Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Inside Popular Film) [Paperback]

Harry M. Benshoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0719044731 | ISBN-13: 978-0719044731

Monster in the Closet is a history of the horrors film that explores the genre's relationship to the social and cultural history of homosexuality in America. Drawing on a wide variety of films and primary source materials including censorship files, critical reviews, promotional materials, fanzines, men's magazines, and popular news weeklies, the book examines the historical figure of the movie monster in relation to various medical, psychological, religious and social models of homosexuality. While recent work within gay and lesbian studies has explored how the genetic tropes of the horror film intersect with popular culture's understanding of queerness, this is the first book to examine how the concept of the monster queer has evolved from era to era. From the gay and lesbian sensibilities encoded into the form and content of the classical Hollywood horror film, to recent films which play upon AIDS-related fears. Monster in the Closet examines how the horror film started and continues, to demonize (or quite literally "monsterize") queer sexuality, and what the pleasures and "costs" of such representations might be both for individual spectators and culture at large.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

They are half-human horrors, strange and scary aliens, the seemingly-normal-but-deadly danger that lurks around the corner: Hollywood monsters, or homosexuals? Horror fiction has always portrayed society's greatest fears as monstrous incarnations of "the other," so it should be no surprise that there has always been a clear homoerotic subtext in horror films--from Frankenstein to Interview with the Vampire. Harry M. Benshoff's Monsters in the Closet details how Hollywood monsters have not only been a reflection of homosexuals, but that changes in the horror film have actually mirrored changes in attitudes toward homosexuality in our society. Discussing hundreds of classic (and not so classic) movies, Benshoff provides new insight into horror and science fiction films and into how popular culture presents ideas about homosexuality to a broad audience.

From Library Journal

Arguing from a postmodern perspective, Benshoff, who teaches film and TV in the Los Angeles area, examines how Hollywood has historically "monsterized" homosexuality even as gay and lesbian viewers were learning to read queer elements into classic horror films. The author traces the concept of monster queer as it evolved from one era to the next. Although Benshoff's erudition creates some weighty prose, his refreshing readings of works by gay and gay-associated directors (e.g., James Whale, Clive Barker) and performers (e.g., Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi) is worth the trouble. An interesting theoretical companion to earlier monographs that touch on gays and horror films, including Vito Russo's seminal Celluloid Closet (1987. rev. ed.), Andrea Weiss's Vampires and Violets (Penguin, 1993), and Rhona Berenstein's Attack of the Leading Ladies (Columbia Univ., 1996); recommended for both queer and film studies collections.?Anthony J. Adam, Prairie View A&M Univ. Lib., Houston
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Manchester University Press (November 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719044731
• ISBN-13: 978-0719044731
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #537,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It will change how you watch movies, September 5, 2006

By 

Jim From The Future (Denton, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Inside Popular Film) (Paperback)

This is an excellent book and the only full volume on the subject. Horror reveals our collective cultural fears, things we find threatening even if we cannot explain why, things we consciously or unconsciously identify as "Other." Much has been written about how horror films illustrate fears concerning race and gender, but our culture's obvious prejudices toward queer (non-hetero) sexuality and their representation in the genre have never been this directly and thoroughly addressed.

Benshoff moves through the material chronologically dealing not only with the films, but the evolving medical and social approaches to the subject. The chapters on classic horror are especially thorough and entertaining. Moving into the era of the Production Code, censorship forced audiences and filmmakers alike to read/write between the lines. Some changes forced by Code officials unintentionally made the material more lurid and suggestive than before. As Benshoff gets into our current postmodern era, things become much more complicated, and the author is not as elaborate as he might be, but by then we've already been through a substantial volume of material, not to mention the difficulty of writing about movements and trends still playing themselves out.

Reading this book will change how you watch movies. If you look at "The Lost Boys," for example, and substitute "queer" or "homosexual" for "vampire," you get a very different movie loaded high with innuendo. When you consider that director Joel Schumacher is openly gay, "The Lost Boys" becomes a subversive queer film made for straight people. Sure, the vampires die at the end, but Benshoff argues here that their attractive image of raw sexual power lingers with audiences more than their destruction.

Most of the negative reviews here cite problems with the author's lack of "proof." Benshoff clearly states in his introduction that this is a subjective analysis. He reads the films from the perspective of a queer audience. While directors like James Whale intentionally coded queer figures into their films, many did not. It is precisely the unawareness of these filmmakers that makes their representation of situations and figures that can be read as queer so telling about the attitudes and underlying feelings of the culture at large. Also, queer filmgoers, like everyone else, look for themselves in the films they see and are sensitive to such representations, regardless of intent.

Overall this is a highly intelligent, entertaining book that opens a dialogue we need to be having both inside and outside the academic community. If you're interested in horror, film analysis or queer theory, this is definitely a book to pick up. For myself it's up there with Carol J. Clover's "Men, Women, And Chainsaws" as a modern milestone in film theory.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, Thought-Provoking Book, April 18, 2000

By 

Tom From NY "Tom From NY" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Inside Popular Film) (Paperback)

I found this to be a very interesting treatment of a fascinating topic. Comparatively jargon-free, and entirely accessible to anyone interested enough to pick it up and read it seriously.

Benshoff does not claim that his is the only view of the films considered. He offers his perspective on these films, and it is a most interesting and fresh look at a group of films all too often ignored. Well worth reading.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gay horrors., April 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Inside Popular Film) (Hardcover)

Benshoff examines "the media representation of queer people," read through "the homosexual implications of popular culture artifacts." The artifact here is the horror film, treated in five chapters: 1) the 1930s era "classical Hollywood film," typified by the Karloff and Lugosi thrillers entangled in Production Code problems; 2) World War II era B-pictures, mainly from Universal and RKO Studios; 3) the cold war era "creature features" and Ed Wood quickies, influenced as much by Kinsey's sexology as by McCarthy's paranoia; 4) the Stonewall era, where "gay lib" clashes with "homosexploitation" in films like "Theatre of Blood" (1973); 5) the postmodern era (set here as after 1975), when horror is more upscale, overtly gay, and tied to AIDS themes and a slasher sensibility. Benshoff's well-researched study identifies both homoerotic and homophobic subtexts in films like "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954); he argues that low-budget pictures better convey the paradoxical nature of forbidden sexualities than mainstream films do. The coverage is broad, with no film given more than a few pages of attention, and many no more than a mention in passing. Benshoff's focus is the political, social and critical implications of an evolving genre of film. This study resembles two excellent ones with comparably broad coverage-Parker Tyler's eccentric "Screening the Sexes" (1972) and Vito Russo's nonacademic study, "The Celluloid Closet" (1981, rev. 1987)-but is more up-to-date, theoretically oriented, and genre specific. The 31 stills, bibliography and index all enhance the book. Recommended to anyone interested who is unintimidated by a little critical theory, Foucauldian or otherwise.