Cecil B. Demented.Psycho Beach Party * Written by Charles Bush * Directed by Robert Lee King * Starring Thomas Gibson Lauren Ambrose * Strand Releasing * Cecil B. Demented * Written and directed by John Waters * Starring Melanie Griffith Stephen Dorff * Artisan Entertainment New films by Charles Busch and John Waters prove that it's harder than ever to shock the masses For purveyors of camp in popular film, going over the edge has long been a preferred expression of going over the top. The scenery-chewing ops afforded by Olivia de Havilland Olivia Mary de Havilland (born July 1, 1916) is a two-time Academy Award winning actress and is the last surviving principal cast member from Gone with the Wind. She is the sister of Academy Award winning actress Joan Fontaine. in The Snake Pit, Bette Davis's Baby Jane and Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond were the psychic equivalents of Carmen Miranda hats: big, florid florid /flor·id/ (flor´id) 1. in full bloom; occurring in fully developed form. 2. having a bright red color. flor·id adj. Of a bright red or ruddy color. , attention-grabbing displays of attitude that any social pariah could relate to, if not have the courage to put on himself. Director John Waters and playwright-performer Charles Busch were raised at the dusk of a time when such psychotic role models could still be received with a straight face. Their new films reflect the same kind of nostalgia: for a time when going crackers made perfect sense to homosexuals (many of whom were subject to electroshock therapy themselves), and the movies offered larger-than-life surrogates through whom they could project their own angst. Faithfully adapted from Busch's off-Broadway hit of the '80s, Psycho Beach Party makes us realize just how prescient he was in the blithe blithe adj. blith·er, blith·est 1. Carefree and lighthearted. 2. Lacking or showing a lack of due concern; casual: spoke with blithe ignorance of the true situation. manner with which he mixed and matched movie genres as well as sexual orientations. Presaging the ascension of Frankie and Annette by one year, this 1962-set farce throws Beach Party, The Three Faces of Eve, and slasher films into a blender and lets the results splatter with come-what-may loopiness. The Gidgetlike facade of Chicklet, the 16-year-old waif gamely played by Lauren Ambrose, is perpetually being displaced by a dominatrix alter ego. Chicklet's abrupt personality changes make her a prime suspect for a series of killings among her beach set, but in Busch's pre-David Lynch joke on Middle America, normative behavior is every bit as suspicious: There are sexphobic moms who live to needlepoint needlepoint: see lace. needlepoint Type of embroidery in which the stitches are counted and worked with a needle over the threads, or mesh, of a canvas foundation. It was known as canvas work until the early 19th century. ; body-waxed surfer dudes who seem a little too stuck on each other; lily-white foreign exchange students who speak like Inger Stevens in The Farmer's Daughter. Back in the '80s, however, Busch's closeted clos·et·ed adj. Being In a state of secrecy or cautious privacy. jocks and smutty smut n. 1. a. A particle of dirt. b. A smudge made by soot, smoke, or dirt. 2. a. Obscenity in speech or writing. b. Pornography. 3. a. beach babes had a shock-tactic quotient that was obliterated once the Farrelly brothers raised the ceiling for over-the-top. Compared to the outrages of Scary Movie, whose movie-reference frame extends back a day and a half, Psycho Beach Party seems as tame and innocent as the drive-in movies it was subverting: Any wild-bikini relic exhumed Exhumed may refer to:
n. 1. A word or phrase formed by reordering the letters of another word or phrase, such as satin to stain. 2. anagrams (used with a sing. and an eye for the fellas. Busch has a talent for developing a plotline that is lost on John Waters, who all too often dresses up colorful characters only to give them no place to go. His lopsided Cecil B. Demented is a prime example. Having first flashed his psycho-comedy credentials with mixed results on Serial Mom, Waters now gives us Steven Dorff as a deranged de·range tr.v. de·ranged, de·rang·ing, de·rang·es 1. To disturb the order or arrangement of. 2. To upset the normal condition or functioning of. 3. To disturb mentally; make insane. independent filmmaker who intends to annihilate an·ni·hi·late v. an·ni·hi·lat·ed, an·ni·hi·lat·ing, an·ni·hi·lates v.tr. 1. a. To destroy completely: The naval force was annihilated during the attack. the commercial film industry. The main attraction, though, is Melanie Griffith, hilarious as Honey Whitlock, a bitch-goddess movie star who can barely disguise her disdain for the hoi polloi. It's the sort of role that Charles Busch might have once fashioned for himself, but Griffith reminds us that women in female drag often have an edge over their male counterparts. Thanks to Griffith's self-mocking tantrums, the first half-hour of Cecil B. Demented is as funny as anything Waters has ever done. The film plunges after Dorff kidnaps Griffith with his renegade band of underground filmmakers and forces her to appear in one of his agitprop agitprop Political strategy in which techniques of agitation and propaganda are used to influence public opinion. Originally described by the Marxist theorist Georgy Plekhanov and then by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, it called for both emotional and reasoned arguments. movies. It's a page audaciously lifted from the life of Waters's regular bit player Patricia Hearst, but Waters's imagination is not as ripe as his daring. You spend the last hour of Cecil B. Demented with your face locked like a skull rictus ric·tus n. pl. rictus or ric·tus·es 1. The expanse of an open mouth, a bird's beak, or similar structure. 2. on automatic smile, waiting for the laugh release that never comes. It could drive a person crazy. Stuart, a writer for Newsday, is author of the forthcoming The Nashville Chronicles (Simon and Schuster). To find out more on Pyscho Beach Party and Cecil B. Demented visit www.advocate.com |
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