A male zombie chomps into the flesh of his lover, then fucks him through a gaping gash in his side so he can join him in a reanimated afterlife. Elsewhere, the living dead suck, screw and wank each other off in an orgiastic mass of writhing flesh.

Welcome to the hard, horny and deliciously twisted world of Bruce LaBruce. For over two decades the Canadian writer/director has been shaking up gay cinema with his magnificently off-kilter visions, resulting in confrontational and controversial films such as Skin Flick and The Raspberry Reich.

In his latest work, the outrageous filmmaker breathes new life into a decaying genre with the first ever feature-length gay zombie flick, Otto; or Up With Dead
People. His most accessible movie yet, it’s a deliriously demented affair that combines sex, gore and politics with an ultra-cool arthouse meets alt-scene aesthetic.

Inspired by cult classics such as Curtis Harrington’s Night Tide, Herk Harvey’s Carnival Of Souls and George A Romero’s Martin, Otto is the melancholic tale of a young misfit (brilliantly portrayed by newcomer Jey Crisfar), who may or might not be a zombie.

For LaBruce, the idea for a gay take on the zombie genre was an obvious one. “If you’ve ever cruised a public toilet or gay bathhouse for sex, you quickly realise that it’s very much like Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead,” he says. “And I don’t necessarily mean that as a bad thing. The dark shadows, the interchangeable body parts, the anonymity and the somnambulistic quality of the participants
– it can be exciting and erotic. Almost all horror movies are about homosexual panic, so it’s about time the zombie genre got gayified.”

Gay it might be, but that doesn’t mean the movie is populated by a bunch of claret-splattered queens. Otto sees a death-obsessed political activist (bolshy goth babe Katharina Klewinghaus) shooting a zombie propaganda picture, Up With The Dead. Meanwhile, her Louise Brooks-style girlfriend (Susanne Sachße) is trapped in a monochrome, silent film dimension.

The strangeness is further enhanced by layers of industrial noise and backmasking, which bring to mind such startlingly surreal soundtracks
as David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

While Otto will appeal to anyone interested in unusual fright flicks, it’s actually aimed at outsiders – those who LaBruce sees as alienated by capitalist society. “I wanted to portray a zombie who’s a misfit and an outcast, which is how anyone who doesn’t conform to the capitalist paradigm is generally treated,” he explains. “I’m so tired of zombie movies in which the undead are treated like worthless homeless people who can be brutally eradicated for sport. It’s way too close to reality.”

The film’s Berlin shoot was eventful. “We put poor Jey through all sorts of torture,” LaBruce recalls with glee. “Things like burying him in a graveyard on his 19th birthday, making him eat raw chicken and fish in strawberry syrup out of the belly of a real rabbit, and having him walk through a bee-infested field of flowers.

I was having a bad day and asked Jey to eat some raw liver. He refused, and I yelled, ‘Look, if Mia Farrow could do it in Rosemary’s Baby, so can you!’ I took a big bite out of the liver, and it was the most vile, disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten!

I spat it out and everyone started to laugh. Jey, to his credit, continued with the scene and put it in his mouth and chewed it – and of course the scene was cut from the final film.”
Otto is currently touring gay and lesbian film festivals.

See Ottothezombie.com and MySpace.com/ottothezombie. Also see Brucelabruce.com and MySpace.com/brucelabruce