Tag Archives: Nightbreed

SHUDDER’s new four-part documentary QUEER FOR FEAR aims to celebrate LGBT horror cinema

Queer for Fear

Horror has a very complicated history with queerness. At times it’s been the genre that’s turned queer stereotypes into evil monsters or gratuitous victims of extreme violence (think Sleepaway Camp). In others, it’s the genre that’s created iconic monsters and killers that cast a reflection on society’s fears and those groups that don’t conform to the status quo (Psycho’s Norman Bates, for instance). And yet, their place in the history of queer representation is not static. Some of the most ‘problematic’ queer horror films for instance, have been reclaimed as examples of resistance and confrontation in mass market spaces (a good example of this is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, which has its own Shudder documentary).

Shudder’s new four-part documentary Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror looks to be just what audiences need to untangle this complex story and look at the many shifts and changes queerness has experienced in horror. The streaming service took to San Diego Comic-Con to reveal an extended sneak peek of the docuseries, which is executive produced by Hannibal’s Brian Fuller.

According to Shudder’s description of Queer for Fear, the docuseries will stretch as far back as the 19th century to look at literary origins (including the influences and subtexts present in the works of authors like Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, and Oscar Wilde), the 1920-30’s ‘pansy craze’ (the rise in popularity of drag performers that had been gathering steam since the New York masquerades balls of the 1890s), all the way to the ‘lavender scare’ of the 1950s, the 1980-90’s AIDS crisis, and the present.

Given how adaptable horror is to the realities of any given context, Queer for Fear is sure to become further confirmation of the genre’s ability hold up a mirror to society in an attempt to scare them into realizing just how terrifying discrimination, Othering, and violence predicated on hate can be.

As is the case with any attempt at capturing the history of something, I’m curious to see what films make it into the story and how much importance is ascribed to them. The extended sneak peek clip Shudder shared seems to present Psycho as a kind of watershed moment in queer horror cinema, for instance. Finding out what other films manage to reach that iconic quality is just one of the reasons viewers will keep coming back for all four episodes.

Nightbreed

I for one hope Clive Barker’s work shines through, especially Nightbreed (1990). As a metaphor for the importance of community for ‘outsider’ groups, Nightbreed stands as one of the British author/director’s most impressive and compelling films. Based on Barker’s own novel Cabal, the story follows a man called Aaron Boone as he searches for the mythical underground city of Midian, a place where monsters live without the pressures of being exposed and judged in the outside world. A murderous psychopath learns of Midian and seeks to destroy the monsters’ refuge.

It was a commercial and critical failure for reasons that fit into the common thread of other queer horror films: it was misunderstood and promoted as something that it was not. In Nighbtbreed’’s case, trailers and other promotional material hinted at a slasher movie rather than a dark queer fantasy experience. It should go without saying, Queer for Fear will have a lot of these type of examples to pull from to explain how so many of these horror films fell into cult status and obscurity because of studio interference in the process of building up a film’s identity.

Queer for Fear is set to premiere on September 29th on Shudder and it’s already looking like a crucial piece of horror history that fans and newcomers should definitely take the time to learn about. It follows in the footsteps of Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019), which also premiered on Shudder, in its intention to promote visibility and champion representation. To say it’s one of the year’s most important releases is quite simply an understatement.

Start your Halloween reading list with Hellraiser/Nightbreed Jihad

Hellraiser/Nightbreed Jihad

If you’re like me, then you treat Halloween as a year-long affair, a way of life, that requires a special read or movie to open the best month of the year: October. Some people have a kind of ritual, something they repeat year in and year out to mark the occasion. For some it’s watching John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), others might prefer a candlelit reading session composed of classic horror short stories from authors that are synonymous with the season (be it Poe, Stephen King, or Lovecraft).

I start October by reading something I’ve never read before, be it a comic or a short story. Last year it was a short story written by Scott Derickson and C. Robert Cargill called “A Clean White Room,” about an Iraq war veteran that becomes a sin-eater in a building that lays atop a crack in the world that has a straight line to Hell. It’s included in The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares: The Haunted City (2015) anthology, a great option for those who prefer their horror to have been published more recently.

This year, Halloween begins with a crossover horror comic that features two uniquely terrifying worlds created by legendary author Clive Barker and it’s called Hellraiser/Nightbreed Jihad. It was published in 1991 by Epic Comics but those interested in it can find it in the Clive Barker’s Nightbreed Archive published by BOOM! Studios, along with a comics adaptation of the movie by Alan Grant, John Wagner, and Jim Baikie.

Hellraiser

Hellraiser/Nightbreed Jihad is written by D.G. Chichester and illustrated by Paul Johnson and it centers on a war Hellraiser’s cenobites want to wage on the Nightbreed given the latter’s existence threatens Hell’s eternal mission of bringing agony and suffering to the souls of the damned.

The Nightbreed, a race of magical creatures that live in an underground city called Midian away from humans, are apparently disrupting the balance of chaos in the world by merely existing. A purging seems the only sensible way forward for the tortured lords of Hell, although there are different schools of thought as to how to deal with the problem.

At a glance, the story carries the look and feel of a Clive Barker tale. It’s ambitious in its worldbuilding and it fuses dark fantasy elements with dangerous magic to dive into taboo topics and subvert them. As is characteristic of Barker’s work, sex factors into the story and is presented as a kind of transcendental experience that courts pain to repurpose pleasure as a ritual that both punishes and rewards.

Paul Johnson’s art is exquisite, leaning heavy on the fantasy elements of its already dream-like worlds to establish a sense of danger and wonder that’s unique to these licenses. This carries over in the new creatures and monsters accompany the already well-established characters seen in the film adaptations of Barker’s books. They expand upon the possibilities of the horrors they embody in each world and give Johnson ample space to experiment with design.

Hellraiser

Chichister’s writing is finely tuned to the sights, sounds, and voices of both sides of the war, relying on the complex vernacular of each world’s reality to provide a very lived-in sense of story early on. It captures the constant state of violence that governs the two groups quite well and it sets up some wonderfully macabre moments that show no intention of holding back on the bloodletting.

Based on what I’ve already read and seen throughout the pages (I couldn’t help myself), Hellraiser/Nightbreed Jihad looks like it will set quite the tone for this year’s Halloween season. The challenge, then, will lie in trying to find something that compares or surpasses this horror comic. It’s a hard one, but there are 31 days-worth of opportunities to indulge in the search.