This frightening haunted house classic features one of horror’s earliest queer characters
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we begin our Halloween season exploration of how various horror sub-genres reflect the queer experience with 1963’s The Haunting.It’s October once again, which we means we’ve got the famously fruitful and complex relationship between queer film and horror on the brain.
Every week this month, we’ll be diving into a movie representing a different scary sub-genre, and exploring how they interpret queer characters and themes through the lens of spooks and frights.
At this point, it’s a cliché for horror movies to turn our repressed traumas and emotional baggage into monsters—forcing us to literally face our fears.
But there’s truth behind every cliché. Sometimes what scares us most is buried deep in the back of minds, and only supernatural creatures or spirits can draw them out.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.Haunted houses have long been the perfect playground for these demons to come out and play.
