Historically, the horror genre has conventionally reinforced traditional gender norms. The blonde ‘bimbo’ dies first, no one listens to the hysterical woman — despite her sense of real danger — and the ‘final girl’ survives as a reward for her purity. The unspoken rules of surviving a slasher — made explicit in slasher parody Scream — include: don’t have sex, don’t drink, and don’t do drugs. In this context, characters are punished for deviating from traditional moral and religious ideals.

However, mainstream horror movie monsters often disrupt gender norms, either serving as the explicit source of horror,  like Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, or through more subtly incongruous gender presentation such as Regan from The Exorcist. In these films, the monsters’ gender transgressions often necessitate their destruction, imprisonment, or ‘saving,’ as they threaten the stability of a traditional white and middle-class family. These representations can be harmful to queer audiences, who may find it difficult to connect with a genre that signals their destruction.

Subverting fear through camp

This is where ‘campy’ horror comes in; a genre that embraces and celebrates its audience. Camp uses parody, humour, and theatricality to challenge the ‘natural order.’ Rather than merely disrupting norms, campy horror subverts genre expectations by poking fun at social anxieties, placing them within a politically charged and contested context. 

Critics frequently downplay the value of campy horror, often dismissing it as silly or even dangerous. Audiences conflate the genre with ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movies, as seen in this campy-horror list that includes both Sleepaway Camp — a notorious flop — and Jennifer’s Body, which is a masterpiece.

Despite its reputation as a guilty pleasure, campy horror holds real value, particularly for queer audiences. It serves as both a critique of traditional ideals and a reclamation of characteristics that mainstream cinema has often demonized. One enduring example is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a movie musical that blends science fiction with B-grade movie tropes. The film follows Janet and Brad, a couple whose car breaks down in front of a gothic castle inhabited by Frank, — an alien glam rock star — his henchmen, and Rocky, a hunky Frankenstein’s monster. This film plays with and subverts traditional gender roles and expectations by placing these “monstrous” characters at the center of the narrative.

The guilt associated with campy horror stems from the threat it poses to neatly packaged, virtuous gender norms. It embraces unresolved gender transgressions and celebrates monstrosity rather than attempting to contain it. These transgressions often involve non-normative gender expressions and unabashed displays of sexuality. In mainstream horror, monsters are frightening because they embody deep-seated cultural fears rooted in traditional religious values. Campy horror subverts this by portraying these monsters in a way that does not vilify their transgressions but instead embraces them.

An example from Rocky Horror Picture Show is when Frank plays seductress, tempting both Janet and Brad in two nearly identical scenes — distinguished only by the curtains, first pink and then blue — effectively foiling their plans to save themselves for marriage. 

Through his sexual freedom, Frank embodies the fear that queerness will destroy the nuclear family. The fun part of Rocky Horror Picture Show is that rather than being silenced or relegated to the margins, Frank is the star of the movie. Janet and Brad — a conventional, straight, white couple — embody typical horror protagonists but fade into the background, becoming passive spectators to Frank’s musical numbers. The ease with which Frank quickly seduces both Janet and Brad suggests that traditional values are not as powerful or natural as the cultural imagination insists.

Rocky Horror Picture Show features characters that challenge the power of the natural order. Frank, the monster, defies easy categorization within the gender binary, threatening to dismantle it entirely. In mainstream horror, such a threat is intolerable. The protagonists are horrified by the monster’s transgressions and quickly set out to resolve them. But Rocky Horror Picture Show is unafraid to play in this space. Much of the movie is spent revelling in the Transylvanians’ gender transgressions, and even Brad — the show’s ‘straight man’ — engages in his own ‘monstrous’ acts and sexual exploits. 

This threat is the reason camp cannot be openly enjoyed in the mainstream.

Rocky Horror Picture Show’s legacy of queer liberation 

Rocky Horror Picture Show debuted in the 1970s to almost unanimously negative critical reception. An early reviewer for Time magazine called it “campy trash,” attributing the play’s initial success in London to a “kinky” British fascination with “transvestism.” 

Camp does not concern itself with mainstream taste; it provides a space for those harmed by the dominant order to subvert its tools and play with them on their own terms. Engaging with camp is not just about enjoying bad taste; it expands the meaning of “good taste” by introducing a value system that caters to queer audiences, indulging aesthetic devices like irony and exaggeration to artistic effect. It gives queer artists and audiences a place to centre themselves. As a result, when Rocky Horror Picture Show predictably missed the mark with mainstream reviewers, it went underground, gaining a cult following through midnight showings.

Rocky Horror Picture Show has little concern for Brad and Janet. At the end of the movie, Frank is killed by his henchmen, who fly back to their home planet. Janet and Brad are left behind, unsure of how to proceed. While the ending is not necessarily a happy one, it invites hopeful readings, primarily because Janet and Brad cannot simply return to their old lives. They have seen and done things that have changed them forever. Campy horror fans often struggle to leave the monsters behind; even if they die in the movie, they live on through fandom. Thus, Rocky Horror Picture Show maintains its cult status almost 50 years after its release, with regular stage performances, screenings, and an audience participation culture that celebrates rather than silences monsters. Midnight screenings allow audiences to immerse themselves in the world of the movie by dressing up as the characters they identify with. They also provide a space to find community and belonging through audience participation, yelling and throwing things at the screen at specific moments.

Campy horror brings queerness to the forefront, reclaiming harmful horror tropes and providing much-needed positive representation. Beneath its surface of silliness and artifice, the genre is both confrontational and political. It allows queer audiences — who may see themselves reflected in monsters — to find a place for themselves.