Category: Action

D’Arcy Drollinger’s ‘Shit & Champagne’ delivers high-kicking, ass-whooping comedy!

When the drug-lords of the underworld kill your fiancé and your sister – and the cops stand idly by and do nothing – there’s only one thing left to do… dance!

Writer-director D’Arcy Drollinger’s tribute to female empowerment and the low-budget exploitation films of the 1970’s, Shit & Champagne delivers high-kicking, ass-whooping comedy.

After her fiancé, Rod (Mario Diaz), and her half-sister, world renowned calf model Brandy (Steven LeMay), are both brutally murdered, Champagne Horowitz Jones Dickerson White (Drollinger), a divorcée and exotic dancer from the wrong side of the tracks, uses all the right moves to single-handedly take on ‘Mal-Wart,’ the largest sex, drug and back-to-school clothing ring in the country.

But when her best friend becomes addicted to booty bumps and is forced to work as a Mal-Wart brand discount prostitute, Champagne has no other choice than to go undercover and infiltrate the corrupt organization.

Using an arsenal of disguises, a plethora of kung-fu moves and a cornucopia of one-liners, Champagne dances her way down the fast and furious road to revenge.

Adapted from Drollinger’s wildly successful stage show, Shit & Champagne is fiendishly fun, offering up wall-to-wall slapstick and camp thanks to the unwavering comic timing of triple threat writer, director and lead actress, as well as an impressive supporting cast of all-star drag talent.

Watch the trailer for Shit & Champagne below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

A respected soldier falls for a young recruit in the searing gay military drama ‘Eismayer’

Sergeant Major Eismayer (Gerhard Liebmann) is known and feared as the toughest training officer in the Austrian Armed Forces. Ruthless with recruits, he is seemingly unwavering in his ideas about discipline, order and presenting an image of macho toughness.

When he starts to fall in love with Falak (Luka Dimic), a new recruit who unashamedly embraces his homosexuality, Eismayer’s closeted existence is shaken to the core.

To a man like Eismayer, loving another man cannot be reconciled with the understanding of what a model soldier should be. Will he choose to protect his badass tough guy image over all else… or can he follow his heart and his true desire?

Inspired by an incredible true story, director David Wagner’s Eismayer is a hard-hitting queer love story set against a modern military backdrop.

A powerful film about coming out, gay love, toxic masculinity, traditional gender roles, fear and friendship, Eismayer aims to tear down your preconceptions and assumptions about masculinity and strength before rebuilding them in a whole new way.

Watch the trailer for Eismayer below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Director Bertrand Mandico offers up a visually stunning queer allegory with ‘The Wild Boys’

The Wild Boys, the debut feature from prolific French short film director Bertrand Mandico, is ready to blow your mind.

Set on a small island at the beginning of the 20th century, the film tells the tale of five adolescent boys (all played by female-identifying actresses) who come from wealthy families, but find themselves increasingly drawn to the occult.

Looking to explore lives of crime and transgression, the group collectively commits a brutal crime – aided by ‘Trevor,’ a strange deity of chaos they can’t seem to control.

The boys are soon punished, forced to board a boat with a lecherous sea captain who is hell-bent on taming their ferocious appetites. They arrive on a lush island where dangers and pleasures abound… and the boys start to transform in both mind and body.

Gorgeously shot on 16mm and brimming with homoeroticism, genderfluidity and sly, subversive humor, The Wild Boys will take you on a heady, hedonistic journey you won’t soon forget. It’s a colorful, unique and strangely funny underground queer masterpiece.

Watch the trailer for The Wild Boys below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: The Letter Men

Between the years 1938 and 1941, a British man named Gordon Bowsher wrote over 200 love letters to his sweetheart, Gilbert Bradley, while he was off in combat during World War II.

Surviving records of queer relationships from that time period are rare. Presumably, most letters would have been destroyed out of fear of discovery. But luckily, Gordon’s letters have survived. Gilbert kept them safe until his death in 2007 – and they were eventually discovered by museum curators in 2015.

Now, more than 80 years after they were first written, the letters represent the largest known collection of LGBTQ+ love notes from the era. With exceptional production values and a fleet 8-minute runtime, director Andy Vallentine manages to craft an epic depiction of one gay love story that was almost lost to time.

Using Gordon’s own words, The Letter Men transports us back to that era, showing us not only the battlefields and the air raid shelters, but the deepest recesses of the human heart.

Featuring truly swoon-worthy lead performances from actors Matthew Postlethwaite and Garrett Clayton, the film offers a unique window into the untold true story of two gay men who were desperately in love, torn apart by war and unknowingly fated to live on in queer history.

Watch a short trailer for The Letter Men below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Go on tour with the drag wrestling collective ‘Chokehole’ in this fabulous documentary

Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland tells the story of how one disenfranchised group of queer performers defeated all the odds to create a wildly compelling theatrical show.

One hot summer night in New Orleans, a popular drag collective decided to stage a wresting night. Dressing as their vibrant alter-egos, they proceeded to beat the living daylights out each other while the audience collectively lost their minds. That night, the wrestling collective ‘Chokehole’ was born.

From Yony Leyser, the filmmaker behind Desire Will Set You Free and Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution, this new 22-minute documentary follows the group as they take their show to Germany.

The film observes the artists both in and out of drag, sharing their larger-than-life and theatrical alter egos while displaying the unique vulnerabilities that lie behind each character. This film explores their loud, vibrant personas alongside their heart-breaking personal stories – and the adversity they’ve had to overcome.

We learn how each character copes with love, sex, transitions, post-trauma and socioeconomics while getting a glimpse into their fantastical, vividly realized world – which is as much an escape for the artists as it is for the audience.

Watch a short teaser trailer for Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland below. The documentary is now streaming on Dekkoo.

‘Supernatural’ is a heady sci-fi fantasia – an art film, political essay and erotic gay drama

One hundred years into the future, an unseen leader transforms Thailand into a strange new world where everything is orderly, citizens earn merit through good deeds and humans are forbidden from touching one another.

For the characters in Supernatural, nostalgia for the past, as well as the painful longing for some form of sexual intimacy, are starting to take their toll. Jumping backward in time, the past lives of three of these characters are revealed.

Packed with gorgeous imagery and sensual homoeroticism, Thai writer-director Thunska Pansittivorakul’s heady sci-fi fantasia amplifies the power of touch while telling an epic story with limited resources. Part experimental art film, part political essay and part erotic gay drama, the film tells individual stories that take place in both the past and the future while commenting on gay life in the present.

Watch the trailer for Supernatural below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Bettas

A seemingly trivial couple’s fight turns unexpectedly violent in Bettas, a frenzied and deliberately over-the-top short thriller from director Benjamin-Shalom Rodriguez.

Lovers Frank and David (Jose Diaz-Oldenburg and Nick Ley) are showering together in a bathroom that isn’t their own. They’re away from home celebrating both Frank’s birthday and the wedding of his best friend.

David is harboring some resentments at the start of the film. Not only is he salty about having paid for the trip, but he’s not happy that Frank coerced him into having sex by the public pool of their hotel.

After a particular song comes on and Frank declines David’s invitation to dance, all hell breaks loose – and their simmering relationship troubles come to the fore in a shockingly bloody crescendo.

Uncomfortably funny and made with a brisk, kinetic energy, Bettas is a deliciously twisted “anti-romance.” We recommend watching it on a date night with your significant other – if only as a cautionary tale about anger management.

Check out the poster for Bettas below. The full short film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Tainted Souls is a gritty and intense Italian crime drama

The complex lives of a group of seemingly different tenants in a cheap Roman apartment building come crashing together in Tainted Souls, an inventive and unsettling Italian crime drama.

Mauro (Maurizio Tesei) has manic ambitions that always seem to outpace his limited means. This causes great strife with his wife Simona (Giulia Bevilacqua). Looking to make something of himself, he gets involved in the business of local crime lord Carmine (Nuccio Siano), which may lead to his downfall.

Meanwhile, former bodybuilder Marcello (Vinicio Marchioni) is married to Chiara (Anna Foglietta), but having a secret affair with Walter (Vincenzo Salemme), a professor and author who also serves as the narrator of the story.

Between the walls of this rundown apartment complex just outside of Rome, all of these disparate lives converge into each other. Will anyone be left standing at the end of this intense character drama… or will a few wayward souls bring everyone down with them?

Watch the trailer for Tainted Souls below. The film is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Don’t miss the deliciously sexy new Dekkoo-original series ‘We Will Never Die’

Sascha Weingarten stars in the brand-new Dekkoo-original series We Will Never Die as Philipp, a seductive, but dangerous criminal from Germany who catches the eye of an Italian tourist named Luca (Jacopo Garfagnoli) while vacationing on the Greek island of Rhodes.

What begins as an innocent encounter between the two ends up taking a sinister turn when Luca witnesses an illicit drug deal. A deadly game of cat and mouse is soon set in motion – continuing in Germany where more men are unexpectedly pulled into harm’s way.

A deliciously twisted new offering from the mind of prolific filmmaker Tor Iben (the German director behind films like The Visitor, Orpheus’ Song, The Passenger and The Year I Lost My Mind), We Will Never Die is a sexually-charged international gay action-thriller that will keep you guessing until the bitter end.

Watch the trailer for We Will Never Die below. The full five-episode first season is available now on Dekkoo.