and 60s. Karloff plays Philip Knight, a best selling author who’s investigating voodoo myths on a desolate tropical island — he plans to debunk those myths as foolish superstitions.

Kmoght’s merry band includes Claire, played by a little-known actress named Jean Engstrom (1920–1997). Claire is a lesbian. She flirts openly with Knight’s female secretary and expresses her disdain for men. Her lesbianism is so obvious that one of the male characters refers to it — without actually saying the L word of course — this was the 1950s after all. Claire was said to belong to a “private and exclusive club.”

Jean Engstrom’s acting career consisted primarily of guest roles on TV series. Voodoo Island was one of her very few theatrical releases.

For having the courage to play a lesbian during those more innocent times, we remember and salute Jean Engstrom.

The Haunting (1963)

This terrifying mood piece is a ghost story like no other. Robert Wise, an admitted fan of horror and science fiction, directed it in between his Oscar-winning musicals West Side Story and The Sound of Music.

Depressed and sexually repressed Eleanor (Julie Harris) is part of a small scientific research team investigating the alleged haunting of Hill House, an isolated mansion in the New England countryside.  Theo (Claire Bloom), another member of the group, is a lesbian who’s clearly attracted to Eleanor. Eleanor has another suitor: the ghost of old Mr. Crane, the man who built Hill House 90 years earlier.

The always unloved, unhappy Eleanor suddenly finds herself at the center of a bizarre love triangle in this, a most satisfyingly scary old-fashioned chiller.

Bloom plays Theo with a delightfully over-the-top panache. Unlike the independently produced low budget Voodoo Island, The Haunting is a big-budget, A-list studio production. Which means that Theo is possibly the first out, proud character in a major Hollywood film.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

The Vampire Lovers is the most famous film version of Carmilla, Sheridan LeFanu’s 19th century novel about lesbian vampires. Considered shocking in it’s day, the book was banned in the UK for many years — it’s currently in print in both the USA and the UK.

Polish-born Holocaust survivor Ingrid Pitt had a brief brush with movie stardom after playing Countess Carmilla Karnstein in the wildly successful The Vampire Lovers. Carmilla goes to great pains to hide her vampirism, but flirts openly with women throughout the film — the telltale “vampire’s kiss” is left upon the breasts of young ladies.

Produced by England’s Hammer Films, who specialized in old-fashioned Gothic horror, the film offers all the trappings that genre aficionados love: drafty old castles and fog-shrouded graveyards are seen in abundance. Carmilla’s lesbianism put a fresh new spin on a formulaic tale which makes the film great fun.

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Perhaps the kinkiest vampire film ever produced.

John Karlen (Dark Shadows) and Danielle Ouimet play a pair of swinging bisexual newlyweds honeymooning in a largely deserted albeit elegant hotel in Belgium. The hotel’s only other guests are a lesbian couple (Delphine Seyrig, Andrea Rau), both of whom are vampires. A bizarre game of cat-and-mouse seduction ensues, which becomes all the more fascinating when it’s revealed the Seyrig’s character is actually Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a real-life 16th-century noblewoman who bathed in the blood of virgins, hoping to maintain her youth.

Visually stunning, erotic and hypnotic, Daughters of Darkness is a most unusual and unforgettable entry in the canon of horror cinema.

Happy Halloween!