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Now, I am focusing on only straight horror films because the past few years have seen the rise of actual all-gay horror movies, the most well-known being Paul Etheredge-Ouzts' West Hollywood slasher Hellbent. Since all the fellas in that one are gay, it doesn't really fit into the discussion at hand. The happy, humpy himbos of Hellbent essentially take on the roles traditionally played by straight boys and girls in standard horror. Our concern here is the odd man (or woman) out — the lone sissy or dyke, trapped with a group of gropey straight kids and forced to suffer through an otherwise straight morality play. And so here it is …

The Gay Characters' Guide to Surviving a Straight Horror Film

1. You don't.
History unfortunately shows that the gays don't fare too well in the horror genre. But then again, neither do most people — after all, you're slapping down your cash to see some blood and maybe jump out of your seat once or twice, and you can't make an omelet without breaking a few teens. In the dozen or so films I will be discussing here, only one of them shows a gay character living through the final reel.

But horror isn't a black-or-white genre. Sure, the whole “you live or you don't” thing is pretty rigid, but there are plenty of shades of grey. Some characters die nobly, while some have deaths that are treated as jokes (the meanest kind, really). Some characters contribute to the defeat of the killer, while some actually aid in the massacre. And perhaps most importantly, some characters earn our love and support, while others become folks we actually want to see die.

In this regard, gay characters have actually made quite a bit of progress over the years. Gay characters have evolved from being mere tools to aid in the survival of the film's heroes to being their own complete characters, and their deaths have been treated with increasing sensitivity. Gay characters have also become younger and more at ease with their sexuality in recent years, which is a huge shift, particularly in a genre commonly regarded as straight male masturbatory material.

Let's start with what is perhaps the gayest slasher movie of all time, Eyes of Laura Mars (1978). Sure, it predates the teen horror boom by a few years and really fits more into the glorious Batshit Matrons in Peril subgenre, but it's basically a midlife crisis version of a slasher movie.

Faye Dunaway (Mommy!) plays Laura, a cutting-edge fashion photographer (gay …) who poses her models in scenes of bloody carnage (fabulous and gay). Problem is, someone's been offing her acquaintances in scenes that mimic her photos, and what's more, she can see through the eyes of the killer as the murders take place. Laura's whisper-thin, noodle-wristed pillar of strength is the fabulously flaming Donald (Rene Auberjonois), who hosts piano parties in his apartment and brays like a gay donkey at just about everything, good or bad. At one point, Donald even dresses up as Laura as a decoy to distract police, and sadly meets his end — still dressed in Dunaway drag — in his building's elevator.

Here, the gay character is about two eyelashes away from a gay Stepin Fetchit, the cackling, zippy queen who seems to have no other concern than catering to the whims of the straight, rich and fabulous. I guess these days he'd be a celebrity stylist or one of the Fab Five. But remember, this was 1978 — for a gay character to be present at all in a mainstream genre picture was something notable in and of itself, and I wouldn't exactly expect the character to be particularly well-rounded.

But while Donald's affectations might be a bit over-the-top and cliché, the fact of the matter is, he's really the only selfless character the movie has. He's there for Laura through thick and thin — he even dies for her, albeit not intentionally. So I guess if you're a gay character and want to survive a horror film:

2. You can't rely on your good intentions. Or your fashion sense.
Let's look at another Batshit Matron in Peril movie, 1981's ridiculous The Fan. In it Lauren Bacall plays film and Broadway legend Sally Ross, who is attempting to mount both her first musical production and James Garner. Sally has been receiving increasingly creepy notes from a deranged fan named Douglas (a young Michael Biehn), who soon begins offing Sally's friends with a straight-edged razor.

As if the Marvin Hamlisch-scored musical, countless dance routines and campy performance of Bacall weren't enough, we soon get a legit gay subplot. In order to throw cops off his trail, Douglas goes to a gay bar, picks up a kid roughly his size, and has a quick tryst with him on a roof before slitting his throat and setting him on fire beside a fake suicide note. Charming, right? And who in God's name would put a straight-edged razor that close to his junk?

Here we have a rather less favorable image of a gay man in a horror film. He exists solely to facilitate the actions of the villain (he's of no help to Sally, who's off belching out show tunes between clouds of cigarette smoke) and is identified only by his “destructive sexuality,” which gets him killed before he utters a single line. It's really pretty despicable, but then again, the whole movie's a gloriously tasteless piece of trash, so it's not out of place. So the message here would be:

3. Don't seduce Michael Biehn on a rooftop.
Oh, come on — have you seen The Terminator? Rawr …

Once the craze kicked in, horror films started skewing much younger, and plot and character withered, making room for more gore and allowing for faster shoots and cheaper budgets. It seemed that the Friday the 13th (1980) and Halloween (1978) clones existed in an entirely straight universe — there's not a gay character to be had among them (although plenty of gay and closeted actors, of course).

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