QUEER HORROR is the only LGTBQ+ horror film screening series in the United States, since 2015. Hosted and programmed by Portland's premier drag clown Carla Rossi (Anthony Hudson) and featuring a marketplace by artist Jason Edward Davis, QUEER HORROR screens bimonthly at the historic Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon, and tours nationally at theatrical venues while also representing at horror conventions.
Consistently selling out a century-old moviehouse full of nearly 400 queers and allies for rowdy screenings of films containing queerness in front of and behind the lens, and opening with staged preshow one-acts starring Portland drag and burlesque All-Stars, QUEER HORROR celebrates horror as a queer genre — not a subgenre — and asks what it means to identify with the monster.
Maybe it’s the fact that queer people are so often relegated to shadows of otherness that horror is more immediately relatable for us. We grew up with boogeymen. We’ve lived with boogeymen. Goblins and ghosts are a welcome escape from real-life monstrosities. (We are the monsters, mister.)
Or maybe it’s the fact that horror has always been intrinsically queer. From the early work of the Gothicists to F.W. Murnau, James Whale, and Daphne Du Maurier to Patricia Highsmith, Clive Barker, Elvira, Don Mancini, and so many more, horror is shaped by queer creators who first formed the collective cultural imagery with which we dream.