“Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things” is such an amazing buried treasure of exploitation. Striking within spitting distance of “The Boys in the Band”, gay cinema gets their first real drive-in schlock fest. Two criminals in Florida decide to hide out while one pretends to be his Aunt Martha. The non cross dressing criminal meets a local girl and he starts to question his emerging sexuality. This only upsets Aunt Martha.
Gender politics, liberal use of LSD and gritty sexuality combine to create a gender bending trailer park nightmare for 95 minutes. What’s so weird about the film is that the two main characters are painfully homosexual, yet they’re also giant misogynists. The film goes out of the way to keep them from being intimate, but the lower rung criminal keeps talking about the other balls him out. Florida was a hell of a place in the 1970s and I can’t wait to see more of their cinema.
The DVD comes with no special features. Hell, you should just be stunned that the American Genre Film Archive and Vinegar Syndrome were able to rescue this film from obscurity. The 2K restoration is on par with Vinegar Syndrome’s latest efforts. The transfer is smooth and the audio track is crisp, but I can’t quite peg down the actual mix. In the end, I’d recommend a purchase to all cult cinema fans.
Release Date: 8/18/15