All Vampires Are Gay! 

Fellas, is it gay to be an undead fiend soaking in your own bitter agony for all eternity?

Yes, it is. And it always has been. The vampire has classically been swathed in dramatics, stunning aesthetics, and an otherness that has drawn queer audiences to herald these creatures of the night as icons of our own community. But while not every vampire story is written to be queer, there is an uncanny blend between queer and vampire cultures and experiences that draw gay audiences to the blood-soaked film screen time and time again.

 

A flair for the dramatic

Campness is something that is held dear in the hearts of queer people everywhere. Call it flamboyance, being “visibly gay”, or just a part of queer culture that’s knowable but undefinable; everything about the way vampires behave, dress, and even speak tick the boxes of campness that makes us root for them every time – even if (especially if) they’re the villain of the story.

We can’t talk about camp vampires (campires?) without referencing the iconic 1987 film The Lost Boys. Though the film’s plot centres around a heterosexual love story, punctuated by the gore and horror of a vampiric cult of teenage boys, the camp aesthetics of this film are part of what makes it so memorable. Each of the Lost Boys are clothed head-to-toe in mid-80s androgynous chic that queer people still replicate to this day. With mesh shirts ripped open to show blood-stained chests and midriffs, ears donned with a single earring (a clear call to 80s gay culture), the Lost Boys wouldn’t look out of place at a gay bar, and contrast with the rest of the characters who are dressed in the typical uniform of the American suburban neighbourhood.
This idea is one that is perpetuated across vampire cinema; vampires often have something about their appearance that is so subtly wrong that it gives an uncanny feeling of otherness, setting them apart from ‘normal’ people and making it essential to bury themselves deeper into the proverbial closet (or coffin) for fear of exposure, or to prevent ‘outing’ themselves as undead to those who knew them in life.

 

Found family

For many queer people, the concept of ‘found family’ is a necessary reality. While not the case universally, the number of LGBT+ people who find true acceptance only through the friends they make and families they create is significant enough that it’s almost a queer calling card when it appears in media. In the vampire sub-genre of horror, found family is something that appears frequently – generally through the concept of vampire ‘covens’.

Continuing on the tangent of discussing The Lost Boys, this film provides far more to the queer vampire narrative than only aesthetics. As many know, the name of the film is derived from Peter Pan, referring to a group of children who don’t have families, and will never grow up. The Lost Boys opens with a shot of missing child posters in the opening credits, hinting that the kids truly are not alright by teasing the existence of the vampire group of youths to the audience before their formal introduction. When we do meet the gang of vampires, they seem to be following David as their leader – but he’s just a child himself, desperate for the approval of the real vampire leader, Max, who instead of taking on a father figure role, essentially leaves ‘his’ children to fend for themselves, thus strengthening the boys’ bond as they’re failed by another familial construct and rely more heavily on each other. Initially, Michael is able to withstand the pull of the group, but as a new kid in a new town, with a Mother who’s too busy to care for him and his brother, Michael eventually, too, finds himself giving in to the promise of likeminded outsiders, even if he doesn’t initially see himself as ‘one of them’. This idea mimics the reality of many queer people – whether rejected from their home for their identity or having an unstable home life as a baseline, many gay youths find themselves forming tight friendships based on the common ground of being different and misunderstood by those around them – sometimes leading to them leaving home in pursuit of a life in a community where they feel understood. It’s no surprise, then, that The Lost Boys is timeless, and continues to be meaningful for queer people.

Giving a brighter spin on the concept of found family in the vampire film is the 2014 horror comedy What We Do In The Shadows. Following a coven of vampires, the film is a mockumentary-style peek into the lives of three ancient vampires who co-exist as flatmates in the current day. Where some vampire media delivers us queer themes with the caveat of incest, abuse, and other distressing motifs, What We Do In The Shadows allows us to revel in gore and hilarious undead antics while feeling truly represented by these vampires stumbling their way through the modern world.

The joyful element of What We Do In The Shadows is that there is little underlying plot other than just following this coven of vampires through their daily lives. The interactions are often wholesome, and any conflict is presented as funny, and underlined by comradeship. While all viewers see the comedy of them trying to remain subtle about their vampirism while still openly partaking in vampire culture, this is something that’s particularly significant for queer audiences. Like these vampires, queer people have our own culture and ways of presenting – and while today’s world means that most of us don’t need to hide as much as we did in years prior, we all have experienced treading the fine line between being who we are and keeping some of ourselves hidden away for our own safety. There’s something thoroughly cathartic about watching this found family of vampires navigate an uncertain world together, banding together to protect their identities and the things they hold sacred – as unconventional as those things may be.

 

Pure gay romance

Interview With The Vampire took one for the team by being a piece of vampire media that started out as gratuitously gory and gay, and managed to become even more so with every new iteration. The 1994 film, adapted from the 1976 book of the same name, follows the tragic story of the vampire Louis, which is littered with loss, horror, blood, and a wholeheartedly gay relationship with Lestat, the vampire who changed him, complete with a subversive pseudo family structure that offers a ‘distressing at best’ spin on the aforementioned concept of found family.
The act of feeding on humans is widely implied to be erotic throughout vampire media – but Anne Rice took it a step further, making it an equivalent to sex. In Rice’s vampire world, the undead don’t have the biological ability to have physical intercourse, resulting in the idea that each feed fulfils both the necessary sustenance need, while also being a form of sexual gratification. This further implies that – unless a vampire were to be particularly picky about their prey – all of Anne Rice’s vampires can be assumed to be functionally bisexual.

The fact that 1994 Interview With The Vampire film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt can be deemed ‘toned down’ on the homoeroticism is certainly saying something considering how thoroughly gay it is. Onscreen, Louis’ devotion and worship of Lestat is palpable, while Lestat struts through scene-to-scene like the toxic orchestrator of the worst situationship anyone has ever had. The blood spills gratuitously, the sex is implied abundantly, and for all director Neil Jordan tried to tone it down, the pure gay power of those characters couldn’t be contained.

If Anne Rice’s books made those vampires gay and the 1994 movie put those gay vampires in front of us, AMC’s 2022 TV adaptation removed any lingering doubt that Interview With The Vampire is anything other than a queer, tragic love story. The show sets Lestat’s ensnare of Louis not as a coercion, but as a seduction, with their first feed together leading to them kissing and having graphic, blood-soaked sex on screen, deviating from Rice’s written lore to present an unquestionably gay relationship that the audience experiences viscerally and in sinful dramatics that queer people everywhere rejoice at.

Sucking blood is a sexual substitute in Interview With The Vampire, and in the iconic Dracula it’s similarly erotic. While many of these instances are between heterosexual pairings, the inherent queerness of Dracula is captured immaculately in a scene where the protagonist, Jonathan Harker, finds himself accosted by three vampire women while in bed. In the 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is presented as the three sensual beings of sin approaching Jonathan, wherein he feels a dichotomy of a fear for his life and a guilt-ridden sexual interest despite his own judgement. Yet while the audience watches the quasi-orgy that ensues as the three women touch and ensnare Harker, it’s Dracula’s interruption that provides us with the most intimate sexual allusion. Just as Harker is beginning to submit, Dracula appears suddenly, flying through the window more enraged than we’ve seen him so far. He throws the vampire women off Jonathan and exclaims that Jonathan belongs to him. This possessive act alone is enough to tilt observant audiences towards queer implications, but the film ensures the point is driven as deep as a stake to the heart by including Dracula’s softly-spoken admission of being able to love when he’s accused of not being able to by one of the vampire brides. While this isn’t directed to Jonathan, Dracula claiming him, followed by this statement, gives the audience more than enough material to connect the dots.

The homoeroticism of this scene may be handwaved by the explanation that Dracula is possessive of Jonathan as food, not as a lover. Personally, I don’t think this dismisses the gay implications; the jealousy Dracula shows in marking Jonathan as his alone to consume (whether carnally or as a meal) is still about as gay as the film could get without saying it outright – and for queer horror fans, this is enough for us to count Dracula as one of us.

Other film adaptations of Dracula seem to agree with this reading, with the 1931 Bela Lugosi version showing the three vampire women entering Harker’s bedroom and finding him passed out on the floor - but being shooed away by Dracula who stands possessively above the unconscious man, his posture implying that same protective ownership that’s expressed more outright in the 1992 rendition.

While Dracula has audiences questioning whether the eponymous character really is gay or not, the 2019 film adaptation of Carmilla does the opposite, as the only thing the audience knows is that she is gay, and her vampirism is what’s up for debate. This adaptation brings Carmilla out of the coffin and into the romantic, queer love story she always deserved, free from men swinging their stakes around and the implication of queer love as predatory. Focusing thoroughly on the love story between Laura and Carmilla, the film instead provides small hints that Carmilla could be a vampire by nodding to known traits (waking late in the day, unsettling animals around her), while providing contrasting evidence that suggests she may not be one (showing her appearing in a mirror and handling a cross, for example). Ultimately, it seems that the goal of this adaptation of the 1871 vampire story is not to dismiss Carmilla’s vampirism, but rather to suggest that it doesn’t matter what she is, focusing instead on giving her a narrative where she can be soft, romantic, queer, and unsettling in equal measure.

 

Whether overt or implied, the existence of queerness in vampire films is as blatant to gay audiences as the blood, gore, and fangs. We don’t need to be told in certain terms that vampires are gay – we recognise ourselves on the screen, and feel held by that cold, dead embrace every time.