Entertainment Weekly shared the first trailer for the upcoming docu-series Queer For Fear and it looks awesome. From executive producer Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies), this four-part documentary series explores the history of the LGBTQ+ community in the horror and thriller genres from literary origins with queer authors like Mary Shelley, all the way up to a contemporary new generation of queer creators. A true deep dive into where we’ve been and how we’ve arrived here.
The series includes a slew of incredible interviews, including the likes of icons Jennifer Tilly (Actor, Child’s Play franchise) and Karyn Kusama (Director, Jennifer’s Body, Yellowjackets). Queer for Fear aims to “re-examine genre stories through a queer lens, seeing them not as violent, murderous narratives, but as tales of survival that resonate thematically with queer audiences everywhere.”
Fuller tells EW. “I’d seen an early cut of [Queer for Fear]and volunteered my services to help get it into shape and then it slowly evolved into less of a movie, like Horror Noire, and more of a series.”
The series explores “a broad definition of queer horror which includes Hitchcock films and women-in-prison films.” Fuller explains, “In certain interpretations, a movie like Blade Runner can be seen through the lens of queer horror as a very specific story about marginalized people who want more rights and more life. So there’s a wide variety of interpretations of queer horror and also of queerness. It just seemed that the project is so sprawling this really cannot be contained into an 80- or 90-minute narrative, because there are so many letters of the LGBTQ+ alphabet to cover.”
When it comes to horror origins, Fuller whet his appetite for the genre with Count Chocula, and a photo novel adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien. “Every time my mom went to the grocery store, I hid in the magazine area, and would pore over it, and study the cinematography and the production design. It is such a lovingly constructed film that is elevated with such savvy psychological production design as penis-headed monsters and vagina-shaped doors and all the Freudian and Jungian implications of a mother that betrays her family for the giant cock that just came to roost. Those things I perhaps was not aware of as a ten-year-old [laughs] but certainly once I started understanding that the monster was a big dick-head, the queer implications of that were readily apparent.”
Take a look at the official Queer For Fear: The History of Queer Horror trailer below.
Other interviews include series consultant Renée “Nay” Bever (“Attack of the Queerwolf” Podcast co-host), Mark Gatiss (Co-Creator, Writer & Actor, Sherlock and Dracula on BBC), Kimberly Peirce (Writer and Director, Boys Don’t Cry, Carrie (2013), Lea DeLaria (Actor, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2000), Orange is the New Black), Leslye Headland (Creator, Russian Doll), Oz Perkins (Writer & Director, Gretel & Hansel), and more. Check out the official synopsis below, we can’t wait for Fall!
From literary origins with queer authors Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde to the pansy craze of the 1920s that influenced Universal Monsters and Hitchcock; from the “lavender scare” alien invasion films of the mid-20th century to the AIDS-obsessed bloodletting of ’80s vampire films; through genre-bending horrors from a new generation of queer creators; Queer for Fear re-examines genre stories through a queer lens, seeing them not as violent, murderous narratives, but as tales of survival that resonate thematically with queer audiences everywhere.
The four-part documentary series premieres exclusively on Shudder September 30, with new episodes weekly.
