Bare Behind Bars, Sea Purple, Here Come the Girls 3 and Dare
LGBT DVD Roundup
If it’s a quiet night on the sofa you’re after, beware Bare Behind Bars (Arrow Video ●●●●). Described as a ‘chicks in chains grindhouse explosion’, we’re given sadistic lesbian guards, a permanently aroused screwball nurse and convicts with cabin fever – but how long will the status quo of horror hold when a prison break is on the cards? Ridiculous (thanks in part to some hilariously bad over dubbing) but still off the wall enough to shock.
Sea Purple (Peccadillo Pictures ●●●) is based on the true story of two women locking horns with patriarchal, homophobic society in 19th century Sicily. Some excellent performances from notable Italian actresses Valeria Solarino, Isabella Ragonese and Maria Grazia Cucinotta (aka, the lady who shtupped James Bond in The World Is Not Enough) shine a light on gender identity and stop this from being a dusty period piece.
Peccadillo Pictures provide us with another collection of interesting shorts in the form of Here Come The Girls 3: Tissues And Issues (●●●). Some are fluffy in the utmost (such as ‘Trophy’, the plotline of which could have been lifted from a questionable porno) but others are more thought provoking. Highlights include ‘Birthday’, a Swedish feature focusing on a lesbian couple trying to conceive via artificial insemination, and ‘Mosa’, the story of a young South African woman struggling to come to terms with a violent past.
Dare (Peccadillo ●●●) is a fairly frothy high school drama about a love triangle between drama queen Alexa (Emmy Rossum), her gay BFF and mysterious silent type Johnny (Friday Night Light’s Zach Gilford). With a John Hughes vibe, awfully pretty faces and the fleeting appearance of Alan Cumming and Sandra Bernhardt (hero!), Dare is fun, if not terribly memorable.
Choose your weapon (but please, not in a women-in-prison movie kind of way.)