When it comes to depictions of queer sexuality in American cinema, visibility has not always meant positive representation. Horror films, especially, tend to be a mixed bag with queer desire often used to convey depravity. In his book Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, Harry M. Benshoff writes, “Both movie monsters and homosexuals have existed chiefly in shadowy closets, and when they do emerge from these proscribed places into the sunlit world, they cause panic and fear. Their closets uphold and reinforce culturally constructed binaries of gender and sexuality that structure Western thought.” But here’s the thing. These characterizations didn’t just appear suddenly in modern horror, a period generally thought to have started in 1960 with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. But these associations have always been there. It’s just that they were hidden in a process that has come to be known as coding.