PSYCHO BEACH PARTY (2000) As gay as gay porn (maybe gayer) I would probably never have rented a movie like Psycho Beach Party if it didn't star Lauren Ambrose, who I'd watch in just about anything. I've never even seen a real beach-party movie - how would I know what they're spoofing? Not that I WOULD see a beach-party movie, the concept in itself seeming to me fundamentally, fatally flawed, just a bad idea. It's like those concert movies. Do moviegoers really want to watch movies about other people having a good time? This does not seem to me like a filmgoing experience with a lot of potential. Of course, maybe it's ripe for parody. Like I said, I've never seen any of these movies, so I wouldn't know. But this movie was a hell of a lot funnier than I was expecting. When I use the term "cheesy", I'm referring to a style, not necessarily putting a movie down. I do the same thing when I talk about metal - Manowar is cheesy, they're the kings of cheese, but that's what I like about them. It's when a cheesy approach is mishandled, that things get stinky. (see my Rising Sun review) Undeniably, Psycho Beach Party is an extremely cheesy movie. I think it handles its cheesiness pretty well though. Ambrose stars as Florence Forrest, a mildly acerbic teenager in this 50's/60's small town, who has multiple personalities, including a Bette Davis-like seductress, a take-charge iron-fisted bitch (surely representative of another movie star from the time, but I'm drawing a blank here), and the kind of blatantly stereotypical black chick who, presumably, people saw from time to time in these movies. Like I said, I wouldn't know. Somebody in town is murdering people "who are different" - cripples, for example. Unconcerned by this, Florence pesters the local surfer gang (led by Thomas Gibson as Kanaka, who always speaks in rhyme...didn't I just see another movie where somebody always spoke in rhyme?) to let her surf with them, and they dub her "Chicklet". As the bodies drop, and the cops close in (led by screenwriter Charles Busch in hilariously creepy drag, I thought she was played by a reaaaaaally unattractive woman - or maybe just Ellen Barkin - until I read the credits), a Marilyn Monroe-like movie star (Kimberley Davies) drops in for some fun, Chicklet has a budding romance with a surfer dude (Nicholas Brendon), and about half the cast has to come to grips with their homosexuality. PBP is based on Busch's play of the same title, and it looks like he knew what he was doing in translating it to film. Director Robert Lee King keeps things moving in the spirit in which it was intended, skilfully enough that I never rolled my eyes and thought "Augh, this is too much". Even the raw language and occasional (camp) gruesomeness are handled with the kind of no-winks-no-nudges 50's/60's sincerity, and that's what makes it work. Ambrose is funny and likeable enough to render me utterly helpless to resist. Most of the female cast (Busch sort of included) is really funny here, and they're pretty much what keeps this movie going. As for the men, there's an increasingly explicit (and hilarious) running joke about the blatant homoeroticism between the surfer dudes, hell, why isn't Keanu in THIS movie? The one role he was born to play, a gay surfer dude, and he's not doing it. PBP adds in a slasher aspect with the murders and stuff (one girl's severed head is placed on the still-spinning wheel of her own wheelchair), but it never gets mean-spirited until the last minute. Its relationship to the horror genre is really quite peripheral; it's a device, not the center of where the gags are coming from. Lots of surf rock, making me realize just what Scott Ian was talking about when he was saying what an influence he thinks surf rock was on thrash metal. This plays during the 50's-fake scenes of surfing, of course. Oh yeah, I said that this movie never gets mean-spirited until the last minute. There's admittedly something of a formula to this movie's jokes, which mostly have 50's/60's setups, and 90's payoffs. The movie itself is a logical extension of that, wrapping up in singularly mean-spirited, level-eyed fashion like a 90's horror movie, maybe not a good one, but its placement here is pretty inspired - after the first few moments of disbelieving horror, I was laughing my ass off. That's the best ending I've seen in a long time. I haven't seen a lot of good movies recently, and that may well be making this one seem a little more clever than it really is. Nevertheless, this movie made me laugh harder than any movie has in a long, long time. br> BACK TO THE P's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE