Fan Fare

Let’s get this out of the way: if a film that combines full-on horror with necrophilia and gay porn  is not your thing, then avoid “L.A. Zombie.”

“L.A. Zombie”, which last month made headlines when an Australian film board banned the Canadian movie featuring “gay zombie porn” from screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, provides a look into the world of zombie-on-zombie action, perhaps a world’s first.

After hitting the festival circuit in Germany and Switzerland earlier in the year, the film has landed on the home soil of the Canadian director Bruce La Bruce at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Festival organizers described it like so in the program book: “L.A. Zombie is a hardcore gay porn film. There are numerous scenes of men having graphic sex shot in the manner of pornography, not art film erotica… But L.A. Zombie is very much an art film, too.”

It’s definitely no “Dawn of the Dead”, “Shaun of the Dead”, or “Zombieland.”

Reviewers said the film would have extremely limited appeal anywhere outside the hardcore cult film scene — and even there, it would still have  limited appeal. Variety said the low-budget movie with little dialogue was another attempt by cult director LaBruce to continue his mission “to shock the bourgeoisie with his modified porn.”

“It’s as if the (director) wanted to break apart boundaries between art-gallery videos, camp horror and semi-porn, but rather than producing an interesting melding of the three, he’s just turned out a confused mess,” the Variety review added.

At first, the zombie, played by French porn star Francois Sagat who will appear in “Saw 6″, is met with laughter and several gasps of “Oh My God”.  But the laughter fades as the scenes become more graphic.

(Caption: Photos are stills from Bruce La Bruce’s “L.A. Zombie”. REUTERS/TIFF)