Review: Disorienting Dick

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2022
Images from the Internet

Disorienting Dick
Directed by Richard Griffin
Reasonable Moving Picture Company; Scorpio Film Releasing
88 minutes, 2022
https://www.facebook.com/ScorpioFilmReleasing

Historically, director Richard Griffin likes to reuse cast members in phases. For a while it was actors like Sarah Nicklin, Michael Thurber, and Michael Reed, for example. Then, overlappingly, it was those such as Elyssa Baldassarri , Jamie Dufault, Johnny Sederquist (aka Ninny Nothin), and Anna Rizzo, and lately it’s been Samantha Acampora, Sarah Reed, and especially Graham Stokes. The last two also appear in his latest opus, the strongly LGBQT(etc.) themed Disorienting Dick. Stokes full frontal nudity in the first shot gives the viewer a – er – taste of things to come.

Graham Stokes

This is also a very sharp political commentary as we meet Dick’s mom, the appropriately named Maureen Whiteman (Leslie Racine Vazquez), a Qanon, conspiracy-focused, money and power-hungry politician running for Mayor in a city in Rhode Island (where this is filmed), who is reminiscent of Sarah Palin, Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Greene (though Maureen is intelligent, unlike those others). The mock political ad at her introduction is both ridiculously over the top, and yet quite scary as it is also reflective of a certain level of Republican “values” as they stand today; it is also a theme that permeates the whole film. The subtle Ayn Rand reference by Dick is also telling.

Leslie Racine Vazquez

Dick, in the meanwhile, has a fiancée, Pat (Sarah Reed), who wears a Jesus sweatshirt, but it’s pretty obvious that it isn’t going to last as Dick becomes, in the words of the film, “oriented” (rather than converted). You just know it’s going to conflict with his mom. I am enjoying the political aspects of the story so far, rather than it being more of a gay romp like Griffin’s previous (short), Gay as the Sun (2020; reviewed HERE), which also starred Stokes.

Sarah Reed

While Dick is in the closet and having wild, softcore fantasies about men, his mother finds out his desires, and has him taken to the “Clinic for the Terminally Dandy,” an evil right wing conversion therapy organization (conversion therapy, by the way, is now banned by our neighbors to the north, in Canada; in the United States, only Washington DC has barred the practice on adults). It is run by the evil doctor Hyde Hippocampus (Terry Shea), dressed in black with a black eye patch on his right eye and his Nurse Rached-type nurse assistant, DeFarge (Amy Thompson). Advanced treatment includes the “Lindsey Graham Initiative.” Sorry to give some of the jokes away, but it’s just a smidge of them, and I am trying to clarify that this is a smart film as well as smutty (meant in a good way). 

But that’s not the whole story, as Dick keeps getting kidnapped back and forth between the conversion therapy and a competing “Clinic for the Fabulously Dandy” run by the twin of the other doctor, Jekyll Hippocampus (also Terry Shea) but with bright red clothes and a red eye patch on the other eye, and a non-binary nasty also Nurse Rached type, Atari 2600 (Albert Lin). Therapy includes such things as “Jungian Interpretive Dance.” At the latter institute, they try to get Dick out of the closet. Between the two, no wonder he is so disoriented.

Amy Thompson, Vazquez, Terry Shea, Stokes

The set designs and clothing in the second, positive clinic, by Margaret Wolf and Angela Shulman, are bright pastel colors, which reminded me of the original “Star Trek” series. In the conversion one, the color theme is muted and white, with no pizazz. The director once told me that the comparison of the gay sex in his film The Sins of Dracula (2014; reviewed HERE) was hanging of the chandelier type, whereas the straight couple sex was missionary and boring. This is a similar idea here.

Perhaps I am reading too much into the story, but it almost seems like the percentages are flipped, where 90 percent of the characters are some shade or degree of gay or bi, and 10 percent are straight. It is an interesting concept. In all, this is a morality play on what is right and wrong, with the philosophically metaphorical devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, with one leaning toward straight and one towards being gay, but in this case, which is on which side? In fact, Jesus and the Devil appear in the film momentarily as that inner battle is in play (having those two in a Griffin release(ing) is nothing new (in fact Michael Reed has played both in different films of his, but I digress…).

Albert Lin, Shea

While some of the acting is appropriately over-emoted, there are a lot of really brave performances, by the likes of Victoria Paradis, Vazquez, and especially Stokes. The writing is especially sharp with both political and social commentary that does not drag the story down in any way, and at times quite biting (no pun intended); and the sex and nudity is all male on male and sometimes quite explicit, though not as much as, say, Shortbus (2006). The single lesbian scene is, not surprisingly, unseen. DD has a definitive direction in which it is going, and it follows true to its path, and I respect that, a lot.

There are a lot of elements going into this basic story, including sock puppets (you read that correctly), but deep down, it has a single theme. The last line of the film sums up the philosophy of Disorienting Dick in one sentence quite well (I will not give it away). You should definitely find out for yourself. Maybe the viewer might even learn something about themselves.

IMBD Listing HERE