10 Movies That Weren’t Supposed To Be Gay But Totally Are

These movies aren’t gay, I swear. That homoerotic volleyball scene? Just guys being guys. Those two short hairy dudes pledging their undying love for one another while wandering a continent? Best friends, possibly roommates. The gang of sweaty, shirtless men pounding on each other in an unfinished basement? Alright, that’s pretty gay. While film directors can swear that their intentions were straight, these films are unabashedly queer. And while these movies might still be in the closet, that closet door is made of glass. Here are 10 movies that weren’t supposed to be gay, but totally are.

Top Gun

“Top” is literally in the title. And the only guns that audiences were paying attention to weren’t mounted on fighter jets, but on the sweaty, rippling bodies of the planes’ pilots. It’s baffling to think that the gayness in Tony Scott’s Top Gun isn’t intentional, but the straight men who lined up in droves to see this box office success didn’t seem to think that there was anything queer going on. Where to begin? It’s a film about a bunch of hot, muscled men in tight flight suits who are obsessed with dominating each other both in and out of the cockpit. Whether they’re competing in the air or on the volleyball court, these fellas are downright obsessed with one another. Speaking of volleyball, have you seen the beach volleyball sequence? It looks like the intro to a gay porn flick. And speaking of cockpits, that’s a pretty gay word in and of itself. An apt way to describe what this glorious film is: a steaming pit of cock.

The Lord of The Rings Trilogy

What’s gay about a man and his gardener walking across a continent together to throw a piece of jewelry into a hot, flaming hole? Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings might not have any intentionally gay characters, but Frodo and Sam feel like the film’s central lovers far more than Aragorn and Arwen ever could. Even Gimli and Legolas have more belligerent sexual tension between them than the King of Gondor and his elven lover, but Frodo and Sam take the gay cake. The queerness reaches a fever pitch on the slopes of Mt. Doom, when Sam begins whispering about strawberries in Frodo’s ear, along with an invitation to “share the looooooad.” And did you see how fast Merry and Pippen jumped into bed with Frodo at the end? It’s technically incest, but they don’t seem to mind. After all, they just saved the world. They deserve a little R&R without judgment.

Fight Club

David Fincher’s Fight Club is literally about a man who makes up his dream man in his head, and then spends all his time hanging out with his hallucinatory, homoerotic ideal. He compounds upon the latent gayness by inviting a bunch of other men over to pound on each other in his basement. Shirtless, sweating, and covered in each other’s bodily fluids. Yes, they’re “fighting” one another, but there’s a razor-thin line between aggression and attraction, and Fight Club spends two hours and change riding it. Also, let’s not forget that Brad Pitt’s body in Fight Club is literally the gold standard for bodybuilders and fitness models everywhere. Tyler Durden is the queer-coded hypermasculine ideal.

300

Anyone who knows a sliver of ancient Greek history knows that the Spartans were gay af. Zack Synder’s 300 pays homage to their homoerotic legacy with a film that focuses on hundreds of half-naked dudes and their airbrushed abs. With two middle fingers raised to any shred of historical accuracy, Snyder puts his hot-and-heavy heroes in skimpy bottoms and crimson capes. And while a bunch of guys fighting and dying side by side is pretty gay, it’s actually not the gayest thing about this film. That honor belongs to Xerxes, king of Persia, an unintentional gay icon. He’s a musclebound giant clad in gold chains and bootyshorts who leads an empire built on sexual liberalism and kink fashion. While it’s sad that the 300 Spartans died, the greater tragedy is that Xerxes hasn’t had his own erotic backstory prequel film yet.

The Babadook

Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is perhaps the most unintentionally gay film on this list. After all, there’s nothing particularly queer about this story of a single mom reconciling with the death of her husband and her resentment towards her young son. That’s why when Netflix accidentally listed this film in its LGBTQ+ section, all gay hell broke loose. The internet instantly canonized the Babadook himself as a gay icon, and upon rewatch, he’s actually the epitome of camp. The tophat? The long black gloves? The flamboyantly horrifying way he goes about haunting the film’s grieving heroine? While Mr. Babadook might not have been an intentionally queer-coded villain, he’s remained a welcome staple at pride parades and drag shows ever since.

She’s the Man

William Shakespeare is one of the greatest bisexual icons in literary history. His plays, which were historically performed with crossdressing all-male casts, were rife with gay tension. Twelfth Night, the genderbending comedy that inspired She’s the Man, is one of his gayest. On the hunt to track down her missing twin, the play’s heroine, Viola, dresses as a man and has to contend with the competing affections of a lovesick duke and a beautiful noblewoman. While Viola in the play crossdresses for the love of the game alone, She’s the Man‘s Viola does it to get closer to the man she loves. While film Viola is technically pining for a straight relationship, she goes about getting it in the gayest of ways. Most people’s first idea for seducing the jock wouldn’t be to dress up as a guy to join his sports team, but there’s Viola, doing just that, making gay history in the process.

RRR

Aside from being one of the greatest action movies of the 21st century, S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR is also one of the gayest. It’s the story of two almost comically masculine men, whose shirtless feats of impossible athleticism make them folk heroes across British-controlled India. Before the pair organize a revolution (fighting for one’s rights is also a staple of queer history) they become best friends via an adorably homoerotic getting-to-know-you sequence. They laugh with each other, they race each other around, they do squat-thrusts while balanced on each other’s shoulders. It’s not inherently gay, it’s actually one of the most beautiful portrayals of an emotionally supportive male friendship in cinema, but it’s also quite entertaining to read into it. Also, they do a whole song-and-dance number together, tugging at the heartstrings of queer theater kids the world over.

Jennifer’s Body

Without its copious amount of bi panic, Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body wouldn’t have a plot. Sure, Jennifer Check’s ritual sacrifice by the dimestore version of The Strokes added fuel to the narrative’s fire, but once she’s possessed by a demon, she and her best friend Needy become equally possessed by belligerent sexual tension. This film is a friends-to-enemies-to sort-of-lovers downward spiral fueled by semi-requited sapphic love and the half-eaten bodies of young men. Jennifer and Needy don’t get together in the end; the wanton murder of Needy’s boyfriend nipped that love affair in the bud, but Needy’s bloody revenge against Low Shoulder feels like a murder spree motivated by the loss of what could have been. Needy didn’t gut those guys for essentially killing her friend; she gutted them for killing the person she wanted to be her girlfriend.

The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse is the story of two touch-starved caretakers of nautical architecture, who spend their rainy days drunkenly dancing with one another while trying not to resort to murder out of boredom. Veering wildly between friends, enemies, and almost-lovers, they fail spectacularly at both their custodial duties and at controlling their complex emotions. Perhaps it was the time period, or the isolation, or the mermaid hallucinations that destroyed this sea-salty age-gap romance that could have been, but Ephriam and Thomas sure seemed like a match made in heaven (and simultaneously hell). After all, Thomas took it very personally when Ephriam said he didn’t like his cooking. If that’s not a symptom of suppressed gay longing, I don’t know what is.

The Craft

A historically significant queer awakening for witchy sapphics, Andrew Fleming’s The Craft belongs in the Gay Library of Congress. There’s something inherently queer about forming a coven with your friends. Perhaps because it signifies the found family dynamic that’s so often a staple of queer art? Or perhaps it’s because of the potential for polyamory? Or maybe it’s because a central theme of The Craft‘s is alienation, the sense that you’re different from other people in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on. In The Craft, that difference is represented by its heroines’ latent magic power. In real life, those feelings come hand in hand with a queer coming-of-age experience. Fairuza Balk being a gay icon also helps.

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