What Really Happened to Baby Jane? And the Films of the Gay Girls Riding Club

silly silly silly fun

Pride deserves an extension this year, and I'm manefesting that by taking in this incredible time capsule of mid-century queer culture.

For context, this drag camp send-up of 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane' was not only made mere months after the movie was released, but quite a few years before Stonewall. Its drag culture finding a lane in the time of Kenneth Anger and the Kuchar Brothers, with the incredible ambition to make it happen.

This was 1963 and renegade underground drag collective Gay Girls Riding Club (GGRC) were making parody shorts (on film!) of popular movies at the time. The use of the source material manages to boast both stylistic contemporary irony with a very sincere reverence. It's really amazing this got made.

Largely silent (barring the narration and the score, very Anger-esqe use of the source material) there's so many inventive camera movements and fun tricks here. In perhaps the truest of all underground fashion, very little of the GGRC's information exists today beyond the films and a few small blurbs and ads from the time. But their prolific creation speak to enginuity and community.

Essential viewing for any queer gettogether. The energy of these films is just so affecting, you'll want to grab a camera and make your own gay spoofs of Hollywood classics.

AGFA has the best collections hands down. I WILL own them all one day.

I always have fun with these types of AGFA collection releases. From the crazy slipcover to the films contained within, this is another collection of material that I'm excited to really spend some time rifling through.