"Dances With Gerbils"
(A film review)
Famed
Italian film director Arturo Masturbani has struck gold
again with his latest effort "Dances With
Gerbils". ( See review at this site of his previous
masterpiece "In Search of Gay Jesus" ).
The story concerns a young homosexual living in current
day San Francisco, Reggie Fontaine ( Leonardo DiCaprio ),
who suffers badly from chronic bronchitis and asthma, and
who is advised by his physician to move to a warmer,
drier climate. Fortunately Reggie's mother has just
purchased a defunct dude ranch 100 miles or so out of
Tucson and insists that her darling boy spend the coming
winter months there to assist his recovery.
On arriving at the run-down
ranch in his mother's pink Eldorado Cadillac Reggie is
appalled to find that the property has been occupied by a
desperate band of Navajo Indian men led by an antisocial
misfit, Chief Mescal ( Dennis Hopper ). It's late in the
day, and the place has no phone, so Reggie reluctantly
accepts the band's offer of lodging. He learns the next
morning that there is a feed store about 10 miles further
down the road with a pay phone and plans to leave at
midday to call the local sheriff to start eviction
proceedings. Shortly before noon one of the men offer him
a strange cactus salad and a cold can of Coors. Not
having eaten since the airline flight into Tucson
yesterday Reggie greedily consumes the salad and washes
it down with the ice cold beer. He casually asks the
Indian who fed him what kind of dressing he used and
Chief Mescal overhears the question.
"What kind of dressing
?", he bellows, "I'll tell you what kind of
fucking dressing it is, it's MAGIC fucking
dressing."
The band of men collapse into
laughter, and we come to learn that they do little from
day to day except drink beer, trip on the psychoactive
mescal cactus, and shoot beer cans out back with a rather
substantial array of submachine guns and pistols. Reggie
never quite makes it to the feed store that afternoon and
soon falls into the daily routine around the run down
ranch. One day while rummaging
around an old barn Reggie finds a large family of gerbils
that has taken up residence in some old grain sacks. He
decides to introduce his new friends to the game he loved
to play back in San Francisco. That evening as everyone
sits mightily stoned around the campfire, Reggie
announces he has something he wants to show the assembled
men. He produces a box of gerbils and a short section of
PVC plumbing pipe. He hands the man next to him a
cigarette and lights it for him. He drops his trousers
and inserts one end of the PVC pipe into his rectum. He
then picks a gerbil out of the box and puts it into the
other end of the pipe and motions to the man with the lit
cigarette to blow smoke into that end of the pipe. After
much confusion, the young brave shrugs his shoulders,
takes a deep draw on the cig, and blows into the exposed
end of the pipe. Reggie jumps as the gerbil enters his
rectum and he pulls the pipe out and shakes it to show
that the gerbil is no longer there. The band of Indians
is totally boggled for a few minutes, then suddenly
everyone is laughing, lighting cigarettes, fighting for
the pipe and box of gerbils. By the end of the evening it
is clear that the gerbil game is now as important to the
band as beer, mescal, and submachine guns.
Unfortunately Reggie's decision
ultimately leads the band of men into wanton homosexual
orgies. As they fall further and further into degradation
they find it necessary to supplement their meager incomes
by robbing gas stations and convenience stores. Stoned on
mescal, gerbils running furiously around their rectums,
they rush through store doors and machine gun all the
customers and clerks, then make off with a couple of
hundred dollars and a few cold six packs. Reggie eagerly
serves as getaway driver in his mothers pink Eldorado.
The local sheriff ( Eli Wallach ) is a tequila swilling
halfbreed who has been on the take for decades, so all of
the band's armed robberies go uninvestigated. Eventually
the band's activities attract the attention of the
state National Guard headed by "Butch" Estelle
Ramirez ( Ellen DeGeneres ). Political correctness being
the order of the day, the state governor authorizes
Estelle to bring in the Third Lesbian Paratroop Company
to restore order.
During a key gun battle, most of
the Third's soldiers are wasted by the fearless Navajo
warriors. The survivors are taken prisoner and
brought back to the dude ranch to serve as sex slaves and
kitchen help. Some of the most moving scenes of the movie
are the oral sex sessions between Chief Mescal and
Estelle Ramirez. Only a seasoned director like Signori
Masturbani could film these scenes in a mature artistic
manner. ( As reviewer I must add that Ellen
DeGeneres gives one mean blowjob ). The failure of the
National Guard to restore order finally attracts the
attention of the Clinton administration in Washington. To
avoid embarrassing publicity the Navajo band is offered
exclusive use of one of the smaller National Parks in the
area with guaranteed daily parachute drops of mescal
buttons and ice cold Coors. Chief Mescal and Reggie are
offered and accept new Cabinet positions for Native
American AIDS Awareness.
In a truly moving finish,
Estelle Ramirez and the local sheriff decide to settle
down and the film ends with both of them wasted on
mescal, sheriff lounging in his Lazyboy Recliner as
Estelle gives him a $100 blow job.
With the current dreck that's
showing at movie theaters these days it is indeed a
breath of fresh air to find a director with the courage
and artistic integrity to bring a film like this to
America. Now showing at the Pissoir, East Village and
Rikers Island Cinemaplex.
George Kranz
UPI Peyoteville, AZ
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