OPENING NIGHT FILM
Sponsored by the St. Pete Clearwater Film Commission

Erynn Dalton, 2023, Florida, 71 min.

Guests from the film will be in attendance and will provide a cabaret pre-show!

Seems like a perfect time in Florida for campy gangland humor. Fort Lauderdale Director Erynn Dalton (The Gravedigger) delivers this raucous delight. Miss Minnie Bouvèé (Eric Swanson) is a full-bodied queen of the Big Easy underworld who finds herself under threat by a mysterious masked predator and the fragrance of gardenias, a “sore spot of torment” from Miss Minnie’s past. Adding to her distress is the return of her former lover, Jackson, a conniving rake looking for money. Never mind that Jackson dumped her 20 years ago to marry her younger sister, Mimi Bouvèé-Truvé, (Benjamin Shaevitz) a demure housewife who can catapult from a dainty deb in a pink frilly apron to a foul mouth terror when she disapproves of the caterer’s quote. Enter Miss Minnie’s longtime nemesis, Poodles Makenzie (deliciously delivered by Jennifer McClain), “a psychopath with a hideous coiffure,” who seeks to destroy Miss Minnie and everything she holds dear. Robert Leleux’s script of giggle worthy turns of phrase, “theirs is a romantic intrigue” along with excellent singing and gorgeous costumes are a delightful dressing to the bloody mayhem and murder splayed across the screen with glorious delight. (Sunny Hall)