Category: ’90s Films

Melanie Griffith and Eric Thal are drawn to the unfamiliar in *A Stranger Among Us*.

The early ’90s brought viewers an unusual one-two punch from Sidney Lumet—unusual because the veteran filmmaker only managed to knock himself out. A Stranger Among Us (1992) and Guilty as Sin (1993) are the pictures in question, the former starring Melanie Griffith and the latter her then-husband, Don Johnson. That I recognize each as a dud does nothing to lessen my affinity for them, especially A Stranger Among Us, which bravely asks and answers the question: “What if we remade Witness with Hasidic Jews and cast Eric Thal as Kelly McGillis… and it sucked?”

Griffith plays Emily Eden, a flirty NYPD detective who jokes of her cowboy reputation that she’s Calamity Jane. (Our first hint that this was a questionable undertaking came in the form of its original title: Close to Eden.) Stranger opens with Emily and her partner Nick (Jamey Sheridan, adrift in a role that’s more conceit than character) reminiscing about both their first collar and their on-again, off-again relationship. “Cha-cha all night and then straight to the courthouse in the morning,” she recalls, before spotting a couple of sleazy perps she wants to take down without backup.

Poison Ivy: Cheap Lesbian Thrills in (Mostly) Straight Packaging

By Cranky Lesbian

On August 5, 2022

In '90s Films

Drew Barrymore is a teenage *femme fatale* in *Poison Ivy*.

If you were a young lesbian in the mid-’90s and your parents had cable, you were most likely aware of Poison Ivy. It was the perfect tawdry late-night fare, with a little something for everyone. Your more lascivious straight guys were there, of course, for the lurid sexual content featuring a jailbait antagonist. For everyone else, you had Drew Barrymore’s delightfully perverse machinations and Cheryl Ladd as an emphysema patient dying an unusually glamorous death.

Lesbian overtones (and lip locks) shared by Barrymore and Sara Gilbert were an added bonus for gay adolescents like myself. It wasn’t as titillating as the Aerosmith video with Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler (back then, few things were), or romantic like Fried Green Tomatoes. But its legend was burnished by two simple things: Gilbert, we already sensed, was one of us. And Barrymore was widely rumored to be bisexual. In that prehistoric pre-“Puppy Episode” era, you had to take what you could get.

Parades or Killer Fetuses, That is the Question

By Cranky Lesbian

On November 29, 2008

In '90s Films

Babies aren’t always so cute and cuddly.

The title of this post is, of course, a quote from Hamlet. I think the whole thing goes:

Parades or killer fetuses, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The murderous unborn in films produced by Roger Corman,
Or to watch a giant inflatable Snoopy take over the streets of New York
Both are almost equally pointless, and will make you want to die, to sleep.
william crankspeare

(That last part might be off by a few words. It’s been a while since I last read Hamlet.)

Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the United States, and it’s a day that’s always been “meh” for me, perhaps because I don’t like turkey or football — or maybe because I don’t need to be reminded to be thankful for all the good things in my life.

For me, Thanksgiving means there are marathons of horrible shows on cable all day and there’s no mail service. Is that really worth celebrating? Then there’s the family togetherness concept, which always sounds so warm and fuzzy in theory and ends up being more like a bad Fassbinder film in practice, but without the very things that make bad Fassbinder films bearable: English subtitles and sodomy. (Oh, and without the Hanna Schygulla. Can’t forget the Hanna Schygulla.)

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Category: ’90s Films

A Stranger Among Us: What’s New and Exciting?

Poison Ivy: Cheap Lesbian Thrills in (Mostly) Straight Packaging

Parades or Killer Fetuses, That is the Question