The Great Charles Busch

I FINALLY have gotten to see Die, Mommy, Die!

Happily, it lived up to my expectations. The film is a homage to the great "women's films" of the forties thru sixties (taking place in 1967 LA), and it conjures up all of your favorites scenes starring Bette Davis, Susan Hayward and the marvelous Joan Crawford.

Charles Busch (also the playwright and screenwriter and the man who brought you Lesbian Vampires of Sodom) is the fading chanteuse Angela Arden (a perfect star-making moniker) who has a few very bad skeletons sharing space with her rhinestoned couture in her closet, not to mention an arsenic-laced suppository in her dresser. There is intrigue, and suspense, and grand humor, and some maudlin, melodramatic acting, but never so much that the film becomes unenjoyable. The director, Mark Rucker, has kept the cast on a tight leash, and it pays off. I was especially surprised at Jason Priestley, who conjured up a great Peter Lawford-type gigolo character. Angela delivers the best line of the film to him, telling him that he has "slipped into my life as easily as vermouth into a glass of gin." Exquisite.

Rounding out an already excellent cast is Frances Conroy as Bootsie, the maid. Frances stars on Six Feet Under, (my second favorite TV show after Twin Peaks), and I adore her only slightly less than the actress who plays her sister on the show, Patricia Clarkson.

The film is shot in glorious technicolor, and features vintage projections of LA in 1967 behind a few of the driving scenes, which lends a wonderful sense of period to the film. The costumes are all gorgeous, and the initial reveal shot of Angela in the graveyard is perfection.