Stereotypes In Dyke Hard

Dyke Hard is a celebratory pastiche of multiple B-movies and genre films, exploiting their tropes and clichés in a wild LGBT party of a film. Inspired in part by the work of John Waters, it gives a nod to a dynamic and creative underground of the pre-digital past – a time when political incorrectness and trash rhymed with transgression and carried real meaning and clout. Though "trash as trash can" is the film's credo, these concepts have lost most of their impact today; their milder forms have been appropriated by mainstream entertainers, and what's left of the real thing is usually no further than a Web hit away. Even queer culture, though still a political and social issue, is well on the way to leaving the margins in many countries, thanks in part to performers, media exposure and films such as this one. So there is not much in Dyke Hard that shocks or transgresses or subverts, but it does entertain.

It offers many moments of unabashed fun and delight, provided viewers are willing to sit out the first half hour or so, keeping faith that eventually hot times will
roll. And they will, for once everybody starts to sing, dance, hump, spit and fight, viewers are submerged into a lively, LGBT sexual free-for-all, merging action movie, a queer cabaret show and the Broadway nostalgia musical.

The story goes something like this. An alien cyborg from the future travels to earth and morphs into the nasty and self-centred Riff, a bullying, lesbian high-school student. She founds a band, Dyke Hard, with a bunch of student nobodies, whom she constantly dominates and badgers. Riff, decked in vintage Bowie sci-fi/80s disco, helms the group as lead singer. They shoot to fame with their first song, but soon fall into has-been oblivion when they fail to produce another hit. Riff skips out for a solo career, but falls under the claws of the mysterious Moira, a Nobel laureate and billionaire, with a hidden revenge agenda. Meanwhile, the rest of Dyke Hard is left homeless and broke.

Debut film maker Bitte Andersson lingers too long with setting up the story and establishing the characters, each a distinct stereotype: a nerd keyboardist; a fashion-conscious bassist; a whiney drummer; and a wise-in-her-ways Thai boxer, an addition to the band who becomes its spokesperson and resident sage.
The Swedish actors speak in overly-conscientious English, and pastiche, among other things, something resembling the stylised bad acting one finds in Ed Wood films. This is done on purpose and it works for a while, as does the comic bookish dialogue and some amusing one-liners ("without my action figures, my retirement funds are insufficient"). Other comic moments, some dipping into déjà vu bathroom trash, work less well. This first part of the film, short on its strong points of action and music, lacks bite, and patience fades when the actors began to sound like aliens struggling to sound
human.

But Andersson is an artist, and has a solid background in illustration and special effects. Her keen eye for visual choreography and cadence shines through even as the film sags, alerting discerning viewers that better things are to come. The film finally shifts into high gear when a re-motivated Dyke Hard hits the road for the Battle of the Bands contest, hoping for a comeback. It delivers the goods in a succession of outlandish characters and racy song and dance numbers.

On the way, the band spends the night in a neat haunted house (more Harry Potter than anything) and encounters a singling lesbian ghost who belts out her story of her sexual liberation in death. Then they're off to a prison, run by a Chihuahua-carrying, Nazi-like, bull-dyke warden and her perverse staff. They meet up again with former bartender Buck Blossum. He's reinvented himself as a prison guard so he can hump prisoners, that is, until he succumbs to rainbow-coloured love with The Beast, a terrifying Hannibal Lector rip off. (By now, the audience should be really having fun.)
The band escapes and hightails it to the contest, where the film ends with a feverish grand finale, that includes ninja attackers, deadly female roller skaters, and the mysterious Moira, who shows up with Riff and whose true identity is revealed. The Thai boxer delivers a utopian message straight out of Aquarius, which, in today's world, sounds more like a conflict resolution speech. But nostalgia is as nostalgia can and it works its enlightening magic in its own sweet way: enemies come together and we all go along for the ride. You leave the theatre wondering when Bitt Andersson is going to throw her next hell of a party.