Posted: 10/10/2007

Creatures from the Pink Lagoon

(2007)

by Sawyer J. Lahr

It is summer 1967, and six distinctly different but all over gay male friends gather at a mutual friend’s lake-side cottage for a soiree and are attacked by zombies cured only by the voice of a gay icon off to see the wizard.

A chemical leak at a very apparently marked Chemical Plant has infected local gay men and altered them into walking flesh-eating corpses.

Its beginning soundtrack over Chris Diani’s directorial credit vibes an eerie impression that is quickly put to rest. A woman with a crooked blond wig comforts her mother who mourns the death of her pudgy flaming gay son seen in a picture frame on his casket.

The few women in the plot come and go just after the funeral. They leave their mark by dropping a strain of slang names for gay men when a naïve woman doesn’t quite follow.

From here on, it is without shame, all for laughs. It is a tacky celebration of horror and horribly cheap exploitation filmmaking.

The good-ole-boy prep character, disillusioned about his closeted cheating boyfriend, looks like the vampiric hairstylist on Shear Genius, but perkier.

Notably, a queer film cinephile will point out the direct allusions, recycling, and parodying of Boys in the Band (1970), exploitation films (John Waters, Ed Wood) and b-movie/zombie movie traditions.

Sawyer J. Lahr is a film critic residing in Chicago. Visit Sawyer’s blog here.

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