But in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock, what was barely-there subtext in the novel became text on film - or at least as close to it as the Hays Code would allow. Daphne du Maurier was a notorious bisexual after all. Danvers’ obsession with her beloved mistress. It’s not impossible to read queer subtext into the titular (dead) character’s scandalous affairs, or Mrs. Sometimes infuriating, sometimes liberating, all these works rely on a queer-coded villain… some of them are seductive enough that you end up rooting for them. This Halloween, dig into ten classic Horror stories, in print and on film, that hide their queer themes in plain sight. Whether it’s necessary subtext by a closeted director, a dire warning to young viewers by a Hollywood Code, or a subtle stab by writers at hetero-cis arrogance, the horror genre has long been a dark closet of queer themes, preying on heterosexual panic and feeding on contemporary perspectives of the “gay menace” to enforce, test or outright flout the boundaries of acceptable love. Welcome to the dark closet of Halloween horror.
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