In my earlier piece ON BEING QUEER FOR FEAR, I predicted that Queer for Fear would be “a feast in a world of tasty but limited snacks.” But, I was wrong. A feast implies that one leaves the meal feeling overstuffed, or at the very least, quite satisfied. But no, Queer for Fear season 1 was instead a delightful amuse-bouche that left me eager to taste this chef’s next courses.
Wait, what’s that, Shudder? You aren’t sure if those courses are even coming? Come on, Shudder, I’m hungry. Please give me more!
This may be greedy of me. After all, it’s not as if this season of Queer for Fear was lacking – it’s definitely the most in-depth documentary on queer horror I’ve seen. I had really nothing like it before, and truly, even what I have so far is a gift. But, as I am so often told by our culture, as a bisexual, greed is my prerogative (see the second half of episode 4 of Queer for Fear for more!). I had a taste, and now I want so much more! And, well, the main complaints I’ve encountered about Queer for Fear thus far are what it didn’t cover.
These complaints do have a point. Queer for Fear season 1 was not even close to a complete or thorough explanation of the full history of queer horror. It barely scratched the surface of its beginnings. But, this was intentional. As executive producer Bryan Fuller noted in several different interviews, he and the others who made the show wanted to avoid a feeling of “roller-skating through the Louvre.” Instead of trying to cover as much as they could in the short time Shudder provided, the Queer for Fear team chose to explore a few queer stories in horror in depth, and hope that this would stoke the demand for more of these stories to be told in depth.
This is definitely not the way I would have told the story. Anyone who has ever had a conversation with me knows that I fill any space given to me to talk about my interests wall-to-wall with facts like John Moschitta, Jr., in the Micro Machines commercials of my youth. But, thankfully for all of you, I was not involved in the making of Queer for Fear. Instead of trying to stuff your head with facts as I would, the Queer for Fear team assembled what Fuller characterized in interviews as sort of an Algonquin Round Table of queer horror and gave their conversations room to breathe and allowed the gray areas presented in those conversations to remain.
The show treated the stories it covered with immense care, and some of the things that struck me most were in the subtle details – things like the careful sound design, interesting visual touches, and thoughtful pacing.
The show treated the stories it covered with immense care, and some of the things that struck me most were in the subtle details – things like the careful sound design, interesting visual touches, and thoughtful pacing. One example of a thoughtful but easily-overlooked pacing choice was in the Alfred Hitchcock portion of episode 2. There, the story focused on Hitchcock’s use of and perhaps exploitation of the pain of closeted queer people in his work. After a discussion of the lesbian themes of the film Rebecca, the episode diverges momentarily in a light and humorous discussion in which interviewees discuss whether Mrs. Danvers would be a service top or a service bottom (for the record, I’m on team service top — Rebecca seems like she would have loved to have been catered to).
Though fun, this discussion seemed a bit superfluous for the limited time available – until the next segment began. This final segment of the show was arguably the most emotionally intense of the entire season. There, Osgood Perkins, the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins, opened up about his father’s experience as a closeted queer man in Hollywood, how that informed his performance in Psycho, and how the reality of that performance negatively impacted his life. To me, the light Mrs. Danvers segment before this served as an excellent pressure release valve that allowed me to give the Perkins segment the full emotional attention it deserved, separate from the other serious Hitchcock discussion.
All of this care has really made these episodes of Queer for Fear a pleasure to watch (and rewatch) and reflect upon.
All of this care has really made these episodes of Queer for Fear a pleasure to watch (and rewatch) and reflect upon. As someone who gets so immersed in the things I love, it’s difficult sometimes to find new things in them. But I did here – new (to me) perspectives, films I hadn’t seen before (or not in a while), and so many interesting people to learn about and from. All of this reflection even helped bring down a big creative wall I had been facing and helped inspire me to write a new poetry collection (coming soon!). And this is only from the first four episodes. So, when I heard Bryan Fuller say on his most recent appearance on Fangoria’s The Kingcast (once again a delight – thank you for dropping that one right when I had two hours to kill at O’Hare!) that the Queer for Fear team has enough material to make two or three more seasons, including a planned episode entirely about trans people and another planned episode about Stephen King – well, I can’t help but be hungry for more.
Of course, long-time Bryan Fuller fans know that betting on him and his collaborators to be given an opportunity to finish telling a story at such a high level of quality is often a losing one. But, I’m hopeful that Shudder, as a platform devoted to obsessive interest in horror, may actually do right by us creepy queers. This may be the bet we finally win. Let’s hope that we can finally sit down together for that delicious feast and, for once, satisfy even the greediest among us.
