QFest Movie Reviews: Eating Out: Drama Camp and Bite Marks

Executive Director of PhillyGayCalendar

Eating Out: Drama Camp

You might accuse writer/director Q. Allen Brocka of beating a dead horse with a fourth Eating Out movie, except that he’s able to bring the familiar faces of yesteryear into a whole new context, and with the addition of talented new cast members and some inventive plotting, Drama Camp stands on its own and is right up there with the best of Judd Apatow and company.

The gang hits the woods this time around for a special theatrical camp experience headed by one Dick Dickey (Drew Droege AKA the face behind those hilarious Chloe Sevigny videos), an unbalanced thespian who hasn’t had sex for seven years and doesn’t see why anyone else should, either. That brings us to the very smart conceit that wins the day: NO SEX ALLOWED AT CAMP! That’s right. It’s a movie filled to brimming with hotties and hotties and hotties, and for a good portion of the movie, no one is allowed to get down. That keeps the tension up, and when the narrative finally lets us have it… it bears mentioning that the version of Drama Camp that will be screening on Logo on July 24th will be edited to leave certain things out. We’ll leave it at that.

Elsewhere, newcomer Harmony Santana brings heart to the proceedings as a trans actress who tries to be patient with her awkward suitor, and Daniel Skelton’s Casey sincerely tries to figure out his relationship with wandering-eyed Zack (Chris Salvatore). As Penny, Lilach Mendelovich punches things up as the scrappy camp underdog who hatches schemes to help Casey, leading to an especially memorable sequence involving an enticing pair of white briefs and some poison sumac.

Bite Marks

No such memorable sequence graces the screen during the running time of Bite Marks, which is unfortunate given the sharpness of its comic dialogue and its eerie set piece, a broke-down eighteen wheeler with a mysterious cargo of a single coffin, stranded overnight at a scrap yard in the middle of nowhere. With all that’s going for it, including wryly bright performances from the leads, writer/director Mark Bessenger still fumbles the events leading up to the final showdown between man and vampire, leaving everyone to run around aimlessly like a dismembered corpse with its head cut off.

Benjamin Lutz plays Brewster, a brooding trucker who picks up a gay couple on a backpacking trip, on the condition that they talk to him so he’ll be able to stay awake. Once they reach their supposed destination, the axl breaks and they have to wait for a mechanic to come check things out. And that’s where the carnage begins. And ends. The trio engage in some interesting discussion of vampire mythology throughout film history that leads to the movie’s own take on vampires, but the fanged monsters of Bite Marks, for the most part, don’t make much of a mark on the genre, and instead are dispensed of like so many gruesome whack-a-moles.

Brewster, for his part, has a compelling story that includes a cuckolded big brother and some secret desires, but the script takes him for a bold, yet unsatifying turn that could leave audiences cold. And as the gay backpacking couple, Windham Beacham and David Alanson do a bang-up job cracking wise and matching wits against their toothy nemeses. However, when Bite Marks arrives at its climactic third act, with all of its characters and occult forces in place, Bessenger seems content to simply draw a straight, uncomplicated line to the end, leaving this reviewer slack-jawed in mid-popcorn toss, sputtering “That’s it? Really?” 

  

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