blanche-2 Charles Busch has a cult following in New York City, as he's known for his hilarious plays. A few years ago, he broke into the mainstream with the Broadway hit, Tale of the Allergist's Wife, and now there's even a documentary about him. An immensely talented writer, he knows the classic female legends genre backwards and forwards and can play one with the best of them."Die Mommie Die" was originally a Busch play, and the film, albeit low budget, is excellent - actually, all the better because it's low budget. It's a combo of "Dead Ringer," "The Big Cube," "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane," and "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte." Busch plays Angela Arden, who performed with her twin sister Barbara. Angela broke with Barbara and made it big, while Barbara wound up in broken-down supper clubs. Barbara eventually died. Today Angela, a real tramp, is living the high life with a rich husband, a gay son, a Lolita-type daughter, and a young boyfriend (Jason Priestley).Busch is hilarious, looking a bit like Kathy Griffin, wearing fabulous clothes and looking darn good.This film has a gay sensibility, but if you love the old movies it's based on, you should enjoy it. Very high camp.

jotix100 Charles Busch, the humongous talented writer and performer of the brilliant theatrical spoofs "Vampires Lesbians of Sodom", "Shanghai Moon", "Red Scare on Sunset", "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife", among others, makes an enormous contribution with his screen treatment of the material he created for this film. Under the direction of Mark Rucker, Mr. Busch clearly demonstrates why he is a man ahead of his times.Charles Ludlum, Everett Quinton and Charles Busch, were the ones responsible for the plays that made them icons of the Off and Off-Off-Broadway theater. These men transformed themselves into the larger than life women they wrote about, most taken from the movies they all adored. Those screen goddesses clearly received a lovely tribute from these performers. Charles Busch, perhaps, was the most visible of those early drag dramas. With his enormous success in "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom", Mr. Busch conquered a great New York audience as this play proved. The rest is history.With "Die, Mommie, Die", Mr. Busch seems to be a reincarnation of a younger and sexier Joan Crawford, a woman that is revered by the author. This is a film that "borrows" from those women pictures where everything is larger than life. Those were films where outrageous things were done by the leading actress. There are elements of several of Ms. Crawford's movies, but one can still see influences of Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Swanson, Bette Davis and others."Die, Mommie, Die" is camp of the highest order. Charles Busch plays the twin sisters Angela and Barbara Arden. These women are yin and yang in the Busch lexicon. In addition for looming large over the material, Mr. Busch's own take on the characters are never tacky, or obnoxious. As in all of Mr. Busch's plays, there is so much style that some of the studios would probably benefit from this man's talent in the fashion department. Mr. Busch has an impeccable taste as shown in all his appearances.Of course, this is a film to enjoy because of the extreme situations that only a Charles Busch can conceive. The dialog is fast and it is witty beyond words. For people not exposed to Mr. Busch's brand of humor, it might take a while to realize this is a unique voice in this type of film genre.The supporting cast, Jason Priestley, Natasha Lyonne, Philip Baker Hall, Stark Sands, and Frances Conroy, back up the star, Mr. Busch, and they make the film a lot of fun to watch.

rcraig62 Die, Mommie, Die! is either camp, or satire, or a satire of camp, it's difficult to tell. And there lies the problem with the movie. It's a takeoff of the sort of Joan Crawford/Bette Davis movies from both their 1940's heyday and the hagbag pictures of the 60's. The range seems to cover the whole lifespan of their careers. It's about a washed-up singer/actress played by a man, Charles Busch, in female regalia, named Angela Arden (The character is aptly named. Busch, in drag, strongly resembles Eve Arden. If only he had her comic timing and delivery, the performance would have been a tour-de-force instead of just a good female impersonation), whose affair with a young gigolo (Jason Priestley) is interrupted by the arrival of her producer-husband (Philip Baker-Hall), from a Madrid vacation, who proceeds to take firm control of his home and marriage, driving Angela to contemplate murder.From there, the plot twists into a series of murders, potential murders, sexual crises, and identity crises. It's funny in places, and has some truly unique comic turns (Angela trying to dispose of her husband with a poisoned suppository is gleefully tasteless, and a secret language spoken by Angela and her son that her husband and daughter can't tap into is a beauty - replete with subtitles, no less). But it tends to lose its place in its own chronology; eras are confused, and we can't make sense of things - the humor doesn't match the genre it's lampooning. The story is supposed to take place in the psychedelic 60's, but at the beginning, we can't place it. When Angela's son tells her he left school because a student demonstration shut the school down, it seems an anachronistic joke. There's nothing to indicate a 60's dressing-down by the kids - they just dress like spoiled Hollywood rich kids. Natasha Lyonne, as Angela's daughter, is clothed like the TV Patty Duke. And while Angela and her husband seem locked in 1940's wardrobe time warp (we suspect that's part of the joke; these people are washed-up in Hollywood because they can't get out of 1949), Angela's slick young gigolo is also dressed in 40's garb, a la Bing Crosby.Busch is really the center of the movie, though. Oddly enough, he manages to be believable in character without being believable as a woman (he gives himself away when he speaks, his tones in the lower register are clearly that of a man, not a deep-chested woman). He gives Angela a flighty, tawdry charm; we sympathize with him/her when Baker-Hall lays down the law and ends all her fun. Angela is made promiscuous without being trashy; she has style, and one can understand how she must have been appealing in her halcyon days of performing. In the musical number performed by Angela, "Why Not Me?", Busch gives Angela her glory, she looks like a star, radiant and engagingly naughty, Busch suggests Bette Midler in the routine. The dubbed-in vocal doesn't quite work, though, it's too tepid; it should have been more ebullient, boisterous, rousing. Baker-Hall is great playing the synthesis of all the Sam Spiegels and Dore Scharies, he's a robust outcast, a wash-up who still has the imagined clout to throw his weight around at home. The only performance that feels wrong is Priestley's; he's too broad, his line readings too self-conscious. The others are playing camp, he's satirizing it, like an actor employed by Mad Magazine. He gave a more creditable performance as the teen heartthrob in Love and Death on Long Island, maybe that's all he'll ever be. He doesn't have the sophistication to play a gigolo, he lacks a richness and a physical imposition. He's too boy-next-door, even with bags under his eyes that are making him look like Fred Allen.Die, Mommie, Die! does have some good laughs in it, and the performances, especially Busch's and Baker-Hall's, are really a kick. It doesn't quite capture the Crawford/Davis oeuvre too well, though. That province still belongs to the real stars.

Roland E. Zwick Screenwriter Charles Busch has adapted 'Die Mommie Die' from his own stage play. A transvestite, Busch also plays the lead role of Angela Arden, a washed-up torch singer in the late 1960's who murders her movie producer husband by giving him an arsenic-laced suppository. Other characters include her incest-oriented virgin daughter, her gay teen son and her bisexual stud boyfriend who manages to run through her, her son and her daughter before he's through with the family.'Die Mommie Die' has all the makings of a nifty little satire in the style of John Waters. Alas, Busch, who is clearly in the bush leagues when it comes to film-making, spends so much time trying to be arch that he forgets to be funny. The story, which is a cross between 'Mommie Dearest' and 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,' is rife with campy possibilities, but the film never catches fire, maintaining far too subdued and restrained a tone for this kind of material. Under Mark Rucker's lagging direction, the pacing turns deadly, with the jokes coming a full beat and a half behind where they ought to. Moreover, the deliberately stilted writing and acting are too cute by half, calling so much attention to themselves that they wind up diluting their effectiveness in the process. It's a shame that what should have been a rollicking, manic good time at the movies turns instead into a funereal misfire. Rarely have ninety minutes passed so slowly.