This year marks the 50th anniversary of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and what better way to celebrate than to explore its legacy as a queer lifeline.

In Part Two of our conversation with the creator behind Queer for Fear, we dig into how "Rocky Horror" is more than a midnight movie. It is a rite of passage, a community builder, and a warm blanket for queer horror fans across generations. For Heather, "Rocky Horror" is a personal comfort film she revisits again and again. For Kendall and Corey, it was their very first Halloween together, one dressed as Eddie, the other as Frankenfurter. And for countless others, it was the first time they walked into a theater and felt truly seen.

We also talk about the power of camp to transform trauma, the complicated legacy of "Sleepaway Camp," the evolution of horror conventions from exclusionary to inclusive, and the dream of a traveling queer horror convention where the spirit of Rocky Horror lives on.

In This Episode, You’ll Hear:

• Why "Rocky Horror" still matters 50 years later and why it feels just as transgressive today
• How camp helps queer fans reframe trauma into joy and survival
• The push and pull of problematic texts like "Sleepaway Camp" and why nuance matters
• Conventions as healing spaces for fans and celebrities alike
• The fantasy of a traveling queer horror convention with sequins, karaoke, and midnight screenings

Why This Episode Matters:

Half a century later, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" still has the power to shock, unite, and heal. Part Two celebrates how horror, and "Rocky Horror" in particular, creates spaces where queerness, trauma, and joy collide into something unforgettable.

Clips from riverside_heather_raw-audio_corey_& kendall stu_0995

And I remember talking to Amy Steele first and being like, so I'm just curious as a signer. Can you tell a difference between your heterosexual fans and your queer fans and like, she just looked at me like, of course. Of course. I can tell a difference. And I mean, straight up we're the superior fan.

And then several years went by and she was doing a, um, in costume photo op as where she was wearing, um, Jason's mom's sweater and all that, that stuff. And she totally re totally remembered me, remember the, the, the story. It's like, ah, and that is so, it is, it is so important to the fans. I mean, it's like. I feel it when I see these kids meeting.

Like, you know, the, like, I feel like the Scream series is kinda like our nightmare on Elm Street, you know, for younger kids now. And just to see them like, can't even speak in tears and all this stuff when they're meeting Skeet or Nev or Matthew Lillard, it's like, it just touches my heart, you know? And especially because they're giving back too, you know, and who knows what's been go, what goes on in, in people, you know, signers, celebrities lives, you know, beyond.

And it was, um, the love from the horror fans that brought her back into the fold. And that's just beautiful.

Heather: Yeah, I think there's like, there's like numerous stories like that, especially because you have to think these, it's must be a really interesting experience to have made something sometimes 40 years ago where you worked on it for three months and 40 years later, they're these humans that like give huge chunks of their existence to like knowing every fucking detail about it.

Right?

Corey: Yeah.

Heather: And for some of these people, I mean, I know, I know for Adrian it was like, because of what wound up happening with the stalker, it, it kind of clouded everything and it put kind of like a negative thing. And I know that that also happened with, um. Oh my God, rose, uh, Angela from Sleepaway Camp Issa Rose.

But I mean, one thing my research has always taught me is that. There's no such thing as like stark black and white like, and queer people of all people should know that everything is on a, some kind of spectrum, some kind of continuum. And Angela might have some problematic things that are received in a very negative way by some people.

But some people like, you know, I remember speaking to trans women who love Angela to the point where one woman had like Angela like patch on her jacket back. You know, that's how much she loved Angela. Whereas another woman was like, I can't deal with that movie. I can't, you know, it made me feel so shitty about understanding who I was and all of this stuff.

And there are two completely valid reactions and interpretations.

Corey: absolutely. Yeah. And that's something that Kendall and I have talked about because we wanna have Issa on the show and, and I think Kendall and I have slightly different opinions, um, about that movie. And I will say, that movie really fucked me up. Um, but I love it and she's incredible and, uh, and, and I love how.

Open and accepting she is of all of her fans. Um, you know, she's definitely one of the, the, the queer friendliest, you know, ones out there. And so it's like, uh, yeah. And just, you know, such wonderful energy too.

I'm trying to remember. But cinema itself performs trauma because, like ontologically, the film medium is conducive to traumatic expression in the sense that between sound design, camera work, editing, film itself has the ability to put one, it can, it its language externalizes the internal, like what an amazing thing to have.

So you have these, you have the product itself with horror heels, then you have the relationship between the, you know, viewer, the spectator and the product. And then you have all this extra textual all around every individual product. So I think it'd be interesting to, like, I would, I wanna hear that conversation where there's, um, like is, is it you that has, like you said it, that maybe fucked you up, but you like it?

Do you. Do you have problems with the Angela character in a way where that actually fucked with you or,

Um, and so it's like, I wanna know why she decapitated that boy. Was it because he discovered, you know, that Angela had a part that she didn't think she had? Or was she, so was it, was it her that was like so fucked up about not understanding like, am I a boy? Am I a girl? Am I gay? Am you know, or whatever.

And it was just like that, having to just stop that situation by cutting his head off. I, I don't know. You know, it's like, I think that's what really messed with me was like, oh, this could have been a gay relationship or something, you know, like.

Heather: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, also speaking about, like, speaking about like actual textual queerness at the time, uh, the fathers in that movie, like, I remember, I remember being like, I remember the first time I saw it, I was, I mean, I was like a young teen and just being like, um, fascinated. Like, it's the kind of stuff where you rewind it and you watch it again and you're just like, oh, this is so interesting.

Corey: Yeah. Same. I think, I think Kendall and I watched that for the first time together, maybe like five or six years ago, so

Heather: which is great. I mean, it's a great film, but like it is one of those things where it's just these little kernels, you know, young, like, you know, I think that it's interesting to talk about queer horror now because we have such a robust, like the canon is just growing and growing and growing, and I think that's so great.

Like, you know, would you, well, I don't wanna give away spoilers, so I was gonna talk about weapons again, but you know, it's just, we have this cannon of queer horror films where, you know, people. Because of what I wrote about and because of what I've studied, people always wanna know, like the queer horror films, and I always take time to be like, yeah, I think there are some, some of my favorite new horror films are explicitly queer horror films, but at the same time, the entire genre is queer.

And I still love everything. I, I watch everything. It's like, you know, I'll watch, you know, tigers are not afraid, and then watch Velossa Pastor.

Corey: Yeah. Ex. Yeah, exactly.

Heather: So,

And so at that point, um, we got, we have new kittens, we get Kendall's, um, birthday gift to himself this summer was, um, two kittens that we made Laverne and Shirley. So he's like, I'm gonna go have some kitten time. And I, I finished the movie. I'm like, well, you gotta rewatch it now because it's all

Heather: And it's really sweet. Right? I just remember, like, I remember the first moment where like when he kind of rebuffs her advances, I remember being like, oh, Uhhuh, uh, I think I know where this is going. And I was like, but are they actually gonna go there? And then they go there in such a sweet way. It was actually my favorite part of the film.

Also kittens named Laverne and Shirley Chef's Kiss.

Corey: Thank you. We went back and forth 'cause we were, you know, they're siblings, so, and obviously Laverne and Shirley aren't, but I'm glad we landed on that. Just them, they, they, they have, they have those same personalities as those wacky characters.

Heather: Really? I I love that. No, I love that. Um, I'm just curious. Like, I don't, I don't remember. Did you have a chance to ever look at anything about the trauma chapter that I wrote? Did I send you the trauma chapter, by the way?

Corey: I don't think so. I don't, I have not yet.

Heather: Okay. Well that's, that's my bad.

Corey: That's okay. But I'll definitely, if you send it to me, Kendall and I will read it before we do our intro and outro to the episode. And I can cut all this, this out. Um, and that way we can comment on it, you know, in that

Heather: oh, okay.

Corey: that would be.

And then it kind of morphs into, I didn't wanna stay in the negative of all queers experience insidious trauma all day, every day growing up in a cis head society. That's, that, that's just like built into queer existence. That seemed, and of course I'm talking about the insidious queer trauma, but also, of course, queer people, you know, members of the LGBTQ plus, uh, community also disproportionately befall acute traumas than, but the, the chapter morphs more into a much more joyous expression of queer trauma, which is camp.

And it's like about the camp reception of horror,

Corey: Yeah.

Camp in and of itself as a, I mean, camp is so many things like, you know, camp is an amorphous, queer relationship to society in a way, and itself is a ho like, you know, horror is a, um, horror, horror heals, camp heals. And so of course the queers bring a camp lens to horror in

Corey: absolutely. And we should be talking about it, especially with this being the 50th anniversary of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Heather: Yes. Have you talked, like, do you, like, do you sometimes just talk explicitly about like one film.

Um, but yeah, we, we kind of tend to get a little bit all over the place. But, uh, yeah, I would, I mean, I, we're certainly open to it and I mean that's, you know, that's one movie that's definitely could be worth of, you know, multiple episodes. You know, it's, it's, I mean that was one a life changing thing for me that was like, I think when I first, you know, we started, we would did, you know, did the midnight thing in, in high school, and I think that's when I first started being like, okay.

I think maybe straight is not the word for me.

And it's like, I had a list of horror things. They're like, pick two girl. And so, um, but of course you have to talk about Rocky Horror and the absolute it is, it is like impossible to overstate the [00:12:00] importance of Rocky Horror coming out and being that visible and creating that kind of community. I'm gonna plug a book that is not my book.

It's called Absolute Pleasure, queer Perspectives on Rocky Horror. And it's edited by Margot Atwell. It comes out in, I think around three weeks or so. And it's a really, it's a really. It's a book filled with essays from humans all over and all different intersectionalities under the queer umbrella. And even those who go and the younger people who have issues around consent in the movie or the issues around forced cannibalism, they deal with it with like nuance.

That was not a parade. And. It's just, I can't, I, I can't. I still, that's the movie. I still, it is absolutely my comfort movie. I put it on to, I mean, I don't know, I probably watch it like five or six times a year every year, even by myself. Like, I'll just put that on by myself. 'cause somehow it just brings me, it's like a, it's a warm blanket.

Horror is a blanket, but like Rocky Horror is a particular warm blanket.

Corey: definitely. Yeah. I, um, so Friday afternoons, like, I usually try to like stop working a little bit early and have what I like to call a karaoke session where I just, uh, it's just me and the dogs in the room. Um, you know, singing karaoke, it's just like, it's a great release for the end of the week. And I would say like, probably more than half the time, I will do like a medley of Rocky Horse songs in there, you know.

Heather: Karaoke by the way, I hope one day to be invited to karaoke and we

Heather: Because there's definitely gonna be a midnight screening of Rocky Horror and, and, and we'll do it, we'll do it right. We'll do like, we'll do a midnight screening of Rocky Horror on day one, and then we'll do a midnight screening of The Phantom of Paradise on day two.

Corey: There you go. Yeah. Yeah. I love

Heather: get it. Yeah. We'll have

Corey: Yeah. I think the last time I saw Rocky in theater, it might've been for the four 40th, 35th. I don't know. It was one of the anniversaries, no, it was actually an anniversary of 20th Century Fox, where they were doing like screenings of really prominent Fox movies. And there's a, a famous theater in St.

Louis called The Fox, the Fabulous Fox, and they didn't do it at midnight. I think they did at eight o'clock, but they didn't stop people from bringing in stuff. So like hot dogs are flying and this, this, I mean, I don't, I couldn't, Ima be the poor ushers that had to clean up after this. But I mean, it was like full on participation, you know, and this beautiful, you know, almost gaudy with the gold and everything theater.

That was great.

Maybe it's 79, but it's the longest running continuous midnight screenings of Rocky Horror. And they, during the acute phase of the pandemic, that projectionist got his ass into the theater and still projected it. You know, probably mostly to masks of handful of mass friends or some pro, sometimes maybe, probably just to him, but screened it to not break that thing, like break that tradition.

And I just think it's like, what a gift, like what a, what a gift. 50 years later to have a film that can still. Feel weirdly transgressive in how it, like Franken Ferer confuses me to this day. 'cause I feel things where I'm like, what am I feeling? What is this feeling? I feel where it's just, you have this like gender queer, pansexual alien.

Corey: The performance makes us, you know, fall in love and really care about what happens to Franken Ferter at the end of the movie. You know, even though, like during the first, you know,

Heather: Oh, I like, yeah.

Corey: a, he's a bastard, you know?

Heather: Yeah. I mean, he's terrible. It's like he, like, he clearly, he like, loves him and leaves him. Right. He has

Corey: Right. And he is like

Heather: of like, past partners. He is murdering fucking meatloaf. Just

Corey: whipping a Yeah. Whipping a servant.

Heather: into cannibalism. Yeah.

Corey: Yeah. Yeah. I,

Heather: Yeah, totally. Total, total goddamn monster. But then when he dies , I'm like, to this day, it still, it totally gets me.

It like literally gets me. I think it's also because, uh, those, I think there's something about the, like what song, what music does to our brain, how it like, kind of enters into our chemistry where, you know, I don't cry at every time, but I can still cry in the, at, you know, at the very, very end.

Um, but he was definitely a very sexy, frank converter.

Heather: I love this. I love this. I love everything I've ever heard about you too. This is great.

Corey: Thank you. Well, Heather, we could, I think we could probably go on for hours and hours, but there is a tradition, um, that we have on horror heels is we ask the same final question, and I'm very curious to hear your answer. Who is your favorite final person? We don't say final girl, but we love the final girl trope.

But we say final person to be all inclusive, uh, in a horror flick.

Heather: That is such a hard question. Like I have to choose one. See, the problem is, so I'm gonna call, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull out some kind of like card where I'm like, but the problem is, is I studied the final girl and how queers relate to the final girl. So to choose one feels like I'm like gonna be shitting on them all.

Then I go to Nancy Thompson because I fucking worshiped night, night near franchise. And then you go to Jess. Yeah, you go to Jesse. 'cause I'm like my favorite. Final, like, I mean, that was the first time I saw a quote unquote final boy. And I remember being like, oh, you can have this, this, this, this is like, I didn't have language for it then, but it felt different because, um, in the eighties it felt Jesse just felt like a different character that I hadn't seen, and I still love.

I think Jesse Walsh is an incredible character. Um, all right, let's see.

Corey: Was Jess the first one that popped into your head?

Heather: well, the first one that actually really popped into my head, maybe I'll have to go with this one, is because I got in an argument in a grocery store one time, like a, like a loving debate. It wasn't an argument, it was more of a loving debate.

This, this person not only can like has com, she has like combat and survival skills. And if I'm in a zombie of pocalypse, that's who I want by my side because I'll just be like, stand right behind Aaron. So I guess I'll have to go with that. Even though the whole, the entire trope is such a meaningful, like talk about horror, healing. I didn't, I, my research is empirical and it's based on a survey and I never named the final girl on the survey. And the number of queers who came into the comments, like came into the open text box to be like, and tell me very intimate stories about their relationship with all sorts of different final girls.

Corey: Yes,

Heather: and the stories that they tell and how that trope helped them get through, like junior high and high school. Like what a gift. Like what a gift. Like these, I don't think the makers knew that, that they were giving generations of queers a survival line to know that they could make it too

Corey: Yep, you're absolutely right. And, and that we've had, yeah, millennials on the show. In fact, last week's, uh, or this week's guest Sidney Prescott. We, we've had several Lori Strode from, from Gen Xers. Um, surprisingly, we have not had a Jess yet, and which I, I'm putting it out the universe. I hope somebody soon says Jess, just because we have such a reverence for black Christmas.

And I got to meet Olivia Hussey a couple years ago, and we were gutted when, when, you know, when she passed. And we had Lynn Griffin on for our, a Christmas episode last year. And that was just like, we wa we watch it multiple times a year. But when my cousin and his fiance were living here, we had like, we introduced him to Black Christmas and we did like three years and it were like a black Christmas party.

Corey: Yeah.

Heather: Ash. Ash was, Ash was an incredible

final person. So,

Corey: Yeah.

Heather: well, I, I, I could keep naming them. I love

Corey: yeah. We,

Heather: There's like, is there one that you don't like, be real? Is there, is there a final person? You're like, that one sucks.

Corey: Hmm. I'm sure there is.

Heather: Is there, I'm I, I I'm challenging you. You text me later.

Corey: I will, yeah. 'cause that's, nothing is immediately jumping to mind. Um, which, yeah. There's gotta be a, like a, uh, that's the final person. Yeah. There's gotta be,

Heather: And it's also like, how, how, how elastic do you make this trope? Like, is Chris from Get Out a final person?

Corey: Right.

Heather: I mean, 'cause it's not like a slasher in that sense, but it kind, I mean it's also not, not, you know,

Corey: Right. But at the same time though, and he's, he's not the final person because his buddy's there to save him, you know?

Heather: That's true.

Well I think that's also Like a lovely thing that's hap happened more contemporary.

Corey: Yeah. Yeah.

Heather: Yeah.

Corey: Hmm.

It's just got me, like, I can't wait for the next Jordan Peel movie.

Heather: yeah. Yeah.

Corey: Come on, Jordan. Make 'em a little

Heather: there's more emphasis

on community.

Um,

Corey: Which is great. I mean, it

just, it makes us like win. Of course. Yeah, absolutely.

Heather: No, no. Wait, what were we, what were you gonna say?

Corey: I was just gonna say, it just makes us, it, it builds up that, um, that anticipation, you know, and it's like, and I relate this to, and I don't even know why, but like, I listened to this, uh, this, um,

show on SiriusXM called Trumk Nation, Eddie Trunk. he's like a heavy metal journalist for, you know, however many years. And he talks about like, Hey, you know, if you're always out there on tour, you're not gonna have the same kind of excitement as you are, like a band that takes five years off and all of a sudden is playing a festival and building that excitement, you know, like a

Heather: A hundred percent?

Corey: And so I kind of, yeah, I, I, the same way with Jordan Peel, like, as much as it's like, oh gosh, I would love to see a new Jordan Peel movie. It's like. I love the little teases and the little, you know, like, and when, when the first teaser trailer comes out, all this, like, I just, ah, you know, and I'll watch the YouTube videos of like, people trying to, uh, you know, to dissect it.

Like they know what, what it's gonna be about. It's like, you have no idea this man, he knows he's got hook, line and sinker. He's, he's pulling in, but you have no idea what's going on in this movie for real until you see it.

Corey: Hmm. I'm gonna say us get out. Nope. Um, but they're all very, very close. And I will say the first time I saw Nope. In the theater, um, I wasn't Wow. Some, for whatever reason, I dunno if it was in the mood I was in or what, but it's in, like, then I couldn't stop thinking about it. And so then I went back and watched it a second time.

I'm like, well this is brilliant. I love this movie. You know, um, where whereas like us and get out like immediately, like I was just like, oh my God, US is just, so again, I think it's because I have questions about what happened, like what's going on, like what really, what was it like to live down in this, this other space.

It's like, are you a human? Are you not? I just, you know, there's so many questions and I love that he doesn't provide you with all the answers. You know? I mean, there's a

Heather: Yeah, I think that would actually, I think, I think that like Get Out is like a t like little perfection pack package, but it just like, there's something about us, like us as my top one and I got into like, you know, this last call and I just was at, someone's like, well, nope is better. I'm like, Hey, hey, nope is great.

Corey: Well, I, uh, I mentioned, you know, that I, I dress very garishly when I go to the horror cons, and I don't do cosplay except for one time, and it was the year that get out. It came out and I got a red jumpsuit and I found the gloves and the scissors, and I got a blonde wig and I went as, I'm gonna murder his name, but Tim, Tim Heider the, the, the, you know, the friend, the neighbor, whatever.

Heather: yep. Yeah,

Corey: And so I just like, you know, because I just, I was so obsessed with that movie at that point. I'm like, well, that's a, that's a pretty simple cosplay to put together, but you, you know who, anybody who's seen it knows exactly who you are. You

Heather: I love that. I wanna

Corey: they didn't like me walking around with those big gold scissors though, so I was really only out on the floor for like an hour probably.

Heather: I love that. That's great. I'm not a cosplay person, but I deeply appreciate people who do take the time and the energy, so

Corey: Well, this has been fantastic. Um, well, let's definitely stay in touch and, because I think that there, you know, there are more things that, that we can, uh, collaborate on in the future. For sure.

Heather: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Corey: Of course. If I could get you to.