Get close to a gay vampire this Halloween

Vampires have never been more popular than in the last few years, but this surge has been decades in the making. This is also true for gay vampires. Actually, even though the vampire genre has adopted our ‘coming out’ story, there are other parallels between the rise of vampires and the freedoms of the LGBT community.

While queer horror remains a small sub-niche of both horror and queer fiction/cinema, the majority is focused around the vampire (something less true for the horror genre which is more diverse).

As Halloween approaches, we thought we’d run some themed articles, and one popular topic not covered very often by gay media, vampires. So we asked Sebastien Terrean, head vampire and writer for gaymalevampire.com, to write a guest article.

There are several points in history where vampires became mainstream, starting with Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. But it was during the 60s when vampires were sexualized and fetishized. What began as R-rated films with naked female vampires eventually lead to Interview With The Vampire and The Hunger. In those early days there were even a few gay vampire adult films, and I do mean proper films before the arrival of video tape.

Through the 80s vampires grew in popularity and thanks to a stream of films including The Lost Boys, Fright Night, and Near Dark, vampires were becoming cool while still being scary and vicious. For gays novels started to appear, along with a handful of porn films. But vampires didn’t really come out for gays until the 90s and even into this century. The written word was the first place gay vampires could be found, and after recent revelations from Anne Rice, it’s fair to say this began with Interview With The Vampire, though there were many classic homoerotic stories almost a century before.

Vampire Conner Bradley ready to bite twink AJ Abner in Twinklight

Post-2000 saw the first gay vampire television show in the form of the Lair on HereTV. Films such as Scab, Vampire Boys, Vampires: Brigher in Darkness, Bite Marks, and Vamperifica have given us gay vampires who have been both sexy and dangerous. Of course the numerous adult films also paved the way for vampires to be the subject of our sexual fantasies. There are more adult films featuring vampires than regular gay movies. Of course not all are even worth watching, but I also have a bias when it comes to vampire films and some basic requirements (vampires with fangs).

Vampires have been used to break down social barriers for over a century. Dracula was a significant novel for its’ time, using fantasy to take on the norms of Victorian society. Sexualized vampires have been used to justisfy those in society who don’t conform to the mainstream, afterall vampires are meant to be outside the rules of society and therefore not constrainted by “traditional values” or bascially free to sleep with whomever, whenever and whatever. Vampires are a surrogate for being ourselves; we can project our hidden desires on them and allow them to live the wicked and filthy lives we’d like to lead.

Films to check out

Bite Marks: while it contains no gay vampires, the two main characters are gay and face monster-like vampires. Grab it on iTunes, Amazon.com or tlavideo

The Lair: grab all three seasons of the gay vampire drama on DVD on Amazon.com, Amazon.com or tlavideo. Season 2 also available for download per episode on Amazon.com Instant Video

Vamperifica: available on Blu-Ray from Amazon.com OR Amazon.co.uk

Vampire Boys: buy or rent on iTunes, tla, or Amazon.com

Vampires: Brighter in Darkness: English vampires, some with ancient pasts, battle ex-lovers. Get it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk).

Adult films

Twinklight: a full movie plus numerous episodes in the two years after it was released, full of hot twinks with fangs sucking a lot more than necks.

It’s so easy to see how this could help the queer community, another group once on the fringe which didn’t live according to society’s norms. The two came together and you had vampires that could be gay or maybe not even labelled, they just were. Were they evolved or possessed, it didn’t matter. Instead they could get away with their deviant lifestyles and seeing those characters of ‘fantasy’ doing normal things (along side the abnormal blood drinking, but I’m not judging) must have been freeing for audiences, including the gays.

So as authors and filmmakers sexualized vampires, we began to accept them not always as something to be scared of, but turned on by. Nearly every vampire film goes in one of two directions: pure-horror or sexy-vampire. As vicious and murderous as some vampires might be, they are either monsters devoid of humanity (30 Days of Night, Bite Marks) or have enough humanity to not be simply walking dead. The old mythical animated corpse searching for fresh blood has been spun off as the zombie (which owes its’ origin in the vampire myth), which leaves us with the evolved (or possibly infected) human we know little about.

JT Wreck bites in Twinklight

Maybe not all of us want to be vampires, to be strong and powerful, immortal and uber-sexy, but there’s a reason vampires continue to be featured in words and on screen, and why we are so drawn to them. Beyond the fear, there’s a pull towards these renegades, the bad boys and deviants. For me it’s certainly the fangs, those sharp pointed hard protruding and penetrating fangs. Combined with all that a vampire is and you have an ultimate lover, but also there is the lure of becoming one too, of being young and immortal forever.

As you party this Halloween, spare a thought for the vampire. Sailors and angels may be popular and perrenial, but they’re safe and stereotypical. Coming out as a vampire, even at Halloween, is about allowing out a bit more of your inner demon, your sexuality, the bit of you that doesn’t conform to norms. It would be the vampire I’d go home with from the club, if I wasn’t already the vampire.