Queer for Fear: The Book

Book cover for Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator by Heather O. Petrocelli, published in the Horror Studies series. The cover features a still life painting in the tradition of Memento Mori against a dark background. The central image shows a gray human skull and a snuffed-out candle on a classic red velvet movie theatre seat decorated with vibrant flowers including violets, green carnations, pink roses, and pansies. A striped popcorn container with spilling popcorn appears in the corner, combining classic horror imagery with cinema elements. The title appears in two styles: "Queer for Fear" in flowing red script, and "HORROR FILM AND THE QUEER SPECTATOR" in clean white typography below it.
Queer for Fear offers the first major empirical study of queer horror spectators, their diversity and lived experiences. It offers a new understanding of camp, queer community, queer trauma, queer live cinema, the importance of drag and camp laughter. Queer for Fear is an original, intelligent and thought-provoking study of the complex relationship between queerness, horror and the cinema. A must-have book for queer lovers of Horror––and everyone else!

Barbara Creed (Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema) 

Queer for Fear is a rigorous, field-changing deep dive into queer horror spectators and their relationship with the "queerest genre." Beginning with the bold claim that "horror is queer," Petrocelli crafts a convincing and rigorously researched argument that leaves no stone unturned. This large-scale empirical study breaks open the field of horror studies as Petrocelli expansively connects the experiences of queer spectators to horror through queer identity, camp, live performance, and more.

Laura Westengard (Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma) 

When bold steps are taken, they are thoroughly backed up both through in-text citations and in extensive notes. The work in its entirety is airtight and rigorous. Great care regarding marginalized populations is taken throughout.

A. Rose Johnson (Revenant journal)

I thoroughly enjoyed this ethnographic study of the queer horror spectator. Petrocelli is a master of the interdisciplinary, genre-defying queer theoretical framework and applies it expertly.... This volume is essential for anyone hoping to learn more about the horror audience, particularly the queer audience who has for too long been understudied and underrepresented by the academic side of horror studies.

Pace Warfield (Supernatural Studies journal)