Joe Vallese - It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

Why do queers love horror? What a gift to read writers I love and admire offer so many different answers. It Came from the Closet is at times beautiful, at times funny, at times gorgeously weird and baroque, and always as off-kilter brilliant as the genre, and queerness, itself. Horror teaches us about ourselves in all our thrilling extremes. Plus its just plain fun. Both of which are true of this deeply necessary collection.

ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH, author ofThe Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir

What is the monstrous and what does it mean to us? It Came from the Closet collects twenty-five takes on twenty-five horror films that make us cringe, crack up, turn away and turn back againeach piece lavishly queer in its intelligence, vulnerability, and wit.

PAUL LISICKY, author ofLater: My Life at the Edge of the World

As someone who grew up with posters of Freddy Krueger and Frank N. Furter over my bed, It Came from the Closet is the perfect gay bible for me. The navigations and dissections of some of my favorite slashers through various queer lenses are akin to any great horror film: mind-blowing, eye-popping, and heart-ripping. This book will see you and destroy you!

DREW DROEGE, actor, writer, comedian

It Came from the Closet is a fantastic collection of diverse queer perspectives an accessible, provocative, and much-welcomed addition to the growing body of queer horror analysis of our favorite films, new and old. This is a must-read for horror fans wanting to find connection and community in challenging the heteronormative and patriarchal narratives that can still dominate the genre.

JESSICA PARANT, cocreator of Spinsters of Horror, spinstersofhorror.com

Finally: a smart and serious yet playful book that interrogates the complex queerness of horror and the films that make a horror of queerness. These clear, insightful, and deeply personal essays reveal the real reasons why weve all been so scared.

CHRISTOPHER CASTELLANI, author ofLeading Men

QUEER REFLECTIONSON HORROR

EDITED BY JOE VALLESE

Interior illustrations by Bishakh Som

Published in 2022 by the Feminist Press

at the City University of New York

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

New York, NY 10016

feministpress.org

First Feminist Press edition 2022

Compilation and introduction copyright 2022 by Joe Vallese

Illustrations and artists note copyright 2022 by Bishakh Som

Individual copyright retained by the respective contributors

All rights reserved.

This book was made possible thanks to a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

This book is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

This book was published with financial support from the Jerome Foundation.

No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First printing October 2022

Cover design by Brulio Amado

Text design by Drew Stevens

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

WHAT ARE YOU, queer or somethin?

Im eight years old and, though its my first time hearing the word, the instant knot in my belly tells me it isnt something you want to be called. Im watching Sleepaway Camp, the at once deeply transphobic and effusively homoerotic cult slasher, with my two teenage brothers. Were all stereotypes in our own right: theyre cis, straight, sports-loving, girl-crazy wiseasses, and Im the closeted baby brotherchubby, bookish, my brain struggling to simultaneously identify and bury any visible evidence of my lust for the beefy, crop-topped dolts on the screen. But, at the moment, were just three kids from New Jersey, sitting too close to the television, gleefully awaiting the next gory kill.