I was truly good and excited about the airing of PSYCHO BEACH PARTY (based on Charles Busch's one-man stage show) on Reel 13 on November 1st. I have a lot of good friends in the world of theatre and many of them are big fans of Charles Busch. I had heard great things about this film and the cast alone is enough to warrant excitement – Lauren Ambrose, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"'s Nicholas Brendan, Thomas Gibson and Oscar-nominee Amy Adams seems like a dream team for this sort of an endeavor. Unfortunately, the end result didn't come close to the hype.
The material is pretty much there. I think the failure of PSYCHO BEACH PARTY is a failure of film direction. Firstly, the film is very empty (why is there no one ever on the beach?!?) and while I realize that is a budgetary issue, it is a costly problem, especially when trying to do a parody of this kind. If the film wants to ape Gidget, Frankie and Annette films, surfer movies, slasher movies, The Three Faces of Eve and Joan Crawford simultaneously, it needs the scope to match. I realize the independentness of the film creates limitations, but I know for a fact that there are inexpensive to free ways to fill scenes with background actors or design details that help with the illusion. However, the production team seems to have had their priorities elsewhere.
The Achilles heel of the film, however, is there is no rhythm, no sense of pace and in a broad comedy like this - that is equivalent to a slow, painful death. Most of the jokes fall horribly flat. One-liners spew out quickly enough, but the camera just lingers on the speaker, as if waiting for applause or laughter that just isn't coming. It's like those old cartoons where all you hear are crickets in the audience. Painful.
Fortunately, the cast raises the level of the film a great deal. A much younger Lauren Ambrose is once again magnificent (I have such a talent crush on her) in what ultimately amounts to be a triple-role, utterly believable and hilarious in each phase of her character. Brendan is very charismatic and amusing as usual and Gibson has fun with the conceit that his cooler-than-cool beach bum character rhymes everything he says. Busch himself does his usual cross-dressing act as the local police detective, Captain Monica Stark, but the theatricality of the character and the gimmick don't really connect on the screen. Bad wig and pale skin aside, the character is like an alien in the movie, as if occasionally entering through a portal from the Greenwich Village Halloween parade. I can see it working as a stage convention, but here, it just seems awkward.
Without having seen the stage play, I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that is the root of all the issues with the film version of PSYCHO BEACH PARTY. Generally speaking, there is naturally a greater suspension of disbelief in the theatre. Unfortunately, film as an artform does not have that luxury. I can see most of my problems with PSYCHO BEACH PARTY working much better on stage. But here, it just gets lost in the translation.
(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)