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Russ Meyer - the name conjures up sex, violence and fried chicken (ed. note: it is necessary to see the movies to understand this - apparently, fricasseed feathered friend recurs in his work) - as in the movies Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! ; Valley of the Supervenes and Beyond The Valley of the Supervixens, which he directed.
All are low-budget B-movies with buxom women, simple dialogue and weird plots.
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is seen by some film critics as being ahead of its time, even though it was made in 1966 in black and white.
The theme is murder and cover-up with an ironic twist. Three sexy go-go dancers race an All-American Boy (all four in Corvette Stingrays). An argument ensues and one of the go-go dancers murders the boy. His girlfriend has a nervous breakdown and the go-go dancers kidnap her.
On the lam, they stop at a house run by an oversexed, wheelchair-bound man and his two sons (one a cowboy and the other mentally slow). In the end, all but the cowboy and the heroic women die violently.
Valley of the Supervixens, made in colour in 1970, is about a man avenging the covered-up murder of his brother, with the help of buxom women and an ex-Nazi.
Beyond the Valley of the Supervixens is a parody of Middle American sexuality.
The story is set in a small town whose inhabitants are oversexed - except for a frustrated woman who is not getting sex the way she wants it.
She tries to disguise herself as a Mexican go-go dancer; when that fails, she takes her husband to a sex therapist, who thinks her husband is gay.
While the therapist tries to get the husband out of the closet (literally), the wife is having sex with the nurse.
In the end, she finally gets what she wants when her husband is 'baptized' in a bathtub by a buxom radio preacher - and all is right with the world.
KISS ME, GUIDO
(1997, 90 minutes, colour, USA, directed and written by Tony Vitale, starring Nick Scotti, Anthony Barile and Anthony DeSando)
The review of this in the TV Guide that comes with the Toronto Star rather cattily summed it up as 'Italian stereotype' meets 'gay stereotype'. Never being too hip on stereotypes, and feeling I should learn how to characterize individuals by collective categories if I was ever going to get along in a compartmentalized world (yes, sarcasm), I decided this was a movie I wanted to check out.
In essence, this is the story of Frankie, and Italian, Bronx-based pizza delivery boy and would-be actor who is forever spitting out lines from his favourite Italian or Italian-portraying performers, and how he becomes a friend and room-mate to Warren, a gay, Greenwich village actor.
(An amusing irony early on has Frankie cursing at a gay guy who walks up to two friends sitting at an outdoor cafe and kisses them on the cheeks. When Frankie arrives at the pizza parlour where he works, he does exactly the same thing. I guess it's an Italian vs. Gay shtick...though I suspect the viewer is supposed to think 'wait a minute...').
Frankie, who lives with his enormous family and his wife in a small house, ends up moving out when he catches his wife and brother having sex.
He does not have much money, but he figures that he can find a place once he sells a ring his brother gave him (it turns out to be worthless cubic zirconium).
In the meantime, Warren is far behind on his rent, due to his boyfriend Dakota having left him, and one of Warren's friends takes it upon himself to place a personal ad to the effect of 'GWM seeks actor room-mate'.
Frankie read this, and even shows it to Joey, his cute teddy-bearish co-worker (more on him later) and thinks GWM means 'Guy With Money' (I'm sorry, but this really stretches credibility!), so he responds and goes to check the place out.
It takes him a surprisingly long time to figure out that his proposed room-mate is gay, considering that Warren's friend, who is a screaming stereotype, is there. When he does, he storms out, determined to find another place (which, of course, he can't, so he comes back, supposedly just for the night).
Meanwhile, Warren is rehearsing to be in a play written by Dakota, who has returned to town and who Warren is still attracted to in a love-hate way, despite the fact that Dakota is manifestly a jerk.
Frankie helps Warren to rehaearse his lines one day in the park. In an ironic bit of camaraderie, Frankie almost gets 'gaybashed' and Warren saves him by using the moves he learned in some dreadful ninja movie his boyfriend cast him in (a cute bit of business is that everyone in Frankie's family has seen it and recognizes him from his miniscule role). However, Warren injures his foot, and cannot go on in the admittedly dreadful drama.
Therefore, Frankie takes the role. Needless to say, his entire family and friends show up at the off, off, off-Broadway production, with not entirely predictable results.
Meanwhile, back-stage at the play, Frankie's friend, Joey, finds a screamingly obvious drag queen and is intrigued by her. (In fact, in the final scenes, which are framed by this neat device used earlier in the picture of a shot taken from inside the pizza oven such that each time it opens there are more people present, we learn they even had sex).
Finally, Warren dumps Dakota in favour of his friendship with Frankie, and defends Frankie against Dakota's anti-straight prejudice, and we get the impression Frankie will continue being room-mates with the gay actor.
Not profound, but professional-looking for an indie, barring some jerky
camera work when groups of people move rapidly, and it is certainly a feel-good sort of
picture by the end.
Wilde (UK, 1997, 110 minutes, directed by Brian Gilbert, written by
Julian Mitchell; with Stephen Fry (Oscar Wilde); Jude Law (Lord
Bosie Douglas); Vanessa Redgrave (Lady Wilde); Jennifer Ehle (Constance
Wilde); Michael Sheen (Robbie Ross) and Tom Wilkinson (Marquess
of Queensbury))
The opening scenes of this movie show Oscar's visit to a small Western American town in 1993, where he was warmly and enthusiastically greeted (by some of the most homoerotically shot miners I've ever seen - it rather astonished me to learn that the director of this picture was straight, though who knows about the cameraman?).� It seems to me that it was easier to get Oscar there than it was to get this film here in Kingston, since it has been out just about forever elsewhere and is doubtless heading to video fairly soon (Ed. Note: Surely it must be available by now...).
In any case, see it I finally did, and the wait was largely worth it, if not the act of supreme sacrifice that was rewarded with the most breathtaking experience ever.
In terms of the 'outside the text of the film' stuff that infuriates some theorists (and it grieves me so to see them upset), it was nice to see Stephen Fry finally play a gay character, since he is so queer.� Both physically and attitude-wise, he very strongly resembles Oscar as we generally conceive of him.
I would tend to think the back story of Oscar's life fairly well-known, but to sum up briefly, this movie, though touching on his early life, focuses on the events which happened after he met Lord Bosie Douglas (played by Jude Law as the petulant, conflicted, selfish brat history records he often was, though I wonder if he was quite as violent as he is depicted), whose father disapproved of their relationship and published a notice 'outing' Oscar, which led Wilde to, perhaps foolishly, sue the Marquess of Queensbury for libel (ironically, Oscar and the Marquess shared a certain contempt for the conventions of polite society, though the way they acted on this rejection varied, you should pardon the expression, wildely).
It is also an outrageously sexy picture (even a dedicated monogamist like me found the three gentlemen (such as Robbie Ross, who was Canadian - hooray for Canuck content!) put forward as Oscar's most intimate relationships to be gorgeous, and the bedroom scenes are steamy).� In fact, it focuses strongly on the details of Oscar's sex life, which slights some other aspects of the case and man - but, hey! I'll take my pornography where I can get it! *grin*
Vanessa Redgrave is wasted as Oscar's eccentric but elegant mother (by contrast, check her out in Mrs. Dalloway, where she brings out a light side in the title character that may or may not have been intended by Virginia Woolf) and Tom Wilkinson is a blustery cartoon, if an entertaining burlesque villain, as the Marquess of Queensbury.� Oscar's wife Constance (Jennifer Ehle) and their children, on the other hand, are brilliant in their portrayal of the effects of celebrity and the closet on those around Oscar.
It has been argued that the movie's focus on Oscar's sexual exploits weakens it.� I would have liked to see more of the trial, since the accounts I have read of it suggest there was more at work than the movie depicts, and, at the least, it should have been pointed out that there were more supporters outside the courtroom than Robbie Ross, and calls from luminaries to commute his sentence; however, the fact remains that Oscar was a sexual being, as well as an occasionally brilliant wit, and there are few depictions in film (today in particular, with the rise of the nicely neutered fag on TV and celluloid) of rebellious attitudes towards sex and the politesse of society.
From a cinematic point of view, it is beautiful, catching England in a good mood weather-and-lighting-wise most of the time.
Therefore, while this is probably not the greatest movie of all time, nor
even the best cinematic take on Oscar's life as a political and literary being, it is
worth checking it out, be it on video or in a local art cinema.
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