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Staten Island Sex Cult
Rating: 3 Stars
Video 10/Village East Productions. Produced by Steve Sargent. Edited and directed by Jack Shoot. Videography by Justin Dubois. Music by Jesse Nurphy. Starring Lance Burstin, Chris Capelli, Joey La Beau, John Leon, Malice, Carlos Morales, Sox, Vinny Lucchese, Kembra Pfahler, and Stinkmetal.
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It's early summer, 1997, and strange lights are hovering over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The tabloids are filled with details of Andrew Cunanan's murderous rampage. At Fairplay Male Image Consultants on Staten Island, members of the sex cult that occupies the premises are having their morning coffee. "Can you believe that fucking Andrew?" frets Tanya (Kembra Pfahler, in a non-sexual role). "First he's working with us, then the next thing you know he's become a serial killer, making headlines and all sorts of international free publicity!"

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The cult members' fashion preferences include pierced eyebrows, gnarly tattoos, sleek leather gear, and Versace T-shirts. Their sexual preferences are largely homo, with some emphasis on feet. "Nothing like the smell of fresh feet in the morning to jump start a man's day!" says group leader Stinkmetal, assertive in his lemon-chiffon Mohawk, when he appears to give his followers a pep talk and their day's assignments. Later, we see cult-boy Vinny Lucchese sucking the toes of Joey La Beau, whom he's picked up on the Staten Island Ferry, while La Beau plants a kiss on his left sneaker.

The sex is never quite as kinky as the premise threatens, but it's sometimes very hot, particularly during a shower scene between Chris Capelli and Lance Burstin. This whole enterprise is wrapped in the quasi-underground screwball sensibility of New York artist Charles Atlas, working under his nom-de-porn, Jack Shoot. As Video 10's accompanying press release notes, the plot of Staten Island Sex Cult is "slightly enigmatic and non-linear" a nimble way of saying it doesn't quite make sense. It has something to do with cult members' efforts to generate enough sexual energy to teleport themselves to an alien "father ship" that will carry them off to a higher, more exalted state of being. Ending in a scattering of smoking shoes, this bad-ass curiosity is frequently funny.