Otto at Starz FilmCenter

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More About

• Lucio Fulci
• Bruce LaBruce

Even as an ardent, tireless fan of zombie cinema, I've never seen anything quite like Otto; or, Up With Dead People. Existing in some heretofore undiscovered common ground between the arthouse and the grindhouse, Otto is a tale of a young gay zombie in a cruel world that's as dead in its own way as he is.

He wanders through a bleak, decayed city, adrift and lost, until he walks into a casting call for a zombie movie. As he becomes the lead in the director's latest opus, he begins to recover memories of who he used to be, but it's not clear that that's a good thing. It's not a film for everyone — even zombie lovers may have trouble sinking their teeth into this one's flesh. The film moves at a zombie's pace — slow, steady and nearly unvarying throughout. In its use of layers of meaning, film-within-a-film and other arty devices, it can be bewildering. There are a number of explicit but not hard-core gay zombie sex scenes — disturbing, yes, but less so than the explicit torture-porn close-ups of Lucio Fulci's work, if viewed objectively. Continuing the long tradition of using the zombie to represent or reflect themes of alienation, anti-consumerism, persecution and loneliness, director Bruce LaBruce has concocted something both strange and satisfying.

Otto screens at Starz FilmCenter at 5, 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. January 30 through February 5; tickets range from $6 to $9.50. Call 303-595-3456 or go to www.denverfilm.org for more information.