Horror belongs to queer people and Shudder's new docuseries Queer for Fear is ready to show you exactly how ingrained LGBTQ+ people have been in the genre since its inception. At San Diego Comic-Con, I was thrilled to get the chance to speak with a few of the voices behind the upcoming docuseries. As a queer horror nerd, it was an absolute pleasure to chat with producers Bryan Fuller (Hannibal), Steak House (Launchpad), and docuseries interviewee/series consultant Kimberly Peirce, who wrote and directed Boys Don't Cry and the 2013 remake of Carrie, about how queer history and horror go hand in hand.

Shudder is the go-to streaming service for horror fans and in recent years the platform has taken to lifting up marginalized voices within the genre. In 2021, Shudder brought us Horror Noire, exploring the history of Black people in horror films and how their relationship with the genre has changed over time. Now, the streamer is set to deliver a four-part documentary series unpacking the connection between horror and thriller works and the LGBTQ+ community. Queer for Fear covers everything from LGBTQ+ authors Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde bringing the genre to life to queer actors and creatives continuing to influence the genre today. Throughout the documentary's four episodes, we'll see how the real-life experiences of queer people have been linked to what we see in horror since its inception including homophobic fears surrounding the pansy craze, the lavender scare, and the AIDS crisis ushering in Universal Monsters, alien invasion films, and 80s vampire thrillers.

During our conversation at SDCC, we spoke about the importance of LGBTQ+ voices in media and some of the interviews featured in Queer for Fear including commentary from Peirce, Oz Perkins, the cast of Yellowjackets, and more. We also discussed what makes horror, in particular, so inherently queer, why queer people often find themselves drawn to genre fiction, their favorite reflections of queerness in horror, and their favorite horror movies. You can read the transcript for our conversation down below or watch the video in the player above.

queer for fear poster shudder
Image via Shudder

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COLLIDER: I'm so excited about this docuseries. I feel like it was made for me as a queer person who got married on Halloween last year. So what made you guys decide to bring this monster to life, so to speak?

BRYAN FULLER: Well, the monster was really born out of Shudder's interest in telling stories about the horror genre from marginalized people's points of view. They had this fantastic documentary called Horror Noire, which is about the history of Black people in horror films. And they knew they wanted to do a sequel about the queer community. So, we have to tip our hats to Shudder.

So, there are so many exciting interviews in Queer for Fear from having drag queen Alaska on the cover, to Jennifer's Body director, Karyn Kusama. What are you most excited about for the series?

STEAK HOUSE: Well, Kim Peirce was really exciting.

Yes, yes, of course!

KIMBERLY PEIRCE: I am standing here. So what are you going to say?

HOUSE: I mean, there are so many people. I think it's hard to narrow it down. I think we had the cast of Yellowjackets. A bunch of them came in and it was super fun. And I really enjoyed ... Oh, shoot. My brain's blanking out on the name. What is the star of all the Gregg Araki movies? James? James was a great interview. It's like he really got the fight back of the new queer cinema movement. And I really enjoyed that, but I'll let you guys talk.

FULLER: I think one of the happiest surprises that we got in terms of interviewees was Oz Perkins talking about his father's legacy and what it was like for a closeted queer man to navigate Hollywood and also his family in a really intimate way. That felt like something that I hadn't seen before. Nobody's had that conversation with Oz and we were so honored to be able to have that conversation about Anthony Perkins in a way that really gave dimension to his experience as a closeted actor in the '40s, '50s, and '60s.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho
Image Via Paramount Pictures

So as queer people, we're frequently drawn to genre fiction, sci-fi, horror, you name it. What do you think makes horror so inherently queer?

PEIRCE: Well, all being monsters, I don't know if I speak for these monsters. But look, I certainly think in a culture that has a normativity, heteronormativity, a gender normativity, when you do not fit naturally into that normativity, particularly in prior generations, when you're coming of age, and you don't see a reflection of yourself, you become very astute at looking between the lines and figuring out, "Oh, I think that might be me. I think that might be a future me."

So I can just say for myself, because I'm like trans, butch, genderqueer, homosexual, maybe everything. I was very much looking between the lines. And so I think what I've found is by talking to these guys who are brilliant, and they've done this great documentary and seeing all these amazing interviews, it's like, I'm finding my tribe. That all these layers of being able to see ourselves represented and to read ourselves into existence until we can actually make ourselves into existence. So I think that you have a very creative audience-ship that's creating themselves in it. And then we can get into the specifics of which monsters and horror that we all respond to.

As you said, we frequently look for representation where it isn't or where it's hidden between the lines. Was there a particular moment in pop culture or a movie or television series or even a character that helped you realize your own queerness along the way?

HOUSE: I don't know if it helped me realize my own queerness, but I feel like when I watched Scream when it came out, I feel like this there's something different here, but I don't know what it is. I know I relate to this more than many of the other things I've seen. And there's Kevin Williamson's behind it and he's a gay writer. So the gayness is in there even though it's not necessarily part of the story. And I think that for me, that was just so ... It just made me feel different. I was like, "Oh, I like horror again now." Now I'm seeing things that are fun and have a little bit of just secret queerness, and maybe not so secret queerness, but you know?

PEIRCE: Look, Jekyll and Hyde. If you're what I was, which is a young, bisexual lesbian who was genderqueer, trans, butch, and the idea of I'm going to dress up one way and I'm going to go out into society and I'm going to be a successful doctor, but then at night I'm going to go out. You know what I mean? I'm going to be this other version of myself. It's a completely queer experience of being able to move through gender and through sexual preference. And then I have to throw in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I am the monster, but it's a beautiful monster and a vulnerable monster too, a monster that really wants to be loved. And I really believe that. I'm so proud of these guys because they've worked so hard to bring so many voices into the discussion that we've never heard before, that really are bringing to life why we are in love with these movies and what they mean to us.

FULLER: One of the interviews that we had with a trans woman who talked about how the first time that she saw herself in horror was The Exorcist because she was a young girl whose body was taken over by a male presence in the form of puberty. And it took her 20 years to exorcize that presence and reclaim her true gender. So I think when you're looking at that sort of metaphor and interpretation of the text, it really is about what you are bringing to the table as an audience member.

stranger things-scream1996

What would you say you're most excited for people to take away from this docuseries when they finally get to see it?

HOUSE: I think I want people to really think about what it is to have queer community and community that surrounds you and people that you can relate to and also have this out there for people who are struggling in the world who don't have a community and don't have a place to be and to rile everybody up. Let's push some boundaries!

Hell yeah!

PEIRCE: And I really think to imagine yourself into existence. I think if you don't exist in the texts that are being given to you, go ahead and project yourself onto that, which is what we all had to do. And if they are there and they're latent, hold them up and make a celebration of that. And then I love the idea of the queer community. It's just like find your tribe because your tribe's all over. And I think that's what's been so fun about coming in and doing the interviews. I've known Steak forever. I've known [Bryan] forever. And it's just like, oh my God, this is so much fun. I love understanding your personal connection. You keep bringing up Scream and I'm just like, that's so cool because that wasn't my experience.

FULLER: I think our main goal with this is to provide an experience for the audience that acknowledges what they were feeling that may not be text and to provide an opportunity to own the horror genre in a way that feels sometimes very horror bro-y and very heteronormative and kind of toxically masculine in a way. But its roots and its foundations are all in the queer experience, whether that's Mary Shelley, or Bram Stoker, or Oscar Wilde, or James Whale, or any of the myriad writers that worked with [Alfred] Hitchcock. There were always people telling stories. They're just different levels of obfuscation.

Jack says "Here's Johnny" through a door in 'The Shining' (1980)

Absolutely, I find myself saying all the time that horror belongs to gay people. So I am very excited for this docuseries. Let's just end on a fun one. What's your favorite horror movie?

FULLER: I'm torn between The Shining and Alien. I think there's coding in both of those films. There's definitely something very relatable for a lot of people who identify as queer or special or abnormal and Danny's experience dealing with an abusive father who wants to squash what is special or unique about Danny. And so that's always resonated very strongly with me.

PEIRCE: Well, so for me, it's definitely The Shining and Scatman Crothers and Danny finding... [Peirce is interrupted by a gust of wind]. Whoa, that's a horror thing. We know that we're inhabited here, something's happening.

Definitely ghosts under the table.

PEIRCE: I don't know. Scatman Crothers when he talks about the shine. And it's just this idea of these two people who seem very different, actually have this deep commonality and it's a special power and it's a perception. And it's a wisdom about the world, which is very much, I think what it's like to be queer in a world that doesn't accommodate you and doesn't represent you. Again, you have to birth yourself into existence and find your tribe. And that's what he's doing. They're having a very queer relationship in my eyes.

HOUSE: And I think I'm really excited about now, where we're getting to see series that are made by women, with women in it, and clearly queer, like Yellowjackets and Killing Eve — things that as a younger person, I didn't get to see. And if I did see, even when we're doing a whole episode on dangerous women, most of it's written by men, most of it's directed by men. But for me in the last five years, they're suddenly starting to be more content that I can relate more to because it is actually made by women.

Thank you guys so much for coming and chatting with us. I cannot wait to watch the docuseries when it comes to Shudder this fall.

Queer for Fear premieres on Shudder on September 29. You can watch a sneak peek clip down below: