Event

LUST IN THE DUST in 35mm!

Monday, March 26 @ 7:00 PM / Music Box Theatre
LUST IN THE DUST
Directed by Paul Bartel 1985
One of the most overlooked talents to come out Roger Cormans AIP director mill, Paul Bartel never demonstrated the interest in pursuing Hollywood filmmaking that so many of his cine-brat compatriots did, continuing to make the sort of unfashionable, high-concept, and decidedly independent B-pictures his peers had long since abandoned well into the 90s. Bartels Western-comedy LUST IN THE DUST may have been advertised as something akin to a queer BLAZING SADDLES, but in its ambling, affable way, it is far more faithful to the genres B-movie roots than most of the Westerns produced during the revisionist heyday. Reuniting gay icons Tab Hunter and Divine, previously seen together in John Waterss Polyester, LUST IN THE DUST is ostensibly concerned with a love triangle between Hunters gunslinger Abel Wood, Divines chorus girl-cum-prostitute Rosie Velez, and saloon-owner Marguerita (played by Barbra Streisands understudy Lainie Kazan, who, in her musical number South of My Border, steals the whole damn movie). Theres some nonsense about a search for gold, but Bartel is most excited just to play in his genre sandbox, trying on tropes (the New Mexico-shot vistas are a particular highlight) and casting off any useless seriousness. (CW)
84 min New World Pictures 35mm from Allan Glaser

-PLUS-

Short: The Secret Cinema (Paul Bartel, 1966) 35mm 30 min
The Secret Cinema has been newly restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by The George Lucas Family Foundation.