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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 19,200

eveningsout

Cinematheque helps chase away winter blahs

by Anthony Glassman

Ohio is firmly entrenched in winter; snow is fluttering down outside the window as this is being typed. The last thing anyone wants to do is schlep out in the cold and ice and snow to see a movie.

Usually

The Cleveland Cinematheque, northeast Ohio's home of the art-film and cinema retrospective, is playing four, count 'em, four films of interest to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the next month.

The first two, Burlesk King and Psycho Beach Party, are what we're teasing you with here. Both films are worth watching, and seeing them on a big screen is probably far better than on the tiny television set I was stuck with.

Burlesk King

Straight out of Manila, which is the capital of the Philippines for those of you who failed high school geography, comes this film, a 1999 release which may be the latest in a string of Filipino-stripper-with-a-goodheart-overcomes-adversity films that have seemingly comprised the entirety of the Philippines' film exports to the US of late.

Harry (Rodel Velayo), a young man whose American father abused and pimped him and his Filipino mother when Harry was' young, is eager to move to Manila to find his dad. He and his friend James (Leonardo Litton), who is on the run from a gang of thugs after killing one of their members when they attacked him, pack their stuff and go to the big city.

There, they stay with James' sister Aileen (Cherrie Pie Picache) and her lesbian lover.

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Harry and James become friends with Mario (Raymond Bagatsing), a gay writer whose own relationship has fallen apart, while, at the same time, Harry meets Brenda (Nini Jacinto), the stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold.

Harry and James also wind up, interestingly enough, working at a gay bar as "macho dancers," the usually-straight strippers/ hustlers who make up the entirety of the Philippines' contribution to LGBT film. There are, of course, always the queenier gay men who own the bars where the macho dancers work. Actually, one tends to suspect that it is just one middle-aged, overweight, incredibly effeminate Filipino gay man who is fluent in both Tagalog and English who plays the bar owner in every one of these films, but one could also be wrong on that.

Mel Chionglo, the director, did a fairly decent job with this movie. Lord knows it has more genuine emotion than his last stripper film, Midnight Dancers. It is almost a cautionary tale of heading down the wrong road, repeating the mistakes of the past. And it has a happy ending, stranger than any happy ending outside Dona Herlinda and Her Two Sons.

Psycho Beach Party

The next movie, however, is almost completely beyond this reviewer's reproach. It is a masterpiece of satire and silliness, with drag, debauchery, and destruction abounding.

Based on Charles Busch's play of the same name, it centers around a series of murders surrounding the sweet, innocent, multiple-personalitied Chicklet (Lauren Ambrose, In & Out, Can't Hardly Wait). Chicklet, whose real name is Florence, desperately wants to fit in with the surfers at the Malibu beach in 1962. Their leader, Kanaka (Thomas Gibson, Dharma & Greg, Eyes Wide Shut), takes her under his wing, mainly to get to her alternate persona, the randy Ann Bowman.

The other surfers, including the cryptogay YoYo (Nick Cornish) and Provoloney (Andrew Levitas), the Northwestern University psych department drop-out Starcat (Nicholas Brendon, TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and TJ (Nathan Bexton, Nowhere, Go), eventually take to her. However, they still treat her as a little sister, not the budding woman she is.

Of course, throughout what could have been a tender coming-of-age tale, the bodies keep piling up. It seems that anyone with an imperfection, with something different about them, could be the murderer's next victim. The first was a girl with a harelip at the drive-in, the second was the surfer Junior, who suffered from the heartbreak of psoriasis, then TJ, who had one...of something he should have had two of.

After each brutal slaying, Captain Monica Stark (Charles Busch, the writer/drag icon) appears to investigate the crime, bringing with her a mind full of suspicions and a secret past that involves Kanaka.

The question is, who could possibly be enough of a monster to have murdered all these people? Is it Bettina (popular Australian actress Kimberley Davies), the b-movie star whose good looks everyone wants to exploit? Is it Mrs. Forest (Beth Broderick), Florence's mother, with a dark past of her own? Could it be Starcat, with his hatred of being labeled perfect, or even Chicklet herself, or one of her other personalities?

And, for that matter, is there any reason that Lars (Matt Keeslar, Splendor, The Last Days of Disco), the hunky foreign-exchange student, keeps popping up with sage words of wisdom from his native Sweden?

The movie owes a lot to the psychological thrillers of the 1950s, the beach movies of the '60s, and the slasher flicks of the late '70s, all rolled into one. If Annette Funicello were crossed with Jason from the Friday the 13th movies, and appeared in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, it would be nothing like this, since Psycho Beach Party is an incredibly witty film. The only thing that even comes close to this movie for its mix of nostalgia and insanity would be the films of John Waters.

Not only did Charles Busch write the original play (in which he played Chicklet, which would be a stretch now since Busch is eleven years older than he was back then), but he also adapted the play for the screen. It was directed by Robert Lee King, who directed The Disco Years, one of the three short films in the original volume of Boys Life, Strand Releasing's most popular video to date.

Both films are interesting; Burlesk King fills the screen with bare flesh, while Psycho Beach Party is “Three Faces of Eve meets Monty Python-intellectual humor in a bikini," said Jon Gerrans, co-president of Strand's production arm, New Oz.

As usual, the Cinematheque has outdone themselves. In the same month as the first half of a Stanley Kubrick retrospective, not only are they playing a documentary about the history of marijuana, but also these two wonderful films. Bravo, I say, and keep it up. I need something to watch.

Burlesk King is playing Thursday, Jan. 18 at 8:40 pm, and Sunday, Jan. 21 at 8:45 pm. Psycho Beach Party has two showings, one on Thursday, Feb. 1 and the other on Sunday, Feb. 4, both at 7 pm. The Cinematheque is located in the Cleveland Institute of Arts, 11141 East Blvd, Cleveland Heights, in University Circle. The Cinematheque's complete two-month schedule is online at http://www.cia.edu/ cinematheque.html, and they can be reached at 216-421-7450.

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