Well June has come around again, bringing me to another installment of “Cis-Het Horror Guy writes a Pride post.” I don’t know – is it strange? I don’t always hit all the other calendar connections. There’s often something for Christmas, but not always. I occasionally have done some other themed month, like Black History, for example, but I don’t even usually manage to honor Halloween, the high holiday of the horror-blog year. Still, each June, I do tend to mark Pride.
I think beyond the fact that I have enjoyed many examples of “queer horror,” I do feel that there is a strong kinship between horror as I enjoy it and the notion of queerness. Sure, horror in its classic reactionary mode (“monster” disrupts status quo, causing fear, and is either defeated, reifying social norms, or terrifyingly triumphant, resulting in mourning the loss of said norms) can be good fun, but the stuff that always gets its hooks into me, that I most often return to, is more complicated, richer, more seductive, queerer than that. We fear the monster (interpreted as broadly as possible), but we also love the monster. Maybe we are the monster and we have to reckon with our own identity. Maybe the disruption the monster brings is preferable to the tyranny of normie stasis. Maybe we as viewers or readers need to navigate a nuanced relationship to the horror – loving and fearing the same things, identifying with both victims and aggressors, experiencing both earnest sympathetic fear and distanced ironic appreciation of tropes, beloved failings, absurdity, and camp.
So, yeah. I dig scary stuff that’s queer and though I’ve got no letter in the LGBTQ+ alphabet, I do enjoy specifically considering it each year for at least one post in June.
So, this year is no exception and I’ve watched a few things looking for what I’d like to dig into. I think I’ll just touch on three briefly that I very much enjoyed and which I think are good inclusions for a “Pride” theme, but then I want to really dig into another film which doesn’t suit Pride all that well, but which I think is outstanding Queer Horror.
So first the Pride Party runners up: I recently watched or re-watched three flicks that have a lot in common: So Vam (2021), Queens of the Dead (2025), and Slay (2024). I’m not going into deep individual detail on them, but I think they are all pretty fun, rather lively and funny, have tons of heart, and while they all deal with some horror creature (vampires, zombies, and vampires respectively), none of them are particularly scary. All are made by queer filmmakers. All three feature drag performance as an emancipatory act. All three have campy qualities. All three are warm celebrations of queerness through a horror monster lens. But again, they all lean more into comedy and there’s not that much horror to them.
But not much is not none. It’s just that the horror they feature is less that of their given monsters, and more the fact that even now in the enlightened 2020s it can still be hard as a gay kid in a small town in Australia; drag performers in a rural dive bar may be in danger from the locals; and even a young queer person in a Mecca like NYC can still struggle with fully loving themselves as they are and living life authentically. Plus, there are zombies eating guts and vampires tearing out throats – just enough fictional violence to make the heartwarming character dramedy go down well without feeling too saccharine.
Anyway, they all entertained me, at times touched me, and had good fun with their horror elements. Check ‘em out. Of the three, I think my favorite was Slay – kind of a combination of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and From Dusk Till Dawn, but all have something to recommend them. (As of writing this, So Vam and Queens of the Dead are on Shudder and Slay is on Tubi)
But while they all center queerness, and they all are clearly horror movies (I do big tent classifications – if you’ve got a zombie eviscerating someone, even if it’s not scary, as far as I’m concerned you can call your flick “horror”), they don’t feel much like horror, so I’d like to dig into a very different work that is arguably not a horror movie, but feels like it. It also isn’t made by anyone who identifies as queer, and was even protested by the gay community at the time of its filming and release, but I think it is really worthy of time and attention – it’s a rich and very effective piece of queer horror, and in my opinion, just one hell of a film. So let’s get into it…
Cruising (1980)
Of the films I watched with this post in mind, this was the only one that pulled me in so fully that the moment it was over, I immediately wanted to rewatch it, consider it, and write about it. William Friedkin is most famous in the world of horror for The Exorcist (1973), and among general audience cinephiles for The French Connection (1971), but this later work of his is far more my speed. Essentially an art house flick featuring hardcore shots of gay sex and fetish activity, ostensibly a serial killer procedural, oneiric as all get out, ambiguous and intentionally frustrating for any viewer who craves narrative certainty, it is almost unfathomable that this was a wide release with a big star (Al Pacino) from a major studio (United Artists) almost 50 years ago. I will get into spoilers, so if you haven’t already seen it, go seek it out first. It’s available for rent on Prime and Apple TV.
In short, this is the story of Steve Burns, an NYPD officer who goes deep undercover in the gay BDSM scene of New York in the late 70s to lure and catch a killer who’s been targeting gay men who are into “heavy leather.” Steve is specifically chosen because he physically fits the profile of the victims (but to be fair, “late 20s, 140-150 lbs, dark hair, dark eyes” must have described a huge number of officers at the time, so maybe Captain Edelson, who recruits Steve (an excellent Paul Sorvino), sees something else in him to suggest him for the assignment).
Once on the case, Steve just seems to dive in with no evident preparation. He simply says goodbye to his girlfriend (Karen Allen), takes on the pseudonym of “John Forbes,” and moves into a flat in the West Village, where he starts hanging around a gay fetish bar and other places that gay men cruise each other, such as the Central Park Rambles. Mostly he lurks and watches, not explicitly engaging with anyone except bartenders that he asks for information (until one night, when he sniffs poppers out of some dude’s hanky and finally cuts loose). The one exception to this is relationship with his neighbor, Ted, a playwright whom Steve/John befriends (or more?). Ted, however, is very much not a part of that scene, and describes how scary he finds cruising to be. He’s in a long-term relationship, which while not always evidently warmly loving, does appear stable.
Eventually Steve does identify one suspect, but the cops botch the stakeout when he brings his mark to a cheap hotel for a hookup. Because they don’t seem to know how to use their surveillance equipment properly, they burst in before Steve can confirm the suspect has done anything wrong and end up interrogating both of them, abusively in the case of the suspect.
But in the end, Steve does chase down a bit of evidence connected with an early victim, identify a more likely killer, and meet him for a tense tryst in Central Park in which, once the pants come down, knives come out and an arrest is made.
Steve makes detective and moves back in with his girlfriend and a killer is off the street. Hooray.
On its surface, this is such a simple “cop chases a killer” movie with a straightforward story, filmed in ultra-realistic fashion, but I love it because it’s actually none of those things. Really, this is a film of mirrors and doppelgangers that plays out much more like a dream. And the thing is, while filmic dreams often present an over-the-top surreality, in my personal experience, that isn’t really how most dreams work. Generally, dreams feel entirely real while you’re dreaming them, but things can change and don’t always behave as they do in the waking world. So everything here feels solid and “real,” particularly in its sweaty and tactile presentation of a late 70s/early 80s grimy, gritty, excitingly dangerous New York City, but everything is unmoored, uncanny.
And sometimes absurd. One notable example is the interrogation scene in which Steve and his first suspect are being berated by the cops and out of nowhere, a huge, muscular Black man in a jock strap and a cowboy hat walks into the room and calmly clocks Steve out of his chair before leaving the room without saying a word (later, he’ll return for the suspect). It’s never explained – even to Steve. It feels so out of left field, so odd, like an incongruous element to make something weirder, surreal. The crazy thing here though is that apparently Friedkin got that bit from interviews with actual officers. It’s the sort of thing they would orchestrate in an interrogation to abuse information out of a suspect – the absurdity is the point – if the suspect told anyone about it, no one would believe them.
So the realistic elements become surreal if you sit with them long enough, but the absurdities are based in facts, in research (also, I’m no expert in 70s police movies, but are they generally so very anti-cop? This is one gritty, masculine 70s cop movie that just screams “ACAB” – if the cops aren’t inept, they are lazy or corrupt or abusers, or worse).
One neat trick (which David Fincher borrowed for Zodiac (2007)) is that in each kill scene, the killer is played by a different actor (though always dubbed with the same voice), though he is always filmed in such a way that it’s difficult to tell if it’s the same person or not. I had to go through on second viewing to take screen shots each time we see him to confirm that the actor does in fact change. That’s disorienting enough for the viewer, but on top of that, the actor that plays the killer in the first scene (which is frightening enough to earn the film inclusion on this horror blog on its merits alone – truly scary and upsetting) then plays the killer’s next victim in the subsequent kill scene. But there’s more.
Just as the second kill scene culminates in its inevitable stabbing, we cut to a shot of Steve walking down the street, dressed exactly the same as we just saw the killer. Steve was apparently chosen for this undercover work because he resembles the victims, but the victims also resemble their killer, and so, therefore, does he. This is a world where everything looks like everything else. The penetrator seems identical to the penetrated. The cop is a killer. The killer is a victim. The straight officer is gay. The Police are fetishists, and the kinksters are authoritarians. Cops cruise trans streetwalkers to pressure them for sex and gay men dress as cops to get off on the sexual frisson of fascism. Everything is a mirror for everything else and nothing can be pinned down. It presents as so “realistic,” but there is no center.
This ties in thematically when we do learn about the man identified in the end as the killer – clearly he is self-hating, not accepting his own identity, driven to kill in others what he hates in himself, rooted in deeply unhealthy daddy issues.
Furthermore, once the “killer” has been put away, Ted, the friendly neighbor, is found murdered in his flat and a final sequence (Steve mysteriously staring into the mirror, his interiority fully off limits to the viewer as his girlfriend has fun playing dress up in his fetish-gear-killer drag) seems to suggest that he may be responsible for Ted’s death. Reportedly, Pacino was really frustrated with the ending, complaining that Friedkin never explained it to him, leaving him unsure if he was simply gay or was in fact a killer. For my part, I think Friedkin knew exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t need Pacino to know the answer because there is no answer. We don’t and can’t know. And somehow, answering that simply isn’t the point. Looking in the mirror was all Pacino needed to do – and maybe it was even better that he didn’t understand. Neither do we.
The whole film is the not knowing – looking at reflections that seem familiar, but hide unknown depths – the mirror always being an object of the uncanny. I don’t think the film is interesting because Steve might actually be gay (though he might) or a killer (that too), but because of how unknown he is, to us, but also himself. He is submerged in an unfamiliar world where he could fairly expect to feel out of place, but clearly something resonates inside him.
And that resonation, those vibes are so much of what makes the film spark. The whole movie, the whole leather scene, the whole undercover assignment feels so very dangerous and sexy. I say this as a pretty vanilla cis-het guy, but the sequences of Steve hanging around the fetish club are just hot – the whole space so suffused with lust and flesh and sex in a way that is really alluring, but also threatening – and we see Steve react to it – however he may or may not identify, the thrilling sexuality works on him, at once, turning him on and making him uncomfortable, unsure in his own skin, as his skin reacts to its surroundings. In one striking scene, Steve comes home briefly to visit his girlfriend and they have what seems to be far more intense than usual sex. Clearly, he is worked up by his assignment and bringing it home with him.
Steve’s neighbor, Ted, speaks of how he’s terrified of cruising and I get it – I can’t imagine the vulnerability that goes with picking up and being picked up like that – it has not been my experience, to be sure. In many ways, this would correctly be classified as a detective thriller, but its intersection of compelling desire, genuine fear, and the needs and pains of the body just feel so much like horror to me – the kind of horror that really gets under your skin and works its way into your mind.
Which does bring me to something I want to touch on: the controversy at the time of filming and release, and my decision to include this as a Pride/Queer Horror post.
Released ten years after the first Pride march, Cruising came out as the gay rights movement was fighting (for people’s lives) to convince the general population that gay men and women were “normal people,” deserving of the same rights and respect as everyone else, and not some kind of sexual deviants, too weird to be trusted in the house next door, or teaching your kids, or working for the government or whatever. Along comes this movie, set in this somewhat extreme fetish scene (whips and chains, public sex acts, fisting, golden showers, etc), and my sense is that the gay community at large felt that the film was counterproductive, serving to plant a freaky image in the minds of the public, in addition to drawing a line between homosexuality and mental illness that would lead one to victimize or offer himself up for victimization. I get how this material could have been viewed as harmful to the cause.
But watched from a 2026 perspective, I feel that the scenes in the club or in the Rambles don’t really come across as all that shocking (I’m only shocked that they were included in such a mainstream release). Maybe over time, the world has just become more kink-positive, but while the aspect of opening yourself to a stranger still feels frightening (as in the terrifying first kill scene where the victim invites his killer home and discovers who he’s let into his space), the behavior modeled in the club all seems entirely positive and consensual, and fully above board. I particularly like a couple of moments when Steve runs afoul of the rules, eliciting anger from other patrons, and one time, getting kicked out because he wasn’t properly dressed (ironically, it was “precinct night” and if he’d been dressed as a cop, he would have fit in). If you didn’t know that the specter of an as yet unheard of HIV (people would start to learn about it about one year later) was lurking over it all, it rather comes across as a sexy, but utterly respectful good time for all involved. Notably, I feel that there is a greater degree of explicit consent on display here than in any “straight” meat market disco where men would go to pick up women. Also, in the film’s defense, all of the extras in the fetish club were patrons of a popular leather club at that time – they were willing to make the movie and I’ve read that they were happy with their own portrayal, even if the wider gay community was not.
But there is a real horror here, and it is clichéd and believable and sad. As at least superficially presented (again, the film is more slippery and ambiguous than that), the killer is motivated by self-hate, instilled in him by a stern, homophobic father. He hunts down others who resemble himself, to kill in them what he can’t in himself. This is as much of a cliché as the “straight” killer obsessed with “mommy,” slaughtering the “bad girls” that turn him on. The thing is, though, I generally buy both motivations as distressingly common in life and I can’t really fault the film for leaning on one of them (a cliché simply means we’ve repeated an idea so often that it doesn’t feel true – it doesn’t mean it actually isn’t true). The world is full of self-recrimination and shame. This is one of the reason “Pride” events and materials are important – not merely to demand acceptance and equal rights from the rest of society, but to help people accept and love themselves for who they are, not letting internalized hatred poison their souls. It is easy to dismiss it as a cliché, but how many virulently anti-gay politicians devote decades to harming the LGBT+ community before getting caught cruising an airport men’s room with their wide stance (ok, maybe in that case, exactly one, but you get the picture – a common tendency)?
Returning to criticisms of the film, as with many other similar issues (misogyny, racism, etc.), I don’t think the presence of internalized homophobia makes a work homophobic. I understand why people objected to this on release, and I make no claim that Friedkin’s heart was in the right place – he may have only sought evocative, thrilling, “shocking” subject matter for a good, artsy thriller. But I really feel like the film treats its characters respectfully – as people, not as stereotypes, and certainly not as objects of ridicule or disgust. I’ve read a number of negative reviews from the time of release that bemoan the fact that there’s no one to identify with or that all of the characters are so ugly and unlikable or that the setting is just too shocking and exploitative, but I think that may point to the prejudices of the reviewers rather than the content of the film itself, as that sure wasn’t my viewing experience.
And so yeah, this is not much of a “Pride” flick (for that kind of celebratory vibe, watch any of the three movies I mentioned at the top), but it is Queer horror. The killer’s horror is his own queerness and that individualized horror makes him a danger to others (as with everything else in this picture, everything is a series of reflections, a vicious circle – his fear of his own queerness threatens the wider queer community). He is caught in the end. But was he really the killer – of all the victims? Was there ever really just one killer? The worm of his self-hate is not so easily eradicated – it can pass from one to another; destruction and self-destruction eternally surfacing, internalized violence lashing out at the world without, maybe even infecting anyone who looks close enough to see that reflection in themselves; Steve, we’re looking at you.
But also, that is just one reading, and maybe it’s a stretch. Friedkin has built a Rorschach test of a film here – the viewer’s perspective defines the image seen. And I love it for its ambiguities. So, yeah – this is a strong recommend – rich and evocative and intriguing, but also always engaging – not merely an abstract mood piece.
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And that’s one more June in the books (and of course, this is getting published in July, but I spent the last couple of weeks thinking about it, so it counts). I guess before I’m done, I just have one more thought I’ve been chewing on about the label “Queer Horror.”
It’s been a number of years now that I’ve regularly engaged with this as a lens through which to view horror content, and there is so much that I’ve really enjoyed, but I have to say, all of my favorites are older works. This one, sure, but also, especially, really old pieces, like Cat People (1942), Dracula’s Daughter (1936), or anything from James Whale. I enjoy the degree to which it was sometimes daring to include even the suggestion of queerness in an older work, but I also just really enjoy the viewing strategy of “reading” the queerness in a film (or anything else, for that matter). With contemporary work, while I think it is great, and truly good for people that there is now actual representation in the genre that doesn’t need to be hidden in code (signaling much needed social progress), I don’t always enjoy the engagement in the same way as in something older where it isn’t obvious and you have to know what you’re looking for.
And so I have wondered what the future is for films thus identified. It is one thing to have LGBT+ creators making something – does that exactly make it “queer?” I don’t think it always feels like that. And it is another thing to have explicit representation of LGBT+ characters, but if the story isn’t about their queerness, it also doesn’t feel particularly “queer.” As society moves forward, will this cease to feel like a kind of sub-genre?
I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s happened yet. For example, the three films I discussed briefly at the beginning, So Vam (2021), Queens of the Dead (2025), and Slay (2024), all fully celebrate their queerness, not only featuring representation in front of and/or behind the camera, but making it a central aspect of the film itself. And I think that is something people still need and will still need for a while.
On Saturday, there was a Pride march in the town where I’m spending the summer, Ocean City, MD. It was only the third year that the event had taken place and I’m glad I was there. It was really good and needed in what is essentially a small town like this. During the summer, this place is packed, but the population in the off season is teeny and it can be pretty conservative – I can only imagine how hard it might be, even in 2026, to be gay or bi or trans or what have you in a place like this. But the march, though small, was joyous and overwhelmingly positive – and the excitement I could see in it was really moving. I think as long as kids in a small town still need to have such an event to celebrate their existence and refuse to cease existing, in the realm of horror, there will still be a place, and need for work that centers queerness as a theme, as a site of exploration, growth, and even fear – it’s all part of that full spectrum of human experience.
Happy Pride, everyone. See you next month.