Friday Movie Review – Hedwig and the Angry Inch

There aren’t many movies that are released on DVD for mainstream audiences with decidedly LGBT themes that endure and are popular enough to be considered cult classics 10 years or more after their release. Today’s movie review bucks that trend.

By way of comparison, the cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show originally came out in 1975. The movie was a science fiction satire that involved a transsexual doctor Frankenstein type – in this case, Frank-n-Furter – who was trying to create the perfect man while also playing strange sexual games with his visitors/semi-prisoners who happen upon his residence on a dark and stormy night. The audience participation style movie has endured in willing theaters for more than 35 years and has been out on DVD to be enjoyed at home for more than 10 years. It was available on VHS even before that. It continues to rank in the top 2,500 movies for sales volume for all time.

The John Cameron Mitchell acted and directed movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch has taken a page from the Rocky Horror playbook and gone on to become a top draw in it’s own right. After nearly 10 years on DVD, it still ranks in the top 10,000 movies overall in sales volume.

The movie, about an East German male to female transsexual rock star flat out rocks. Our heroine, Hedwig undergoes a botched sex change operation (the title is a play on the results of this) and then leaves East Germany and the Soviet Block to start a new life and to find love, rock fame and fortune in America. This is both dramatic and funny but it’s also filled with great music.

I highly recommend the movie for your Friday night – or any night – view pleasure and the music for whenever the spirit moves you!

Movie and Soundtrack, respectively