Grab your fave girl and hide behind the cushions.
I love Halloween – I love dressing up in costumes, eating candy, and watching scary films. I think I might even like it more as an adult than I did as a kid. One of the reasons is that Halloween has a definite essence of queerness around it, am I right?
This year, in honour of my favourite holiday, I’ve decided to line up 24 hours of spooky content featuring LGBTQ+ women for you to delve into on Halloween, including films, books, TV episodes, and podcasts. My timings go from witching hour to witching hour, but if you’re the kind of person who needs sleep, then feel free to start whenever you wake up.
00.00: All Cheerleaders Die
When Maddy and the rest of the cheerleading team die in a car crash, Maddy’s ex-girlfriend Leena, a Wiccan, brings them back to life… sort of. The trouble is that now the cheer squad is hunting other students down for food and Maddy is caught in a love triangle between Leena and her teammate Tracey.
01.29: Lyle
If you’ve ever wondered what a modern, lesbian retelling of Rosemary’s Baby would look like, it’s right here. Heavily pregnant Leah is haunted by the death of her daughter and she begins to suspect that a supernatural force was responsible for Lyle’s death, but is this true or just a mother’s grief?
02:34: Alice Isn’t Dead
This is a gripping horror story about a truck driver on the search for her missing wife. I can’t say much more without major spoilers, but you should know that the characters are intriguing and nuanced. While you could easily spend the whole day binge-listening to this, I recommend that you start with episode one and savour your time with this podcast. P.S. It’s also getting made into a novel.
02:53: Women Who Kill
True crime podcasters Morgan and her ex-girlfriend Jean suspect that Morgan’s new girlfriend is a murderer, but are they getting too into their work?
04:26: May
When May was a child, she suffered trauma that left her with abandonment issues and an inability to form long-term relationships. During the movie, she starts dating Adam and Polly, but she’s so desperate to keep them from leaving her that she… well let’s just say that my friend sums this movie up with the phrase “bisexual Frankenstein”.
05:59: Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel
It’s getting a little bit dark here, so let’s take a break from murders and demons to read this light-hearted Disney novel about two queer teenage girls who fall in love and accidentally bring three witches back to life.
07:00: High Tension
In this French film, Marie is spending the weekend with her best friend (and secret love interest) Alex and her family, when a serial killer arrives. Suddenly, it’s a race against time to see who will survive.
08:33: She Creature
Set in the world of the travelling circus, Lily, a mermaid impersonator, falls in love with the mermaid her husband has kidnapped to replace her. The mermaid shows her love for Lily by attempting to kill anyone who wrongs her.
10:04: White is for Witching
In this unsettling novel, Miranda has disappeared and three separate narratives of the events leading up to her disappearance are presented; one from her twin brother, one from her girlfriend Ore, and one from the house. Prepare to wrack your brain to find out how and why Miranda went missing.
13.04 The Haunting
In this classic horror movie, based on The Haunting of Hill House novel, four people are invited to stay in a house where something spooky is definitely going on. One of the main characters, a psychic lesbian called Theo, takes a shine to fellow investigator Eleanor, but ghosts and the Victorian era get in the way.
14:48: Make a Wish
To me, inviting all of my ex-girlfriends to camp in the woods for my birthday sounds scary enough already, but now there’s a serial killer on the loose… Who will make it out alive?
16:24: The Hunger
Here we’ll take a break from the violence to enjoy an erotic horror film, where a love triangle emerges between a doctor specialising in sleep research (Susan Sarandon) and a vampire couple (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) and results in a sex scene between the female leads.
18:01: Affinity
This book focuses on the life of Victorian charity worker Margaret, who works with female inmates. She is drawn to spiritualist inmate Selena, who claims to be able to talk to the dead, and finds herself engulfed in Selena’s world, desperately trying to bring the two of them together.
21:01: Modern Vampires
This 90s horror-comedy has Dr Val Helsing hiring “crack-smoking gang-bangers”, an actual quote from the IMDB page, to hunt the vampires who are secretly controlling the USA. It’s fairly out there, but then it was released in 1999. It also features a make-out scene between Natasha Lyonne and Natasha Gregson Wagner.
22:32: Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire
This book of short stories is one that you can easily dip in and out of, featuring tales of erotica, and pure horror while seeming to blur the lines between both genres. It’s both unforgettable and terrifying.
Did I miss your favourite book/film/podcast? Are you planning to spend Halloween another way? Let me know in the comments.
