Un-Queering Horror: Hellbent and the Policing of the 'Gay Slasher'

摘要

Paul Etheredge-Ouzts's 2004 film Hellbent identifies itself as the first "all gay slasher film" and has, subsequently, been identified as a queer film. While many scholars consider the horror genre to have decidedly queer potential, this essay argues that, despite being a "gay film," Hellbent refuses the oppositional and political implications of queerness. Reading both the film text itself and a number of promotional "extra-texts," this essay identifies a strategy of rhetorical ambivalence that simultaneously asserts and disavows queer practices and pleasures.