When he’s not running the Mayfair Theater up in Ottawa, Canada, Lee Gordon Demarbre is doing it the drive-in way, even though the Mayfair has a roof. He’s responsible for the all-time Easter classic Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter that I make my family and in-laws watch every holiday, where the Son of God teams up with a luchadore to save the lesbians of Canada from bloodsucking creeps.
That one, made back in 2001, got four stars from me. His newest flick, Enter the Drag Dragon, has a drag queen teaming with his friend Jaws and their mentor/theater owner to find a treasure and save a dog, not necessarily in that order.
But this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill caper flick at all. It starts out with a machete-wielding hunter guy in a pith helmet and khakis taking a bio break on the head of a mannequin complaining to his fellow explorer about how sick he is of dealing with zombies.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t hear him because she’s being messily devoured by zombies. Learning his audience is a bunch of undead shambling cannibals, he hightails it out of there and then does a slow-motion dive into a river from a cliff with multiple shot angles like they did in those 1970s action shows with Lee Majors’ or William Shatner’s stunt double. If you insist on me being more recent, you can substitute in the Beastie Boys’ video for “Sabotage,” which also is technically an oldie now.
Believing himself to be safe, Mr. Pith whips out a treasure map of the boat from The Goonies and a spyglass, but he was pretty wrong about being away from the zombies, because one rams the spyglass’s viewing end through his eyeball.
Exit the hunter, enter the drag dragon.
SPECIAL NOTE: The character of Crunch is referred to as “he” in dialogue by his friends, so I’m using in-flick continuity here. If I’m wrong, Lee can get ahold of me and I’ll change it up.
So next thing is there’s a bearded drag queen with Divine-style makeup and glitter named Crunch (Sam Kellerman) from the Crazy Dragon Detective Agency wearing some rhinestone sunglasses, a Marilyn Monroe wig and a princess dress in platforms who does the John Travolta strut through downtown Ottawa, complete with disco accompaniment on the soundtrack. I don’t think I have to be more recent with that one since everyone knows what the John Travolta strut is.
Coming across two construction workers named Ace and Deuce, Crunch gets harassed after asking for a pimped-out Pee-Wee Herman-looking bike with tassels that the two guys are guarding. To note, Deuce looks like a Canadian redneck who took his fashion sense from the Devo “Whip It” video. Ace looks like your average stubbly white guy. They’re both wearing those double-can beer helmet things you see in the front row of the bleachers at any random Canadian Football League game (that’s Canadian for NFL — except they only get three downs and the field’s bigger).
To note, because it’s Canada, and these are Canadian construction workers, those double beer-can construction helmets actually meet the Canadian national safety code. To also note, Lee Demarbre is a professional filmmaker and a professional Canadian. You could expect the same thing from David Cronenberg if he had two beer-can hat guys in one of his flicks because that is how Canadians roll.
Crunch kung-fus both of em because he is on a mission and then lectures em before returning the bike to a grateful kid and then gets paid. After a whangdoodle wipe (it’s a filmmaking technique marking a transition in time and space, not whatever else you might be thinking involving anatomy and fabric), he’s enjoying a burger and shake.
Crunch comes across this guy Sebastian who’s hanging up a poster of his lost husky and Crunch says he’s gonna find the dog because Crunch seems to have a crush on Sebastian.
Then we meet Jaws (Beatrice Beres), this roller-skating food deliverer and she kung-fus this guy who’s trying to sell her stuff. She also meets Sebastian, who works at a bookstore, and talks about how she & Crunch help each other out.
Then the first two people who got zombified eat Ace and this woman with big garbonzas that Ace and Deuce stole the bike for. (They were trying to get the tassels from the bike for the garbonza woman to use).
Then we meet this secret syndicate group called F.I.S.T. run by this person named Gorch. There are a bunch of minions named Turbo, Rawhide, Moby, Booby Trap, Teapot, who has a laser-guided hula hoop, and Elsa, who’s the brainy administrative assistant of the group. They do shady crime stuff.
Then Crunch and Jaws practice Kung Fu on the top of the Mayfair Theater in Ottawa, which Lee runs in real life, but that Fast Buck (Phil Caracas — he was Jesus in Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter) runs in the flick. The Mayfair is always showing martial arts flicks for Crunch and Jaws because it’s a practical way to prepare fledgling detectives for the rigor of getting the job done in Ottawa.
Then a bunch of zombies go worship a waterfall in Lou Ferrigno Hulk makeup when an Aztec mummy shows up and says anybody who approaches their treasure must be destroyed.
This whole part of the movie is where Lee is setting up the plot points for the whole rest of the flick. It’s like Canadian chess.
There’s a whole subplot of the theater also being haunted by an interdimensional being, and so Crunch gets hit by a Toyota after being spooked by a sentient cherries jubilee in the fridge and Lee recasts the role. This happens two more times.
The new Crunch fights a bunch of people from NAG – The Never Again Gay Christian Conversionists of Canada that has a slogan that the “only way to salvation is on a straight path.” There’s a mass fight that Crunch wins and then a cowboy named Dick Toes attacks and gets whooped. Crunch then reveals that the guy indeed has dicks for toes.
There’s a musical interlude, a bunch of fights with zombies in the Ottawa jungle and with FIST and more stuff blows up.
Best Way to Determine a Transition in Scene: A whangdoodle rolls across the screen to show that things are changing. This technique is known as a whangdoodle wipe and will be adopted by auteur filmmakers in the coming decades.
Best Way to Recast: Lee borrows the well-established technique from Doctor Who where the character goes through a traumatic experience and then changes the actor twice before going back to the original. These plot devices work seamlessly in service to the flick.
Best Cameo: Construction foreman Lloyd Kaufman asks Jaws if she knows anything about dry humping and corrects himself to mean drywall and says that she needs to take her top off to let her body breathe and increase her flexibility before painting.
Best Offensive Weapon: Crunch pulls out these Nunchaku made out of two whangdoodles called cockchuks (or maybe it’s kokchuks) and beats Ace in the face with em. All three versions of Crunch wield their whangdoodle-based weapons with authority.
Best Warning About Observing a Changing Lexicon: Buck: “You can call us douchebag butthead scumbums, but not ‘retards.’ It’s insensitive.”
Best Innovative Attack: In the final fight, the threat of poisoned garbonza motorboating is nearly realized.
Best Clash: When a zombie fights a cyborg.
Best Teaser: There’s a post-credits scene that teases a future clash in the Great White North — Dick Toes vs. Cunt Foot.
Any proper Mutant would ignore the angry reviewer on IMDb who just doesn’t get it. Four stars all the way.
Check it out streaming on Fandango at Home and just out on BluRay from MVD. If you order it now, you’ll have it to check out for watchalongs for Pride Month or any month.