Elevator Girls in Bondage

This movie is so startlingly, hilariously insane and brilliant. I saw it almost a year ago and it still thrills me to think of it. It is not easy to get a hold of this film, so if you have the chance to watch it then grab it! Basically the movie is a very bizarre LSD influenced series of ever more surreal moments, all tied up in a Marxist critique of the infringement on worker's rights. Just about everything is bad in this film; the acting, the dubbing, the script, but it is all intentionally so and the result is really quite the masterpiece of queer cinema. The Cockettes were pivotal to performance art and pop culture, this movie is just as valid as any of their performances.

I only knew of this hard-to-find cult film from an ex, so I was thrilled to find a copy at a San Francisco thrift store (personally signed and lipstick-smudged by the film's star, Rumi Missabu). "Elevator Girls" was made in 1972 -- the same year as John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" -- and the two films share a "homemade Technicolor" look. But "Elevator Girls" is closer in spirit to that other '70s San Francisco cult film, "Thundercrack!" (both are laden with gratuitous nudity and full-on sex -- but not the whackable kind, just the absurd-parody-of-porno kind). It's hard to rate a film of this kind because, as another reviewer noted here, it's intentionally bad, e.g. the dubbed dialogue features some of the worst lip-syncing ever put on film. What makes the film watchable are Rumi's strong performance and Joan Crawford boxcar hairdo -- and a mercifully short 56-minute length. Like another great cult film that's so bad it's good -- "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" -- "Elevator Girls" turns normal good film/bad film ratings on its wigged head. See it at least once, if for no other reason than to experience the LSD-fueled lunacy from post-Stonewall, post-Summer of Love San Francisco.

This isn't the best Cockette movie, but it's definitely worth watching, especially if you know the cast members. It is a bit slow in parts, similar to Andy Warhol's early movies (The Sleep movie comes to mind, but it's not THAT slow!), and once you get used to Pristine Condition's make-up (I think Billy Orchid was responsible for that), the plot (what there is of one) tends to drag a bit (accidental pun - really!).

By now, I would recommend anyone who has the opportunity to see it, if only for historical curiosity, but once is probably enough. I was fortunate enough to see it in San Francisco when I lived with one of the Cockettes, and my personal attachment to the cast probably affects my opinion of the movie, but I still think that it can be enjoyed by the curious, and especially those interested in the San Francisco culture of the early 1970s.

It's very much of a piece with The Cockettes' live shows, which is to say chaotic, raucous, haphazard and "amateurish," which I mean in a GOOD way.

It is great fun, and thoroughly bawdy, "not for children or stupid adults" (to quote Karen Finley). It is a wild tranny romp, subverting traditional gender roles and mocking uptight straight -- and gay -- society with merciless abandon.

The film captures a slice of queer culture from the pre-plague era, when being outrageous and having fun was reason enough to carry on in the never-never land of the San Francisco scene.

I understand that one of the Cockettes is selling a DVD transfer of it, but I don't believe it's otherwise available.

Shiva H. Vishnu!!! I can count on one hand the number of times I've been speechless in the last 5 years. Overlooking the snow-covered Rockies from Independence Pass is one. Reading the last 30 pages of Hannibal is another. Witnessing the aftermath of the Texas A&M Bonfire collapse is certainly a third.

Well, this is a fourth.