Posted: 09/29/2007

Creatures from the Pink Lagoon

(2007)

by Ed Moore

Creatures from the Pink Lagoon is a spoof of not one but two classics of cinematic counterculture, Night of the Living Dead and The Boys in the Band.

It’s somewhat surprising that nobody thought to combine these two concepts before. Think about it—both works are products of late-1960s counterculture and that era’s protests (against conflict and for individual expression).

No such lofty ideals are involved here, though: As the title might imply, Creatures from the Pink Lagoon is intended as pure camp, without a serious thought in its head. From the opening scene in a graveyard (intentionally evoking memories of Ed Wood’s magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space) to the closing shots of a character driving away from the zombie holocaust to the strains of a Judy Garland tune, everything is played for laughs, with the barest minimum of a plot and all shot in black & white (except when the zombies attack—then the screen, appropriately enough, goes pink).

Stan (Lowell Deo) is throwing a birthday party for Phillip (Nick Garrison) and inviting all their friends, including Stan’s cheating boyfriend, Billy (Vincent Kovar); Billy’s closeted cousin, Joseph (Evan Mosher); bitter, bitchy Randall (Philip D. Clarke) and Randall’s flavor of the moment, Gary (John Kaufmann), who quickly develops eyes for Billy. Phillip’s rough-trade “boyfriend,” Bobby (Bill Morrison), can’t be bother to show up, though—he’d rather hang out at the rest stop and get blowjobs from strangers.

That rest stop, though, has more problems that just anonymous sex—mosquitoes from the nearby chemical plant bite the men who pause for refreshment, turning them into flesh-hungry monsters that descend on Stan’s beach house and attack the inhabitants. These aren’t just any zombies—they’re gay zombies. How do we know? They dance to show tunes, and the first one out of the ground has a decidedly limp wrist.

There are funny moments that don’t depend on the orientation of the characters to get laughs, like when one survivor unwisely pauses during his attempted escape to light a cigarette, only to have a zombie chew his hand off and take a few drags of the cigarette himself (while the severed hand still holds it), while another hurls the dildos at the oncoming undead (they seem to like it, too). There’s also a sweet romance that develops between two of the living amid the onslaught of the dead.

How much humor you find in all of this depends not only on your affection for cheesy sci-fi movies (and if you don’t have affection for cheesy sci-fi movies, I don’t want to know you), but on how you respond to the entendre-heavy screenplay, which is loaded with every gay stereotype you’ve ever heard: Promiscuous, effeminate (except for the very butch Bobby, whose manly cologne becomes a weapon against the undead), and obsessed with sex (everybody gives Phillip a dildo for his birthday).

Is writer/director Chris Diani poking affectionate fun at gays the way Mel Brooks makes jokes about Jews in his movies? Or is Diani having fun at the expense of gays by reinforcing societal stereotypes? How you answer that question will determine how much you enjoy this movie. If the politically incorrect comedy doesn’t bother you, you may laugh your ass off (if a zombie doesn’t chew it off first). If it does bother you, though, this flick will make you downright angry.

It doesn’t hurt at all that Creatures from the Pink Lagoon is very short (about 71 minutes), so that if the humor (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view) starts to work your nerves, at least you know it’ll be over soon.

Ed Moore is a writer in Chicago.

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