Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror FilmMonster in the Closet is a history of the horrors film that explores the genre's relationship to the social and cultural history of homosexuality in America. Drawing on a wide variety of films and primary source materials including censorship files, critical reviews, promotional materials, fanzines, men's magazines, and popular news weeklies, the book examines the historical figure of the movie monster in relation to various medical, psychological, religious and social models of homosexuality. While recent work within gay and lesbian studies has explored how the genetic tropes of the horror film intersect with popular culture's understanding of queerness, this is the first book to examine how the concept of the monster queer has evolved from era to era. From the gay and lesbian sensibilities encoded into the form and content of the classical Hollywood horror film, to recent films which play upon AIDS-related fears. Monster in the Closet examines how the horror film started and continues, to demonize (or quite literally "monsterize") queer sexuality, and what the pleasures and "costs" of such representations might be both for individual spectators and culture at large. |
Contents
Defining the monster queer in the classical Hollywood | 31 |
James Whale page | 40 |
Ernest Thesiger | 42 |
Sandor and Marya from Draculas Daughter | 49 |
Island of Lost Souls | 52 |
The Mask of Fu Manchu | 57 |
The Raven | 62 |
The Black Cat | 63 |
How To Make a Monster | 151 |
Glen or Glenda | 160 |
Orgy of the Dead | 163 |
Exposing the monster queer to the sunlight circa | 173 |
The Secret of Dorian Gray | 184 |
The Vampire Lovers | 194 |
Twins of Evil | 197 |
Theatre of Blood | 215 |
White Zombie | 66 |
Curing the monster queer during | 77 |
Shadow shot of Marya from Draculas Daughter | 78 |
Son of Frankenstein | 92 |
The Ghost Ship chessboard | 104 |
The Ghost Ship knife attack | 105 |
The Picture of Dorian Gray | 111 |
Recriminalizing | 122 |
Married a Monster from Outer Space | 131 |
Publicity shot from Revenge of the Creature | 134 |
Was a Teenage Werewolf | 145 |
Gary Conway Teenage Frankenstein in beefcake magazine | 147 |
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actors American and/or argued audiences become Bela Lugosi bestiality blaxploitation Books boys camp campy Carmilla characters cinema classical Hollywood classical horror film Closet connotation construction Creature cure decades desire Dorian Gray Dracula era's Esquire essay evil exploits female Fiction figure film's Frankenstein gay and lesbian gay male gender genre genre's gothic Hammer films hero heterosexual Hollywood horror film homo homoerotic homophobia homophobic homosexual homosocial horror films horror movie human James Whale Karloff lesbian vampire linked magazine male homosexual Mank metaphor monster movies monster queer monstrous murder narrative Newsweek normal Old Dark House perhaps perversion Pete Phibes played Politics popular culture postmodern Production Code psychiatrists queer couple queer monster queer sexuality repressed Review Routledge sado-masochistic Scarlet Street scene screen signifiers social spectators ster story suggest teenage monster tropes University Press victims villain Vincent Price violence Werewolf Whale White Zombie women York young Zombie