Touches You

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Bruce LaBruce is (very weirdly) becoming one of my favorite indy film makers. WWaaaay back in the early nineties in film school we saw "no skin off my ass" and I dismissed it then as pretentious soft-core. I was glib and wrong. Ages ago my friends and I went to see "Hustler White" at a midnite showing and frankly we were at once titillated and impressed. Then when "Raspberry Reich" rolled out I was ALMOST convinced....That film struck a pitch-perfect chord between 60's revolutionary porn (I Am Curious Yellow) and modern satire. I just watched "Otto" and I am officially a fan. Through the use of explicit sex and graphic violence M. LaBruce is actually making a point! I'm impressed and pleasantly surprised. This is maybe a "zombie" movie...but more specifically a neat commentary on modern youth with a great sense of humor and a chilling overtone. If you're older and adventurous and want to get a sort of "summary" of the present youth-culture and this whole "zombie thing" this is a great film to watch. Underrated and sublime (after you get-over all the gay sex...if you have to get-over it at all)

I'm blown away by how much I like "Otto." I'm a straight woman who is not into horror films, B movies or zombie flicks. I am, however, studying gay cinema; still, everything I read about this film told me I would hate it. Ultimately, my reasons for liking it have little to do with an interest in gay cinema but rather I am touched by what "Otto" says of heart and head. Which was a big surprise! I was intrigued by the silent film element. I absolutely love the idea of refusal to participate in "consensual reality" as a revolutionary act. That was what made me decide to keep watching and I'm glad I did. I'm rating this highly because I love to be surprised. I enjoy having my preconceived notions shattered, especially when I am so certain that I know how I feel about things. I have never seen anything like "Otto" -- which impresses me and has me thinking. Not only do I not regret the time spent watching this film but now I'm writing this. Who saw that coming?If you have patience, there is something lovely in all of this messy, gory absurdity. The surreal pretension leads to something rare and sweet.******SPOILERS!******

LaBruce, makes an attempt at being edgy, ironic, and satirical… but what he delivers is an uninspired, poorly written, poorly acted, poorly edited waste of time.Firstly, I don't know what's more offensive… The fact that LaBruce exploits the struggle for LGBT rights, by using it as an obvious crutch to deflect criticism of his depictions of vile and unconscionable acts of violence and necrophilia, or how badly he misses the mark and twists what could have been a brilliant metaphor, into something you could imagine being shown in the basement of the Providence Road Baptist Church. Then again, it could be his sad attempt at a parody of post-modern nihilism, which also shows not a spark of insight, and instead of skewering the genre, he just parrots it.Whatever his intent, LaBruce misses irony by miles and wouldn't know satire if Groucho Marx shoved a copy of Huckleberry Finn straight up the orifice from which he originally pulled the screenplay for this film.His ironic metaphor, to take mainstream societies rejection of homosexuality and place it parallel to the gristly abomination that zombies represent in fiction; *could* have been brilliant, but his half-hearted effort lets it fall flat and as dead as his protagonist. The real horror here is the result of LaBruce's failure to show any irony at all in this metaphor, or prove it false. Instead, he actually drains all the humanity out of his story and actors, the very characteristic that would give lie to the idea that homosexuals are monstrous abominations that defile human flesh, what's more, he adds fuel to the stereotype by having his characters devalue, exploit, and abuse one another casually.One may be tempted to forgive LaBruce, his blatant exploitation, since this film is a excuse for pornography, disguised as social commentary, disguised as art. It could even be ignored that LaBruce feels free to dispense with the character development, continuity of plot, dialog, humor, or even context that might make this movie bearable… that is, if this really was pornography… but even at that LaBruce fails miserably.What's more tedious than watching some lifeless derivative piece of art house drivel? Why, it's watching an *insincere* rendition of that same lifeless derivative piece of art house drivel; where only the most obtuse and predictable observations are made as satire and then we are expected to find them profound and witty. LaBruce attempts to mock the genre… but does so in such an artless way he becomes part of it. Like two mimes pretending to be mirror images of one another…only that's not the best description, because the mimes may accidentally entertain you… unlike this film.I would recommend this film to anyone who has survived the zombie apocalypse in actual fact. After mankind is wiped out and all his works have fallen to ruin, watching this film would ease the sense of loss. One could shrug and say… "the culture that produced this is dead and gone… good riddance." Think you Mr. LaBruce, for giving us all just one more reason to be ashamed of humanity. Well done.

It takes a certain caliber of film-maker to approach a genre which was intended to horrify its audience and, instead, make it amuse and move them. I found "Otto; or, Up With Dead People" to be Bruce LaBruce's strongest work to date. The plot was both the most linear and accessible, and at the same time the most convoluted. Even with a lack of chronology, a dizzying metafilm of movie within movie, and multiple points of view and filming techniques, the movie manages to devote more time to standard plot development than previous Bruce LaBruce works. Perhaps this was necessary to reach out to all the viewers on a more explicit level, and create empathy for a character, who belongs to a group of otherwise reviled monsters. It was quite bizarre to leave the theater relating to characters who had been shown brutally eviscerating each other in graphic detail. But it is this feeling of commonality with a supposedly terrifying monster that makes the movie powerful and touching. The equivocal metaphor that compares conformist society to zombies is more like a thinly veiled reality: take away the blood and guts and what's the difference between the two? It goes to show that you don't always need a grandiose and earnest tone to say something significant. Sometimes, the silliest and most ridiculous metaphors are the ones which uncover the most meaningful truth.