Australian Film Festival Rejects Bruce LaBruce’s L.A. Zombie

The folks at the Melbourne International Film Festival wouldn’t be caught dead with a necrophiliac. That’s why they rejected Bruce LaBruce’s zombie porn art flick, L.A. Zombie which features Francois Sagat and a handful of other porn actors like Eddie Diaz, Wolf Hudson, Adam Killian, and Erik Rhodes. The film board is worried that the film would “breach local taste standards”, which is odd considering that the film only features a blood orgy where zombies fuck each other’s rot-holes and gunshot wounds.
Outraged, LaBruce issued a statement. Here’s the best part:

Intriguingly, the version of L.A. Zombie that has been banned by the Australian Film Classification Board is the softcore version, which features no explicit anally penetrative sex. Although this version does contain a few brief shots of flaccid penises, the only erect member in the show belongs to the alien zombie, played by French porn star Francois Sagat, and it is a prosthetic (fake) cock, not the actor’s own. The hardcore version, L.A. Zombie Hardcore, will be released and distributed separately on Halloween after the softcore version plays for several months on the international film festival circuit.

L.A. Zombie is about an alien zombie who emerges from the ocean and proceeds to find dead bodies in Los Angeles with which he has sex in order to bring them back to life—not as zombies, but as true resurrections. 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. The alien zombie may or may not be a homeless schizophrenic, so the film also serves as a kind of document of the epidemic of homelessness that currently ravages the city. Censorship in any form should not be tolerated, but to ban a film that one programmer at a major festival has called “a masterpiece of melancholia” is truly beyond the pale.

We posted pictures from the film back when it was still filming. QC totally supports gay zombies and thinks that film festivals are supposed to embrace art and push the envelope. But there’s no telling how good the actual film is—Bruce LaBruce isn’t exactly known for good direction, great acting, or high production value. So while it’s possible that Melbourne might have rejected L.A. Zombie for its gunshot wound fucking, they might have rejected it just for being a bad movie. Either way, we’ll watch it as soon as we can and report back to you.