The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

When few countries were pushing the boundaries of the LGBTIQ community this beautiful movie tested the waters. It made Australia grow up in an era when economically everyone wanted to go back to a more comfortable time. It came out around the same time as Muriel's Wedding which is equally about a run down family of characters who are better when they come together. This movie is a prime example of Australian cinema.

A relatively low budget Australian film about drag queens took the world by storm, almost caused a riot at the Cannes film festival and drove a million young queens to the dressing up box in the hunt for sequins, sparkles and pink flip-flops! The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of The Desert gave us such classic lines as, "Just what this country needs, another cock in a frock on a rock!" and "Listen here you mullet, why don't you just light your tampon and blow your box apart, it's the only bang you're ever going to get, sweetheart"

It is without exception the best and arguably the most successful drag queen movie of all time, breaking box office records and capturing the top of the charts in numerous countries around the world. It was an Academy award winning extravaganza of glitter, glam and lip-syncing with the most outrageously camp costumes the world had seen outside Madame JoJo's or Funny Girls! Uproariously funny and yet deeply affecting it proved to be way more than just a camp outing of tried and tested queer humour.

The late eighties was a bit of a coming of age time for Australia's gay population, especially Sydney, it really came alive and blossomed into one of the bigger gay populations in the world. Australia has a reputation for all the big butch manly men, which considering how the modern nation of Australia started, would seem pretty accurate, only it's not, it's completely different, ever so much more vibrant and colourful. It is that vibrancy, that colour and that hopefulness that is so perfectly depicted in Priscilla.

Stephen Elliott, the director and writer, who incidentally has a small cameo in the movie as a cute door boy in Alice, says he saw drag shows in other places, like the US and England, which were essentially men in dresses lip-syncing to other peoples songs. In Australia they did the same, but took it in a completely new direction, it became a completely new strange variety of theatre, so much so that he even used to go to drag queen jelly wrestling, pushing the envelope to the maximum. It was this experience along with watching a drunken drag queen at the Sydney gay Mardi Gras, which gave birth to the movie idea, which took hardly any time at all to write.

From the very opening you know this film has deep rooted soul, first shots of Hugo as Mitzi mouthing the words to the poignant Charlene song, 'I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me' give the impression of an emotively sad song, yet this is so rapidly defused by the appearance of a lethargic priest and Felicia nursing a baby rubber chicken. You have left in no doubt after that that is no ordinary Australian movie and the jokes and gags just tumble on from there in rapid succession. However it's not all giggles, there are some key moments of high emotion - seeing the graffiti sprayed on the side of the bus in pink paint the morning after shocks the trio along with the audience and strikes a chord with those of old enough to have lived through a time of such prejudice and discrimination and how true those word seem when they ring in our ears, that no matter how tough we think we are, such things still hurt.

There are deeply moving scenes, such as the gay bashing of Felicia and the confrontation between Mitzi and his son in Alice, which really seem seep through the comedy to dance in your heart and make you fall in love with the film.  One of the key aspects of the movie is the superb casting; Terrence Stamp previously typecast as your typical British villain, took a risk on the role of Bernadette and knocked it out of the water in a downbeat, down trodden put upon yet completely resilient way. Hugo Weaving is the less visually striking member of the trio and the central character of Mitzi, who really is the lynch pin between the two worlds. The role of Felecia is taken by the simply stunning Guy Pearce who had literally just left long running soap Neighbours, in which he played goodie two shoes Mike and was an inspired choice and oh so pretty. Guy's superb performance takes the movie to new heights and is so good that the he has had trouble-convincing people he is actually straight in real life, even to this day. Bill Hunter a massive Australian character actor shines outstandingly as the gruff and butch Bob, the mechanic and unlikely love interest for one of the three.

Priscilla is a beautiful magical combination of humour, catty bitchiness, kitsch costumes, stunning disco soundtrack and subtle sentiment with provocative thoughtful scenes and a delicate brush of honesty. Some jokes are obvious so too is the stereotypical veneer of the characters upon first glance, yet look a little deep as the film rolls on, you see more and more layers being unpeeled and exposed in a gently moving and comical way. It is one of the most enjoyable gay movies of all time; each subsequent viewing cements that sentiment further into fact. Read more and find out where this film made it in the Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time book, search on Amazon for Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time, or visit - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007FU7HPO

...and that's a GOOD thing. Basically, before I truly became aware of "Priscilla", I had only thought of its three central actors as just regular, boring guys who were fine enough at acting, but really weren't anything special. Wrong. I had heard about this mysterious movie once or twice, but had no idea who was in it, nor what it was about (beyond the rather vague concept of drag queens/transvestites), and when I decided to read more about it, and find out who was in the cast - SURPRISE! Guy Pearce (of whom I had had a bad first impression when I discovered him in that travesty "The Time Machine"), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith himself!!!), and Terence Stamp (whom I don't think I ever saw in any films, but whom I still knew a fair bit about)! How genius is that? I had to see this to believe it, and when I did, I was not let down! Beautiful scenes, costumes, dialogue and music made this probably one of the most interesting and memorable movie experiences of my life! I wasn't the least bit uptight about it (as some people were turned off by the flamboyant behaviour and distasteful jokes, which I found refreshingly great!), and delighted in the campy antics of this fantastic trio! It's a beautiful, feel-good comedy that I recommend to anyone with a catty sense of humour (and a VERY open mind).

1994 proved to be rather a good year for Australian movies, with both this and MURIEL'S WEDDING delighting international audiences with their cheeky over-the-top humour, panache, pathos, winning performances, and fun soundtracks. Both, of course, heavily featured the music of ABBA (Australia has long had a particular love-affair with the Scandinavian quartet - it was probably no coincidence that it was decided to shoot the group's own feature, ABBA: THE MOVIE, during the Australian leg of their 1977 world concert tour). In MURIEL'S WEDDING the band's music is perhaps treated with more reverence and respect - Muriel Heslop is, after all, a huge fan, and the film itself is of a far more serious, distinctly black nature. PRISCILLA, on the other hand, constantly revels in its own bitchiness and catty humour, and has countless memorable, and in many cases unprintable, lines of dialogue, including stabs at the supergroup - "I've said it once and I'll say it again - no more f***ing ABBA"; "What are you telling me - this is an ABBA turd?" Of course ABBA is merely one of MANY verbal targets for the film's three main protagonists, but far from this alienating us from any of them, we cannot help but be swept along by the sheer garish joy of the entire venture.

The basic plot focuses on recently bereaved transsexual Bernadette (a magnificent, hardly recognizable Terence Stamp), who teams up with two younger drag artistes, sensitive Tick/Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and screaming queen Adam/Felicia (Guy Pearce), so that they can travel half-way across Australia on board an all but dilapidated bus named "Priscilla", in order to perform a cabaret act at a remote casino run by an ex-partner of Tick's, soon revealed to be, horror of horrors, a WOMAN! Along the way they encounter all sorts of absurd situations and individuals almost as strange and unconventional as they themselves are, whilst Bernadette, against her better judgement, falls for gruff mechanic Bob (Bill Hunter, who also features in MURIEL'S WEDDING) that they pick up en route, and in so doing he loses his "mail-order" bride Cynthia (Julia Cortez), who in one especially memorable scene does things with ping-pong balls you just don't want to imagine!

The performances are really the thing here - Terence Stamp (who won numerous accolades for his cast-against-type labours) is amazing and totally credible as the quietly dignified transsexual, and it is hard to believe that Weaving and (especially) Pearce have not worked as flamboyant, lip-synching drag queens all their professional lives! The gaudy, outrageous costumes won a well-deserved Oscar, and the photography of the barren, surreal landscape is also masterful, as is Stephan Elliott's creative direction and hilarious, ultimately poignant script. The soundtrack may not be to everyone's taste, but it has enough camp classics to satisfy anyone yearning to relive the tacky heyday of the '70s - including ABBA's "Mamma Mia", the Village People's "Go West", and Gloria Gaynor's superb "I Will Survive", given a gloriously inventive rendition to a bunch of appreciative aboriginals, with one of their number joining in most enthusiastically.

A true kitsch classic, then - well worth re-visiting, again and again ... and again.

...and I don't say "great" lightly. This isn't merely some tired road comedy in drag, it's a fun, at times surprisingly moving story.

Part of my immense surprise comes because I'd never really understood the appeal of drag shows. While I'm not sure I'm any bigger a fan, I definitely found myself drawn into the little universe created here.

The central characters are real people who manage to play to stereotypes without succumbing to them. I was frankly amazed by Terence Stamp, an actor who has made a career playing dangerous, macho types, and made a surprisingly compelling and believable ageing transsexual. The novelty quickly wore off; it was one of those rare performances that was just totally without affect. Honestly, one of the best performances I've ever seen.

Fun, as I expected, but there's a genuine affection and depth here. A very pleasant surprise.