Sugar High Glitter City (2001)

Directed by Jackie Strano
Starring Shar Rednour, Kiki Carr, Simone Del La Getto
Rated XXX
USA 


"You want some fuckin' candy, bitch?"

Jackie Strano was the lead singer for Sappho-rawk band The Hail Marys. Along with zine-editress Shar Rednour, she was also the prime mover behind SIR video. That's Sex, Indulgence, and Rock.  They made lesbian videos. Not the phony lesbians that you're used to, though -the airbrushed former cheerleader straight porn girls that purr like kittens and nibble on each other like toothless grandmothers with finger sandwiches. You might be wishing for such puffball illusions by the end of SIR production, but your not going to get it. What they're all about is the real lesbo-underground, and it's a raw world of sexual outlaws with their own brand of rough riding justice. Strap yourself in. Or on, whatever.

Sugar High Glitter City is a near-future Dystopian fantasy, more than a little redolent of 70's underground sex classic Cafe Flesh. No sex-negative rubber neckers in Glitter City, though. All the citizens here are in on the rough trade at one end or the other. The problem with this town is that sugar- not a euphemism, I'm talking about lollipops and such, is outlawed. There's no real explanation for this- I'm guessing Nazi dentists, though. At any rate, you know how it goes with humans- outlaw something, and suddenly everybody wants it.

Kit Kat bars are like vials of crack here, and desperate sugar-fixers roam the streets. Many have resorted to prostitution to support their habits, and that's where the trouble starts. Crooked vice cops take full advantage of these troubled times, two in particular. Head honchess Jackie S. herself, and her silver pantsed side-kick Stark (who looks violently insane throughout these proceedings, by the way), bang every Nutrasweety in town- dangling blow-pops in front of them and threatening jail time if they don't go along.

Their are also sugar mamas, a chocolate mafia, and sleazy Janes of every shape and size strutting their stuff in Glitter City, all looking to score in one way or the other. Although all the candy whores in town are lesbians of the lipstick variety- a little rough around the curves, maybe, but definitely het-friendly, the rest of this clit-crazy town is populated by girls who look like they work at the health food store. For squareball straights (like me, turns out), it can be pretty alarming. It's a particular mind-bender halfway through when what looks like a thick-waisted Dave Navarro - you know, cheesy mustache and chin hair, cowboy hat, leather pants- trades some sugar pills for some back seat education from a Billy Idol girl, and when she gets moving, she tears off her body-wrap to reveal a very feminine, though oddly Ron Jeremy-like figure underneath. Yikes.

There are endless variations on this theme in Sugar High. Groovy chick in the back of a van is peddling cherry pies, mowhawked skate-dyke wheels in and makes out with her, and the pie. Sugar slut parades around town in a bra made of candy hearts. All day suckers are sucked on, all day long. The whole thing is one hallucinatory gang-fuck of confection and girl on girl love. This film won a ton of awards when it was released last year, and I'm not surprised. On an obviously ultra-low budget, SIR has created a whole alternate world, part hardcore pornography, part 70's ghetto-fried blaxploitation, part Twilight Zone. If it didn't scare me half to death, I would have loved it.

- Ken McIntyre