Parody this, Batman…

TORONTO from www.reuters.com – “L.A. Zombie,” a Canadian indie film described by the Melbourne International Film Festival as “gay zombie porn,” has been denied an Australian festival berth by local censors.

The Australian Film Classification Board concluded that implied sex with corpses by an alien zombie in Los Angeles, breached local taste standards.

“L.A. Zombie” will receive a world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland on August 5, before its North American bow at the Toronto festival in September, according to the film’s producers. It was to have screened in Melbourne on August 7 and 8.

Director Bruce LaBruce [pictured] said the censors viewed only the softcore version of his film, “which features no explicit anally penetrative sex.”

LaBruce has built a directorial career shooting hardcore pornography that aims to produce a return for financiers, along with a second softcore version with auteur touches that can screen on the festival circuit to critical acclaim.

The hardcore version of “L.A. Zombie” will be released separately on Halloween after the softcore version plays the international festival circuit.

“Although apparently the Australian Classification Board has no problem passing all manner of mainstream torture porn movies which feature, amongst other things, the rape and dismemberment of women, it’s interesting that they have no stomach for a movie that reaffirms life,” LaBruce said in a statement.

from www.smh.com.au – The director of gay zombie porn film LA Zombie says he is delighted his movie was banned.

‘‘My first thought was ‘Eureka!’’’ director Bruce LaBruce said, speaking from his home in Toronto.

‘‘I’ll never understand how censors don’t see that the more they try to suppress a film, the more people will want to see it. It gives me a profile I didn’t have yesterday.’’

Mr LaBruce says the Australian classification board should have allowed LA Zombie to screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival because of its ‘‘artistic merit’’.

Festival director Richard Moore received a letter yesterday from the Film Classification Board director Donald McDonald, stating that L.A. Zombie could not be screened as it would in his opinion be refused classification.

‘‘My film is debuting at Locarno in competition, it’s a prestigious festival. So it’s self evident it has artistic merit and most censorship boards take that into account. I’m surprised [the Australian classification board] didn’t take it into consideration, if they knew.’’
Gore … The film stars several prominent gay porn stars, actors and models.

Made for ‘‘less than $US100,000’’ in Los Angeles last year, LA Zombie was devised as ‘‘a reaction against torture porn’’ says La Bruce. ‘‘People come back to life [in my film], it’s a metaphor for healing.’’

He called the classification board ‘‘hypocritical’’ for banning his film while ‘‘they pass so many mainstream films that have the most extreme violence, with brutal treatment towards women, and torture and dismemberment, but because they didn’t show a penis, they can be screened with impunity.’’

LaBruce admitted that his film did have explicit scenes of sex and violence, but said the version that was banned from the festival was a ‘‘soft core’’ version, where ‘‘it’s obviously a fake prosthetic. It’s a bizarre-looking thing with a scorpion’s stinger, it’s clearly not a human penis.’’

Film festival director Richard Moore said the festival has not yet decided if it will appeal against the ban, but LaBruce has already started a twitter and Facebook campaign urging Australians to protest the classification board’s decision. It is not yet known if the board’s decision to refuse to give LA Zombie an exemption from classification (so that it could be shown at festivals) will automatically mean that it will be refused classification as an R 18+ or X18+ DVD.

This is not the first time LaBruce’s films have been banned. Singapore has blocked several attempts by film festivals to screen his films, the British censors have insisted on the removal of scenes and segments from several of his films over the past two decades, before they could be released on DVD, and in Japan, his DVDs are distributed with a black dot hovering over the more graphic sex scenes.

The director denied he’d deliberately sought censorship when making LA Zombie, which features gaping wounds, corpses, and several [faked] body fluids in close-up detail.

‘‘I wasn’t expecting it with this one,’’ he said. ‘‘My film Otto screened in Melbourne and that also had a zombie penetrating another zombie.’’