Many times, just having a gay or even a gay-seeming actor connected to a project can automatically give the film a feeling of subtext that maybe was never meant to be there in the first place. Certain actors in the horror genre like Vincent Price, Shane Briant, Agnes Moorehead, Shelley Winters, Barbara Steele, Ingrid Pitt et al. just have an aura (intended or unconscious) that someone who plays for the other team relates to. David Peel's performance in "The Brides of Dracula"-- through a combination of his looks, the role's characterization, and subtleties in the script-- is a prime example of how a perfomer can lend an unspoken quality to a part that superficially seems very straightforward. Gay men can enjoy this film because it seems to aknowledge the dance we do with the vampire myth. Namely, that we like to play both victim and aggressor. Baron Meinster is seduced into the cult of vampirism and yet also becomes the initiator who seduces others when liberated from his chains. That the film has fetching female vamps walking around in diaphanous nightgowns doesn't detract from that (really, the title pretty much demands they be included). For us, the female ingenue and the brides could just as easily be male characters, other handsome, fascinatingly amoral men like Meinster transformed into the undead. That we can recognize ourselves in certain films just shows how a single film can appeal to multiple perceptions at once.