Die, Mommie, Die! (2003)

First, I should admit that I've never seen the play on which "Die, Mommie, Die!" is based. If you only hear that the star is a drag queen, then you might have an idea about the movie's content. However, most of it is not particularly flamboyant. Campy, yes, but it has a serious side. Charles Busch (who wrote the play) plays a retired singer whose actions cause an awkward series of events. Despite the focus on the singer and her family, I thought that the most intriguing character was the Bible-quoting housekeeper played by Frances Conroy (of "Six Feet Under" and "American Horror Story"). Despite her religious zealotry, this woman knows a lot more than we realize! Basically, "Die, Mommie, Die!" is a spoof of/homage to movies featuring grand dames. I wouldn't go so far as to call this a great movie or even a hilarious one, but it's worth seeing. I interpreted it as a look at fame's fickle nature and the difficulty of acknowledging the changing world (such as what the singer finds out about her son). Now that I've seen it, I'd like to see the play, as well as Busch's other plays. A fine addition to the pantheon of LGBT cinema.Also starring Jason Priestley, Philip Baker Hall, Stark Sands, Natasha Lyonne and Nora Dunn.

What a fun movie!! So campy, so snappy, yet so... human. Charles Busch is delightful, as a writer and actor, not to mention an expert lip-sync-er. Busch seems to channel every golden screen diva from Garland to Garbo, even as recent as Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford. The movie is full of witty one- liners, pop culture references, and juicy double entendres. The actors all eat up this killer material, and Rucker's direction makes the most of an apparently limited budget. But that hardly matters when there's a true love of the medium by all involved, which is the case with "Die Mommie Die!" Too bad Busch doesn't write for "Will & Grace" nowadays. But I'm sure he has much better things to do.

After noticing that the star of this film is a drag queen than you start to wonder what else this story has to offer and that's where the main problem of this satiric effort lies. Story is set in the 1960's (I think so, anyway) where we see a faded former singing star named Angela Arden (Charles Busch) and she wants to divorce her husband Sol Sussman (Philip Baker Hall) who's a has-been Hollywood producer. Their children are virginal Edith (Natasha Lyonne) who loves her father but hates her mother and homosexual pothead Lance (Stark Sands) who has the opposite feelings towards his parents.*****SPOILER ALERT***** Sol won't give Angela a divorce so she decides to kill him by dipping a suppository in arsenic and inserting it! Sol dies and the authorities consider it just a heart attack but Edith and Lance start to think that their mother was up to it. The local gigolo Tony Parker (Jason Priestley) is bisexual and has slept with both Edith and Lance and he starts to investigate the death of Sol but when the maid Bootsie Carp (Frances Conroy) pops up dead than it seems just a matter of time to find proof that Angela is behind things. After drugging Angela with LSD she admits not only to Sol's death but also the circumstances involving her twin sister Barbara.This is directed by Mark Rucker who makes his debut and though he has to somehow get around the minuscule budget the films weakness has nothing to do with the production values. The script is a campy send-up of the older melodrama's from both the 50's and 60's and as I watched this several films came to mind like "Peyton Place", "Valley of the Dolls", "Sunset Boulevard", "Straight Jacket", and many of Douglas Sirk's efforts. The main joke in the film is Busch in drag resembling Joan Crawford but with the characters last name of Arden I couldn't help but think of actress Eve Arden whom Busch also resembles. But that part of the films humor wears out so quickly that everything else seems thrown in to try and fill out the script to a near 90 minutes and the ridiculous ending doesn't help either. The film has many in-jokes and the characters all display silly behavior but even die hard camp lovers will find this effort (at best) a tedious offering.

I remember seeing, Stark Sands, on HBO's "Six feet under." I thought he was very attractive. Now that I saw, "Die mommie, die," I think Stark Sands is not only attractive, but an enormous talent! Co-starring with jason Priestly, Natosha Lyonne, and the entire superb cast, Stark Sands has a feirceness in his pretty green eyes that brought his character to life in an astonishing roar. I have rented this great send-up of classic movies at least 4 times. And now I am going to purchase it. This is one of the finest "indie" films I have seen since, "Sordid lives." And it also has made me a huge, Stark Sands fan. I look forward to seeing more of his acting in the future.