Editorials
Queer the Walking Dead: The Rise of the “Gay Zombie” Subgenre
Why Do Queer People Resonate with the Zombie?
For a queer audience, the liminal state (defined by the dictionary as “the quality of being between two stages or places”) is our ability to see, internalize, and comprehend both sides of what a zombie movie has to offer.
“The particular thing that a zombie has in liminality is that they literally are us.” says Petrocelli, adding that “zombies, as liminal monsters, are as close as you can get to who we are.” After all, what is a zombie other than a human standing just on the other side of death? Whereas many other monsters of fiction have a supernatural transition of sorts, a keystone of zombie lore centers on the idea of how quickly zombies can go to people we know and love…to other. In that respect, there’s an aspect of zombie cinema that allows audiences to have a broader point of view in relation to the monster.
The curious thing about making a film within a subgenre you’ve been watching your entire life is that suddenly, and without warning, you start to look at it in a multitude of vastly different ways. When setting out alongside my intrepid cast & crew to shoot our forthcoming feature film, There’s a Zombie Outside, we knew we were approaching the tropes of the living dead a little bit sideways. For one thing, in comparison to the oft-expected shambling hordes, our movie only had one zombie… and it also happened to be deeply and unapologetically queer.
THERE’S A ZOMBIE OUTSIDE
Exploring the Gay Zombie Trope
Utilizing our titular creature to explore notions of “queer listlessness,” as well as our tenuous relationship with art, I became deeply aware that I was asking audiences to meet us somewhere slightly different than the expected farmhouse with survivors trapped inside.
Yet, as I continued to survey the landscape of time-honored zombie tropes, I couldn’t help but notice that for every film adhering to convention, there were exceptional outliers. Movies with titles like 1995’s La Cage Aux Zombies, 2009’s George: A Zombie Intervention, and 2011’s Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings all explored risen-from-the-grave identity politics or presented flamboyant flesh-eating farce with flair.
Such films, and numerous others, provide evidence of an undeniable interest in zombies on the part of queer filmmakers and viewers alike. Interestingly, among creators, there’s a notable preponderance of gay-identifying men who gravitate to the subject matter. Yet, in most cases, beyond the tacit agreement of the living dead as tool for commentary, these individuals seem all too willing to take their flesh-eaters into a multitude of varying directions that their straight counterparts dare not tread.
In many ways, the unique divergence of the queer zombie has effectively allowed it to “come out of the coffin” as its own subgenre.
However, like the pop culture redefining reanimated corpses that came before them, there’s more to this splintered classification than mere surface-level assignation.
Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2008)
The Queerification of the Zombie
With Night of the Living Dead, George Romero and John A. Russo undeniably reconstructed how we culturally think of zombies. The “Romero Zombie,” as it would come to be known, became the propulsion point forward for nearly all living dead media that would follow. Indeed, so much of the “mainstream” zombie subgenre strives to emulate the tropes of what Romero put forth, modern audiences unwaveringly accept this blueprint as how such movies are done.
Yet, for Bruce LaBruce, award-winning filmmaker of Otto; or, Up with Dead People and L.A. Zombie, there’s a crucial element to Romero’s work that many modern filmmakers overlook.
“Romero made the political zombie,” says LaBruce, “which is one thing people don’t do so much when they’re emulating him. Night of the Living Dead has a Black lead that is shot by the police because they think he’s a zombie…or maybe they don’t. It’s a total political allegory. Romero’s subsequent films are a critique of consumer capitalism. There’s a lot of class and race representation in his work. I think it’s too bad that more people don’t emulate those aspects of his filmmaking.”
…and while it’s true that many modern mainstream zombie films may eschew that sense of allegory, the truth remains that queer artists are often political simply by virtue of existence.
For Chris Diani, filmmaker of Creatures from the Pink Lagoon, the plight of zombie movie protagonists reflects this circumstance.
“To a gay man, the basic set-up of every zombie movie is frighteningly familiar: A group of scrappy underdogs has to use empathy, intellect, wit, and resilience to face off against brainless, shambling slobs dressed in last year’s fashions,” Diani says. “What is that, if not a monster movie version of queers clashing with rabid right-wing protesters at Pride?”
It’s a point that Dr. Heather O. Petrocelli, author of Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator, seems to reiterate.
“Even in this era of increased acceptance for queer people, we’re living in a liminal state of precarity,” says Petrocelli. “The most recent backlash shows us that it’s not just three steps forward…and then three more steps forward. You can get your ass knocked back. Progress is not a linear track.”
All things undead body politic considered, in many ways, it’s Petrocelli’s inference of liminality wherein the notion of a separate queer zombie subgenre really begins to take shape.
L.A. Zombie (2010)
Why Do Queer People Resonate with the Zombie?
For a queer audience, the liminal state (defined by the dictionary as “the quality of being between two stages or places”) is our ability to see, internalize, and comprehend both sides of what a zombie movie has to offer.
“The particular thing that a zombie has in liminality is that they literally are us.” says Petrocelli, adding that “zombies, as liminal monsters, are as close as you can get to who we are.”
After all, what is a zombie other than a human standing just on the other side of death? Whereas many other monsters of fiction have a supernatural transition of sorts, a keystone of zombie lore centers on the idea of how quickly zombies can go to people we know and love…to other.
In that respect, there’s an aspect of zombie cinema that allows audiences to have a broader point of view in relation to the monster.
“Zombie films flip focus,” says Petrocelli. “You can identify with the zombie or, depending on the movie, you can identify with the person who has the animated masses coming for them. That’s the point of liminality – you don’t have a foothold on either side of the threshold.”
For Bruce LaBruce, the idea of seeing things from the perspective of the ostracized living dead could certainly lend itself to the appeal.
“The disenfranchisement and outsiderness of queers is all very conducive to the zombie trope,” he says, further adding that while other monsters may have gotten a queer read much sooner, there’s something particularly interesting about the zombie’s gay revolution.
“The vampire mythology really tied into ideas of the sexual predator, so of course it was aligned with a gay subtext or they were presented as bisexual. But to transpose that onto the zombie myth is a bit more of a leap, in a way,” says LaBruce. “It’s not so sexy on the surface. The monster is much more of a deadened creature. There’s a bit of necessary necromantic element when you sexualize a zombie…but it’s still kind of the romantic idea of a disenfranchised character who doesn’t fit in.”
George’s Intervention (2009)
Using Monsters to Explore the Monstrous
Explorations of otherness via the monstrous aside, for a creature so closely tied in lore to contagion, there’s undeniably another aspect that those examining the queer community’s connection to zombie narratives can’t deny.
“The rise of pandemics in modern culture definitely had an influence on the zombie in film,” says Dr. Heather Petrocelli.
“It’s not difficult to make the connection between AIDS and zombies,” says Bruce LaBruce. “The fact that gays became pathologized because of AIDS and treated sort of like monsters – it’s a body withering disease where the ravages were so extreme that people were turned into almost living corpses.”
It’s well-documented that many queer creatives channeled their rage and grief over the seismic loss of the AIDS epidemic into art, and for those working within the horror genre, it should come as no surprise that such emotions were filtered through a dark lens of the fantastic. The monsters became symbolic of monstrous circumstances and stories of survivors in the face of overwhelming death became all the more poignant.
Yet, there is often such focus on this particular chapter of history and how it is channeled through the lens of horror that some critics overlook the crucial element of empowerment and escapism retreating into monster stories can provide.
Speaking on this distinction, Chris Diani illustrates how, ultimately, versatility is key.
“It’s the way zombie narratives can be stretched to address countless other struggles faced by the queer community that makes them so attractive to gay filmmakers,” Diani says. “A gay zombie film can be an AIDS allegory, an anti-capitalistic screed, a glimpse at the outsider experience, or a campy takedown of cruising culture. With all these takes and more to explore, it’s not surprising to see the enduring appeal of zombie films to queer horror fans.”
Perhaps nothing highlights Diani’s point regarding this burgeoning subgenre’s flexibility more than filmmaker Michael Simon’s aptly titled Gay Zombie, which focuses primarily on a topic often unexpected in flesh-eating stories: Love.
“When I made Gay Zombie, I thought it would be hilarious and meaningful that the lead character only felt comfortable coming out after becoming a zombie – much more than in his waking life,” says Simon.
…and, although there’s plenty of blood and guts, Michael Simon asserts that his vision of the living dead is less about monstrosity, and more about self-acceptance.
Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings (2011)
Can the Zombie Be Empowering?
“In the simplest of terms – [the message] is that it’s never too late to find love and be yourself. And to be comfortable with yourself,” says Simon.
In so many ways, this is what sets the queer zombie subgenre apart – the idea that we can rise up from the earth and be so much more. To be queer in this world is to always be in transition, to be both the perceived monster and that which must survive the night.
To be the other. To be the lover. To be the revolution.
Yes, George Romero set the mold. His vision used monsters to buck the system…and remind us that sometimes the system is the monster that needs bucking.
But to be queer is to know that we don’t have to shamble forward aimlessly. We can deviate.
Whether Night, Dawn, or Day. We can live. Kinda.
…and for any naysayers who think that the queer zombie’s ability to represent so much more than mere monster lessens its bite, allow me to leave you with this parting thought from Michael Simon, who says,
“Zombies, like gays, will eat your ass before they take shit from anyone!”
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Be sure to keep an eye on Michael Varrati’s next movie, THERE’S A ZOMBIE OUTSIDE, which will be hitting the film festival circuit soon, and looks incredible!
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
