Misc
WHAT’S YOUR PLEASURE, READERS?: The Results Of Our Queer Icons In Horror Survey Are Here!
Channeling all our queerest fans’ power like a bolt careening into Dr. Frankenstein’s lightning rod (no double entendre there, surely), we’ve tallied the results of our last survey! Here are our top five icons according to our dear readers:
- THEODORA CAIN (The Haunting of Hill House (2018))
When Hill House burst onto the scene back in 2018, one of the biggest highlights of the show discussion-wise about the Netflix original was the instantly popular Theo, who from the very get-go is revealed to be lesbian.
While I didn’t hop on the H.H.H. train when it first hit streaming, I’ve since become a big fan of the show, and Theo in particular. Played by the ever-charming Kate Siegel, a regular on Mike Flanagan’s productions, she brings excellent acting to a storyline built around a young gay woman’s complex relationships with her identity, her family, her powers, and herself.
And where is this most effective and memorable but in the third episode “Touch”? This psychic’s relationship with her abilities not only serves for some great visuals and storytelling but also makes up a touching metaphor for the isolation many young queer people face (see: the gloves that made me tear up a bit when I got what they meant). The way Theo’s story ends also speaks to hopefulness for escaping that isolation through love.
- PINHEAD & HIS GASH (Hellraiser Franchise)
No seriously, their gang is called a gash. Does your squad of gays have a cool euphemistic name? Didn’t think so. Start brainstorming before all the good ones get taken, gang.
Creator Clive Barker, an openly gay horror writer himself, gave us a complex and grotesque creation that strikes a funny balance between bloody and beautiful, which you must admire due to the difficulty of pulling off making a legendary symbol of horror.
If you need any more evidence, look to the glamorous novella Pinhead. More plainly androgynous in the story, with a “light and breathy [voice]–the voice of an excited girl”. This, along with the fact “every inch of their head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection […] a jeweled pin driven through to the bone”, just makes me think becoming a cenobite is a fancy process of yass-ification. They’re a bedazzled, murderous, pretty enby, which I appreciate.
Many fans, including a few anonymous submissions on our survey, expressed delight over the new casting of trans actress Jamie Clayton who will take up Doug Bradley’s mantle: “Pinhead is just iconic, and I’m so excited for the new movie to come out, and to have a trans woman play the character.”
The gash would be proud, in more ways than one.
- JENNIFER CHECK & ANITA “NEEDY” LESNICKI (Jennifer’s Body)
THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! IF YOU DON’T PUT SOME RESPECT ON DIABLO CODY’S NAME RIGHT NOW!
Ahem. Sorry, got a little passionate there.
I feel like everyone who watches Jennifer’s Body gets enthralled by the clever and fang sharp writing, the gruesomely good visuals, and most importantly, the tragic and incredibly sapphic romance between leads Jennifer and Needy, who steal the show with their onscreen chemistry. It evokes feelings familiar in many viewers: one of our fans mentioned in their response that “Needy and Jennifer’s relationship captures that undisclosed desire amongst my friends I had in high school.”
Fear Queers podcast host Beyza Ozer (@finalbeyza) also felt strongly about this queer rep: “It wasn’t until recently when queer women started becoming more validated in horror and taken more seriously—[…] hopefully more accurate, inspiring, and empowering stories come out in the next few years!”
If you’ve seen this film and don’t think that Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried work off each other brilliantly in their romance, I have to assume like Miss Check herself says: you’re just totally jello. You’re lime green jello and you can’t even admit it to yourself.
- DR. FRANK-N-FURTER (Rocky Horror Picture Show)
When you cross a legendary performance from Tim Curry, a name with heavy innuendo, and one of the best soundtracks of any musical out there, could you really get anything other than gay icon status?
Rocky Horror is a film that speaks to queer youth especially, in a unique and beautiful way. As someone whose high school had a “Rocky Horror Incident” on Halloween, causing some waves with the faculty, and who has seen the film with audiences ranging from a living room to a theatre full, there’s an undeniable energy that this movie brings out of people.
Twitter user @KalDaHomo told us in their response that Dr. Frank-N-Furter “helped them realize that sexuality is fluid and I can wear whatever I damn well please!”, and I think that experience is really telling of the kind of freeing fun everyone has when they watch Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Don’t dream it, readers. Be it.
- ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE DARK
Undoubtedly the most boisterous and unforgettable of the horror hosts we’ve ever seen, there was no other option for our fans clearly as Elvira rounds out the top of the list, edging out her competitors by a very large margin.
When people found out last September that Cassandra Peterson had been in a long-term relationship with another woman, LGBTQ+ Twitter had it trending like Halloween had come early with bisexual flag t-shirt cannons and free money. But it was a no-brainer as to why everyone was hyped.
Elvira has been a fierce icon in the queer community from the get-go, with a long-running camaraderie to the drag scene in particular; That’s not even mentioning that she believes if there ever is another Elvira to take her place (if anybody could fill in those shoes!) that it should be a drag queen to become the next Mistress of the Dark.
And aside from all that, it’s just a plain old heartwarming experience to see an icon of the horror community share their true self with the world—and to see the world greet that identity with open arms.
Our editor-in-chief James-Michael had this to say about Elvira: “She’s a bonafide icon. From tv to comics, she’s been on every conceivable form of media and continues to transcend barriers. Not to mention, you could never meet a cooler person. I love her so damn much.”
We hope you got to see your favorite icons in the top 5 spots, and we’ll see you gorgeous ghouls again in the next article! Sweet screams!
Misc
Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!
Enter Our Halloween Giveaway!
How to Enter:
Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK AND JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP!
Step 2. LIKE AND SHARE the giveaway post!
Step 3. This is the most important step, email us at contact@horrorpress.com with your FULL Facebook name (so we can verify you’re in the group) and who your favorite character is from the Texas Chainsaw franchise.
**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**
**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**
What You’ll Win
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video
- 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
- Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
- Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
- Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
- The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
- Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
- Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
- Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
- Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
- Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
- Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
- Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Cast and crew interviews
- Theatrical trailers and TV spots
- Concept art galleries
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
Misc
NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!
As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever.
From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025!
Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights
Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength
Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons.
During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear.
I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!
You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.
Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet
Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.
I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film.
Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band
My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to.
“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”
“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.”
That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)
Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy.
Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business
If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.
“Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.”
In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.
Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”
Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.
Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment
Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make.
Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house…
Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature!

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun
NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long.
At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.
I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life.
That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more.





