Bruce LaBruce’s Gay Zombie Movie Otto: Or, Up With Dead People
Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian writer and filmmaker who is generally known as a gay activist. Although I’ve never seen any of his movies, I know that many of them have been controversial and border on pornography. While I can’t say that’s a particularly big selling point for me, I understand that he creates movies primarily to provoke a reaction, and from the sounds of it, he’s pretty good at what he does. His latest film, Otto: Or, Up With Dead People, is currently playing at Sundance, and it appears to be generating quite a few “reactions”.
Otto is about a zombie who remembers nothing about his past. After hitching a ride to Berlin, he meets up with a political filmmaker who decides to make a documentary about him, and eventually casts him in a porno. Eventually he discovers a wallet in his back pocket and regains memories of his ex-boyfriend Rudolf, making plans to be reunited with him again.
I don’t think there are too many art house zombie movies out there, and the fact that LaBruce decided to give his take on the genre clearly had a lot of people intrigued. Unfortunately, it seems that the movie hasn’t sat too well with audiences at Sundance. Bloody Disgusting gave their review in the form of a short haiku:
Pretentious Garbage
Penises, Lots of Colors
Didn’t Get the Joke
Alex over at FirstShowing.net also gave it 0 out of 10 stars. If that doesn’t make you want to see it, then I don’t know what will! For more info, and to watch a short teaser trailer, visit the film’s official website.
Comments (4)
I caught The Raspberry Reich at TIFF several years ago. Yes it was a porn film, but it was really a great satire of activism and pornography and how movements crumble due to the egos involved.
Not a great film by a long stretch, but an interesting one.
Posted by kurt on January 26th, 2008(And yes, I’m looking forward to OTTO, despite the negative reviews)…having seen a Bruce LaBruce film, I have some inkling of what to actually expect, so I think I’ll probably enjoy Otto for what it is.
Posted by kurt on January 26th, 2008I picked up the Otto promo comic at Sundance and thought that was cool. But the movie was awful.
Posted by Chad on February 6th, 2008it’s totally disgusting…
Posted by lj on May 4th, 2009Leave a Reply