Priscilla Agent Smith, Queen of Rivendale

On Netflix this week was The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994). The hubby popped in the DVD. Netflix tend to sit on top of the TV til someone bothers to put it in. I've long forgotten what I put on my video list so now every week is a surprise. I just presume that they were all movies I would have liked to have watched at some point or another.

So we're watching, and I'm thinking that heavy brow looks really familiar and indeed it was Hugo Weaving, 15 years before he became Agent Smith or Elrond, playing Mitzi, a drag-queen who takes another two queens on a road trip to the Australian outback to become reacquainted with his son. He already has that very serious stare about him that gives middle earth its gravitas, which the way I'm used to seeing him, but also many light hearted scenes, he is in drag afterall and wears a dress made entirely out of tsinellas.

Bernadette the aging transgender on the trip is played by Terence Stamp aka General Zod from the Superman movies. Nope didn't recognize him one bit.

I remember in college, there was a bit of an uproar over a Asian woman roll in the movie. Cynthia, played by Julia Cortez, is Bob's wife, whom they meet because Bob is the only mechanic for miles and miles. Her back story is that he woke up one night in a generic Asian country and told him they were married. Apparently, he was some kind of sex fetish performer with the knack of launching not one but three ping-pongs, from, um, well, certainly not her mouth. She uses a me-no-english accent, but often curses him out in full on Tagalog. She feeds off of the men's attention to her special talent. I still don't quite understand how her character works in the movie, except to show that Bob is a supposedly straight nice guy with a soft heart for Queer folk. Bob does try to hide his wife from people because he's ashamed of her talents and locks her outfits and ping pongs in a cabinet. She breaks the cabinet to perform at the bar and the next day she packs her stuff and leaves him. The actress only other credit in imdb is a Power Rangers movie.

The whole movie is like most road movies, nothing like sticking people in an enclosed space for miles and miles to get a plot going, except with tons of sequins and feather boas. The movie ends on a happy note as they find acceptance and appreciation wherever they end up.