After last night's opening (and way late night out followed by a full day in the office) I arrived rather tired at the AMC Theater on 34th street tonight. But the first film I saw this evening perked me right up. The Curiosity of Chance is an homage to the John Hughes style teen films of the 80s, except with a queer twist. So of course, it's cotton candy. Fluff. But oh what fun fluff it was. Delightfully written, smartly art directed and filled with period music that kept the mood up it was the kind of film I'd have loved to have seen when I was in high school. All I got to see was Lindsay Anderson's If... (which I will be writing about very soon). Tad Hilgenbrinck's sulks were a pleasure to watch. And given that his resume includes much Shakespeare I hope I have the pleasure of seeing him on stage in NY someday. And let's be clear about just how much of a fantasy this film was: in the film's climactic "Battle of the Bands" contest, the hero's band is introduced by a bevy of drag queens from the local bar, who have invaded the high school to support their youngest sister in training. That said, I was completely willing to suspend all disbelief because it was such sweet fun.
Sometimes it pays to quit when you're ahead. This is the roulette wheel of the film festival. Here! TV
premiered its new TV series about "a coven of gay vampire witches," The Lair, showing the first
three episodes. The writing was hideous, the acting, well, hard to fault the actors with such truly stupid lines unbelievable plotlines. And I don't mean that a coven of gay vampires run out of a sex club is unbelievable. 
No, the actions and sheer idiocy of the characters is what made it unbelievable. As someone said in the row behind me after the second episode, "It's not going to get any better." It failed as soft core porn as well, though
there certainly were long loving camera shots of cute David Moretti in the shower, and vampire orgy scenes. The level of the dialog and acting was a hair above porn acting. In fact, there were porn actors in the show. If there had been any conscious irony to it perhaps it would have worked. But it didn't even have the charm of the terrible but campy vampire TV classic, Dark Shadows. Where is Jonathan Frid now that we need him? No surprise...like all cult TV heroes he will be appearing at a Dark Shadows convention in Tarrytown NY in August of this year.
I could get all psychological and write about the ongoing fascination of connecting gay men and vampires, and dark sex clubs with black magic and the shadow, but it's been written about in depth elsewhere and quite frankly, The Lair is no great addition to this tradition. And with that, back tomorrow afternoon for the animation program. That's always fun.
The Curiosity of Chance comes out on DVD on July 15th! Get your copy today!
www.TLAvideo.com or at www.thecuriosityofchance.com and you an also buy it at Amazon.
Posted by: Carrie McCray | July 14, 2008 at 09:19 AM