Queer Horror Film and Television

In recent years the representation of alternative sexuality in the horror film and television has outed itself from the shadows from which it once lurked via the embrace of an outrageously queer horror aesthetic where homosexuality is often unequivocally referenced.<br/><br/> In this book Darren Elliott-Smith departs from the analysis of the monster as a symbol of heterosexual anxiety and fear and moves to focus instead on queer fears and anxieties within gay male subcultures. Furthermore he examines the works of significant queer horror film television producers and directors to reveal gay men's anxieties about: acceptance and assimilation into Western culture the perpetuation of self-loathing and gay shame and further anxieties associations shameful femininity. This book focuses mainly on representations of masculinity and gay male spectatorship in queer horror films and television post-2000. In titling this sub-genre queer horror Elliott-Smith designates horror that is crafted by male directors/producers who self-identify as gay bi queer or transgendered and whose work features homoerotic or explicitly homosexual narratives with out gay characters.<br/><br/>In terms of case studies this book considers a variety of genres and forms from: video art horror; independently distributed exploitation films (A Far Cry from Home Rowe Kelly 2012); queer Gothic soap operas (Dante's Cove 2005-7); satirical horror comedies (such as The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror (Thompson 2008); low-budget slashers (Hellbent Etheredge-Outzs 2007); and contemporary representations of gay zombies in film and television from the pornographic LA Zombie (Bruce LaBruce 2010)) to the melodramatic In the Flesh (BBC Three 2013-15). <br/><br/>Moving from the margins to the mainstream via the application of psychoanalytic theory critical and cultural interpretation interviews with key directors and close readings of classic cult and modern horror this book will be invaluable to students and researchers of gender and sexuality in horror film and television.