Why didn’t it appeal to me? Well, despite being released in 1990, Nightbreed has always had a distinct ‘80s monster movie vibe to it. It’s one of those films that has been on my radar forever but, if I’m being perfectly honest, it never really appealed to me, so I kept putting it on the backburner. I’m shocked that it took me this long to finally see Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, Joe. “You call us ‘monsters,’ but when you dream, you dream of flying, and changing, and living without death. Queer Aspect: The Nightbreed represent queerness, or any fill-in-the-blank “Other” you can think of. Tracked down by the police, his doctor, and his girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby), Boone eventually finds refuge in an abandoned cemetery called Midian among a “tribe” of monsters and outcasts known as the “Nightbreed” where they hide from humanity. Synopsis: Boone (Craig Sheffer), an unstable mental patient, is falsely led to believe by his doctor (David Cronenberg) that he is a serial killer.
Just know that at no point will we be getting Babashook.
For lifelong queer horror fans like us, there’s as much value in serious discussions about representation as there is in reading a ridiculously silly/fun horror film with a YAS KWEEN mentality. Each month in Horror Queers, Joe and Trace tackle a horror film with LGBTQ+ themes, a high camp quotient or both.
