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

Wow. Like a train wreck, I couldn't keep my eyes off of this film. I was riveted. And this was the sixth time I've seen it! An amazing retelling of the death of an era, and the death of a club kid.

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.

fascinating. You can't help but watch. This documentary focuses more on the lives and attitudes of Alig and his circle than it does on the murder of Angel. Very strange people in very strange times. James St. James has written a very good book on the subject called DISCO BLOODBATH. The most chilling comment is when Alig says he wants a lighter sentence "so he can have a VCR, because if you are on death row, you can't have one..." You would love to dismiss these characters from your mind, but you can't, they haunt you.

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.