COMEDY REVIEW : An Hour in the Ether With Judy Tenuta, the Mad Vamp : The comic uses every angle of attack to usher her audience toward ‘Judy-ism.’ Her otherworldly vibrato evokes sci-fi flashbacks into the haunted B-movie mists of lost minds.

Judy Tenuta is a complete comedy autodidact, a self-created figure of such outre, vamping, oversize manner that one has to wonder why she would ever descend to giving an industry showcase in order to display herself. But she did it anyway Tuesday at the Roxy.

What could the self-described petite flower, the love goddess in glittering harem silk whom none could hope to possess--except the spirit of absent celebrities (Elvis Presley chief among them) who use her as a medium for deliciously nasty innuendo--ever want to do in a dumb sitcom, or a buddy movie, or a woman’s film that indulges her fey eccentricity?

Tenuta belongs on a stage, and for well over an hour she skillfully used every angle of attack to bring her audience along in the exalted transports of “Judy-ism,” where her high, otherworldly vibrato evokes sci-fi flashbacks into the haunted B-movie mists of comically lost minds. Only here those ethers were filled with raucous one-liners about male troglodytes, sexual perversity in celebrity-land, grim comic-book schoolteachers, a brother whom only she could love (“because I might need a bone-marrow transplant one day”) and a scene at a wake (to which she’s invited on a first date) where the mother of the deceased asks her to touch the corpse. “I like guys with makeup,” she protested, “but only if they’re breathing. “

Tenuta presents herself as a mythic cult princess pausing between runs on her accordion to spin out Day-Glo fantasies of comic sex-images and figures ballooned into vivid caricature (she does a robust Andrew Dice Clay); her sexual allusions fly by without the deadening weight of a single expletive. She knows how to put on a show--even if it sometimes plays like that of a terrifically bright and funny kid who’s raided her absent mother’s closet to entertain her pals--and her show of vaunting narcissism never takes her out of reach of her audience.

Into the second hour of the show, she made a fatal error by screening a sitcom (which she wrote and starred in) that was meant to parody the cruel banality of sitcoms in general. But it was so tedious and did so much to expose her as a performer locked in one gear that most of the industry pros who came to see her cleared out in 20 minutes. It was a stunning act of self-destruction, even by Hollywood standards. But it was probably just as well; she’s a natural for live performance, and for doing only what she can do.

Judy Tenuta performs tonight at 8:30 at the Brea Improvisation, 945 E. Birch St., Brea. Tickets: $10. Information: (714) 529-7878.