Lived It

Fear Month: Rhys Nicholson on why all horror movies are queer

Episode Summary

The icon, comedian, and Netflix star himself — Rhys Nicholson — joins us to chat all things queer representation in the history of horror, from Frankenstein to Fear Street, and how that representation has changed from subtext to text. All in this episode with Alexei Toliopoulos and Gen Fricker.

Episode Notes

Episode Transcription

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Hello, and welcome back to Fear Month on the Big Film Buffet. My name is Alexei Toliopoulos, and joining me as always is Gen Fricker. What are we doing on the show today?

Gen Fricker:

Oh my goodness, we are joined by a very, very special guest. He is a wonderful human.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Wow.

Gen Fricker:

He is the star of his own Netflix comedy special, Live at the Athenaeum. He is Rhys Nicholson. Hello.

Rhys Nicholson:

Hello. I've put my arms up. We've all put our arms up for no reason.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

We have. We're rejoicing, we're praising.

Rhys Nicholson:

I love that you... Fear Month. Because why not just Fear... I'd say Fear 18 Months.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah.

Rhys Nicholson:

Is that not the world that we're living in? How lucky you are in podcast world to only have to have a month.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

A month of fears. But I really want to get you on this Fear Month special, Rhys, because you are one of my absolute favourite pop culture minds that there is, and I needed to get your thoughts on this, because I think Fear Street is something interesting in horror, because horror is something that lives in the subtext so much. Horror movies are always about something reflective of culture, reflective of society, and I think queer theory is so linked to horror because of that subtextual basis of the genre.

Rhys Nicholson:

It's fear of otherness, right?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely.

Rhys Nicholson:

That's what I've always thought horror is.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

But I think as well, part of what makes Fear Street so exciting, part of its identity, is that it makes these queer romances that are usually subtextual, makes them explicit, and it's right there in the forefront.

Rhys Nicholson:

Yeah. I've been thinking a little bit about this in the last couple of days, and see, I'm more of a thriller guy, most of the time. I like your Silence of the Lambses. I'm not usually a... guy. I'm a... type of guy. Like, "Oh, it was him the whole time." But then the more I thought about it, the more I realised how unkind thrillers are. Any thriller, not every thriller but especially during the 80s and the 90s, and maybe even noir thrillers of ages ago, they're just mainly, "Hey, how scary are queer people?" That's essentially what they're all about.

Rhys Nicholson:

Silence of the Lambs? Not great to trans people. The Maltese Falcon, I would even kind of say is a thriller, is all about, "Hey, this guy's pretty weird." Whereas horror movies, they kind of inherently have to be camp. Saw is camp, because it has to be camp. In order for you to be okay with watching a head be chopped off, or watching blood, it needs to be kind of performative. Otherwise you're just like, "Jesus Christ, that guy's head's just been chopped off."

Gen Fricker:

The tiny clown on the bike is a big giveaway if something is camp or is not camp.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

That's a queer icon, that puppet on the tricycle.

Rhys Nicholson:

The Babadook. There you go.

Gen Fricker:

Yes!

Rhys Nicholson:

The true queer icon.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Truly. And I think as well, that's so on point of why I think they're wrapped up together. It is that campness. And you go all the way back to the start of cinema, talkies if you will, in the 1930s, the big horror director is openly gay filmmaker James Whale, who makes Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, the Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House. If you watch those, they're an absolute scream. They're so camp.

Rhys Nicholson:

When you're a young gay person, you do kind of feel like a Frankenstein, and then you get to about your 40s as a gay man and you realise you are the invisible man. So it does kind of come together.

Gen Fricker:

It's a documentary, in a way.

Rhys Nicholson:

It's a documentary. We will all become invisible at some point.

Gen Fricker:

Do you have a favourite horror film, Rhys?

Rhys Nicholson:

It depends. The Rocky Horror, technically not a horror movie, but it is, if you know it. It is, but it isn't. It's a very cliché reference to make, but I'd say that probably kind of is it.

Rhys Nicholson:

I remember watching Halloween. That was maybe the first horror movie I ever saw, when I was maybe 10. The first proper one. I'd already seen The Rocky Horror. [inaudible 00:04:16] give you any idea of my upbringing. And my mum fast forwarded through the rude bits, like the bedroom scenes, but it was VHS, so I still saw it, it was just faster.

Rhys Nicholson:

But Halloween H20 was like... Talk about camp things. Jamie Lee Curtis is now a camp icon because of those things. And then Ryan Murphy kind of grabs hold of these things and just makes his... I think maybe the gayest shit you're ever going to see is a Ryan Murphy American Horror Story and stuff.

Rhys Nicholson:

But I feel like every queer person has... it's just part of their aesthetic, or part of their vibes is that they love spooky movies. There's something about it, and I don't know why. It's probably because of the otherness thing, right?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, I think so, and I think as well, you hit on something with Jamie Lee Curtis being a cultural icon for that reason. There's a reflectiveness to the final girls, because they are people that start as victims and then they have to find their own agency and become heroic through it, and basically stand up to their bullies. To me, that's a absolute queer reading of slasher films.

Rhys Nicholson:

And I think that's what we do as a group of people, and I'm only speaking for gay men when I say this, but our queer icons are usually quite tragic figures, the Judy Garlands and that kind of thing. We latch on to people. Especially during those early eras, we relate to these people that are misunderstood and trying to do the right thing. That's the whole story of Frankenstein, right? He's misunderstood. They think he murdered the little girl.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Exactly.

Rhys Nicholson:

I know we're talking about Fear Street and stuff. Lot of dead kids in these movies. I liked it, I really enjoyed them, but boy.

Gen Fricker:

Lot of dead kids.

Rhys Nicholson:

One of my favourite things that happened is, there's a scene where there's two couples having a sex scene. This isn't giving anything away. And then there's just one guy who just has a wank.

Gen Fricker:

Yes! Yes, in the first one. Fear Street 1994.

Rhys Nicholson:

And I've never related to someone more. Everyone I know is having sex and I'm just in another room.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. But he is feeling himself in that moment.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah.

Rhys Nicholson:

Oh, he loves it. And he's got painted nails, and he's looking himself in the mirror, and he's like, "All right, let's make this happen."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

He's coming alive like, "Okay, this is it." This is the teen movie I've been waiting for for a long time.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

There's a movie, I don't know if you've ever seen this film, Rhys. Have you ever seen Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge?

Rhys Nicholson:

No, I remember the first one made a big impact on me as a kid, because the hand comes out of the lady's parts, her swimsuit area, in the bath, and that really made quite an impact on me. But no, the second one is with the nudie scene, right?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes. This is one that I think is a very key text as well, when we're talking about queerness in horror. It's a movie I really love, but it is, I would say, bordering on no longer subtext, the queerness of the film. There's scenes where they're at a leather bar, pretty much full frontal male nudity, which is so rare for a horror film. But there's scenes where they're in a locker room, and there's someone getting whipped on the butt by Freddy with a towel and stuff.

Gen Fricker:

Sorry, the killer whips someone on the butt with a towel?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes. That is true.

Rhys Nicholson:

Yeah. He's killing him with kindness.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Or behindness, if you will.

Rhys Nicholson:

You think Freddy's a top or a bottom?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, Freddy's versatile, if you know what I mean. He's in your dreams, he adapts to what your desires are.

Rhys Nicholson:

He's definitely a dom at least. He's definitely a dom.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

But I think as well, with this film, its lead, instead of a final girl, it's a final boy, and so much of that is interpreted through this queer lens, because the actor came out many years later as being gay as well. He dances, and it's not like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. He's shuffling his butt to close draws and stuff.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

There's also a great documentary called Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, which is from the perspective of Mark Patton, the actor of Nightmare on Elm Street 2. But part of it is this kind of gender study of, this is someone who is a man, a young teenage boy, who is very, very handsome, but they have to play them as a victim, as someone that is vulnerable, who then has to gain their agency, and I think that's something where straight audiences were not really able to accept that as a read on these films, but it's kind of been very embraced by queer audiences now.

Rhys Nicholson:

It's that thing that I feel like if you grow up queer, you do this thing, and there's a great documentary about it, The Celluloid Closet, which is just about queer readings of just general film, and just hearing Gore Vidal just go on about, "We didn't tell Charlton Heston he was playing a gay man in this movie, he just worked it out himself." I think you do this thing where you do just, even before you maybe have come to terms with your queerness, you're just scanning texts all the time, just looking for something constantly.

Rhys Nicholson:

The original Rebecca is kind of a horror movie in a weird way as well. The story of Rebecca is, this man marries a new lady, he's a widower, and he brings his new wife back, and they've got this old housekeeper. It's pretty coded that she's a lesbian and was in love with Rebecca, and there's a scene in the original Rebecca where the older lady is showing the new wife through Rebecca's closet, and she gets out a pair of her underwear and is holding them, and she puts her hand, and she's like, "Look at them. You can see right through them." I'm not exaggerating the tone of this scene, I'm not exaggerating the dialogue. It's just this scene of the new wife going, "Oh."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, something's up with Mrs. Danvers!

Rhys Nicholson:

And they kind of make her quite matronly, and quite... she doesn't have love in her life, which is the understanding of what it was to be queer in those days.

Rhys Nicholson:

The Trials of Oscar Wilde is a movie that came out in 1960, and I don't know how they got away with it in 1960, they're just like, "How about this rager?" The whole movie. And there's just no coding in it whatsoever. But the way that they do it, and I think they do it in a lot of horror movies as well, even if it's a period piece, they make them look like the gay men of the time. As in, of now. So all the young gay guys, and it's set in the 1800s, have quiffed, 60s hairdresser hair.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

We go from Gore Vidal to Vidal Sassoon in such a swift motion!

Rhys Nicholson:

But I do think also, horror movies generally have to be coded. You kind of have to. Even Scream, it's queer, but it's not. The idea of a woman surviving at the end and, you're right, taking her agency and stuff, is kind of against the norm of the times, and so it is inherently queer in itself. "Look at this lady, doing it for herself. She doesn't need a man! In fact, that man is trying to kill her."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely.

Gen Fricker:

I'd be interested to know, watching the Fear Street movies and that queerness being so overt, does that change how you enjoy these films?

Rhys Nicholson:

I think when I was younger I was scared of horror movies, and now I'm older and I'm not as panicked by them. I'm not like, "Oh my God." It reminds me a little bit, and I mean this as a compliment, of the kind of... Ryan Murphy has done this thing where, by making American Horror Story and now he's making this American Horror Stories show, and stunt casting people like Jessica Lange and Lady Gaga and... This is a broad generation about queer people, but we are popular culture fiends. Because I think maybe we spent a bit more time alone than other people. So to see not just yourself but also the culture that you love represented, and in a really smart way.

Rhys Nicholson:

I feel like a lot of horror movies are thought to be silly entertainments, but they're quite deep and layered and intricate, and in order to work... Having someone get murdered is not enjoyable to watch. And the pace of a horror is often so much smarter, I think, than say a comedy. A comedy, something funny happens, and you're like, "That was funny. Make another funny thing happen." But in order for you to be scared, it's quite a nuanced thing that has to happen. It's a pretty nuanced emotion.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's all about gaining that reaction from the audience. I think that's where that inherent campness comes from.

Rhys Nicholson:

And it has to tap into your personality. And as a queer person, I think that's what horror movies do.

Gen Fricker:

Thanks so much Rhys, it's so good to talk to you.

Rhys Nicholson:

Thank you so much for having me on. I listen to this podcast, so it'll be weird when I listen to it.