The Scariest Things loves a great film festival. We particularly love film festivals that come to our neighborhood, and the latest one to arrive is the inaugural Queer Screams Film Festival, celebrating LGBTQ+ horror themes at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland from August 18-20! Highlights include actress Lynn Lowry presenting Shivers (1975) and The Crazies (1973) in which she starred, and Director Sam Irvin will be on hand to showcase Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001), as well as a plethora of horror shorts, and a horror drag show!

The festival combines short and feature films from local, national and international filmmakers. The festival lineup offers a variety of horror genres—including zombies, vampires, demonic possession, cabin-in-the-woods slashers and stories of one-night stands which take terrifying turns. The films span a wide breadth of horror subgenres, but LGBTQ+ themes and representation ultimately link each film together. Those were the two requirements for entry into the festival. Films needed to be a horror-genre film containing LGBTQ+ representation, whether it be the characters on the screen or the actors and filmmakers behind it.

As festival organizer JT Seaton says, “Queer audiences gravitate toward horror films because we can identify with The Other—the outcast of society, in essence, The Monster.” It’s no coincidence that a gay filmmaker, James Whale, directed Frankenstein, one of the first horror films to take a sympathetic approach to its ostensible villain. And the array of short films, screening in five blocks over Saturday and Sunday, promise a similarly subversive approach.

Just imagine we’re all sitting at a table in a rawkin’ Portland bar and the jukebox is too loud and your horror pals try to catch up over plastic pitchers of Rainier and shots of Old Crow! Genuinely and sincerely, a huge thanks to Lynn Lowry and JT Seaton for being on the show.