Party Monster

Ever since my mom and I saw the motion picture "Party Monster", we were curious to learn more about the club kids and Michael Alig and James St. James. In my opinion about the tragic death of Angel Mendaz, I felt it was a fight gone too far because I did find out that Michael is actually despite the drug addiction is a very decent and kind human being. Same with Angel, he was a good friend, again, get past the drug selling, he was another very good human being. But then again I wasn't there, so I can't say this 100% with truth.

But I felt that the documentary was more on getting sympathy for Michael Alig, despite from what I heard and read on websites that he was a very nice guy, he did kill someone. He had claimed it was self defense, but he could've come clean from the get go then. Still the documentary itself on the club kids is a good one, if you are curious about the lifestyle and what it was like to be a club kid, this is a documentary worth watching.

8/10

Fascinating look at gothic humans in this Marilyn Manson type documentary. The biographical story is about a young man who was arrested for the grisly murder of another 'club kid'. I hope this comes out on video because so many don't have the pleasure of having cable network CINEMAX like I do.

I caught the end of "Party Monster" the movie starring Macaulay Culkin, and it sparked my curiosity to watch the documentary.

This doc is fairly bare bones looking, but it tells the whole story I think. Since this film isn't covering ancient history, there are lots of living people around that can be interviewed for fleshing out the story. However, after watching the movie for 5 minutes you realize that all of these people were more than likely completely zapped on multiple drugs while the covered events were happening, so how much do they remember and how accurate is it? We'll never know. This story sounds really simple to me, too simple really. Michael Alig became very famous for promoting parties, he had access to lots of drugs, and lots of people who catered to this party all the time lifestyle.

I am going to sound like a downer by saying this, but I can't see any substance at all in any of the Club Kids. Was this all their lives was about? Pretty pathetic and meaningless if you ask me. Getting high and dressing up to go to get more messed up with a bunch of other idiots. This wasn't a very entertaining film to me. I guess the story is just all too familiar. Small town kid goes to the big city, gets some success, this causes a tragic spiral towards self destruction, the end. Blame it on the current state of our media if you want, but I am personally not shocked anymore by stories of drug abuse and the crimes committed by mentally unstable drug addicts.

A very entertaining film from the always wry Fenton Baily and Randy Barbato. Too bad that while Angel Melendez was a very sweet man who suffered a horrible death, the film doesn't attempt to portray him with any complexity. If you can allow yourself to forget this fact, it's easy to be swept away by this thumping, flashy doc.

I'd read the 'Village Voice' series when this all went down, so I knew the overall story going into this documentary, which helps in getting through this - I have a few friends who turned this off, unable to believe what they were seeing. Nothing much for me to add - PARTY MONSTER is a technicolor-lurid portrayal of greed, addiction, self-delusion, narcissism and depravity (born not of pleasure, but out of a sort of sex-and-drugs one-upsmanship) all spun out of control, leading to the inevitable violent crescendo. Through it all the creativity (at least at first), insecurity and loneliness of the key players in the scene manages to also come through loud and clear, which adds to the tragedy behind the lurid surface here.

But there's also a world of lonely, kinky, creative, insecure, stoned and/or delusional people who somehow manage to not slide into the kind of horrorshow on display here, so those aren't good excuses (though the interviews with Alig's shattered and heroin-addicted last boyfriend made me unbelievably sad), and I'd say that Angel's family ought to be infuriated over Alig's behind-bars ascendance into cult stardom. Whatever Alig's future, I'm certain that a documentary about Angel would offer less shock value, but more soul, telling us far more about the multiple worlds he moved between in the process, which ultimately is why the value of PARTY MONSTER is questionable at best.