‘Dream Deceivers’: A Case About Judas Priest’s Song

Screening tonight through Wednesday at the NuWilshire, David Van Taylor’s documentary, “Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance vs. Judas Priest,” is a thought-provoking account of how the young survivor of a double suicide attempt and his family brought suit against the popular heavy metal group, arguing that he and his late friend Ray Belknap (whose family also joined in the suit) had been induced to kill themselves with a 12-gauge shotgun by subliminal suggestions in one of the group’s songs.

The film cuts to the heart of the contemporary malaise of evasion of responsibility: Vance and Belknap were troubled, trouble-prone young men, but their families want to blame their fates on the musicians, who by the same token, clearly have no sense of responsibility for the impact of their work, subliminal or otherwise. For showtimes: (310) 394-8099.

Gay Perspective: The 10th annual Los Angeles International Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival commences Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Directors Guild Theaters, 7920 Sunset Blvd., with the local premiere of “Swoon,” Tom Kalin’s high-style, low-budget fresh take on the infamous Leopold-Loeb murder case of the ‘20s. In essence, Kalin presents with a chic tone of flat disaffectedness the well-known story of two rich, bored Chicago teen-agers with above-the-law superiority complexes who kidnap and murder 12-year-old Bobby Franks for kicks.

Kalin spells out the homosexual passion the somber Leopold (Craig Chester) felt for the handsome, reckless--and acquiescing--Loeb (Daniel Schlachet) but otherwise lets us the viewer decide what their fate reveals about their era and themselves.

Although the apparently true story of the Catalina de Erauso, born 400 years ago in San Sebastian, Spain, is chock-full of incredible incident, Javier Aguirre Fernandez’s film of her life, “The Nun Who Became a Lieutenant” (Friday at 9:30 p.m.), which stars Esperanza Roy, is lamentably ponderous; Catalina’s escape from the convent to assume a male identity, living the adventurous life of a soldier in the New World, cries for the sense of irony and outrageousness of Pedro Almodovar.

In the sensitive, stylized melodrama “The Twin Bracelets” (Friday at 7:30 p.m.), filmmaker Yu-Shan Huang tells the story of a young lesbian coming of age in a small village in China. This is a strong, deftly wrought feminist protest against the cruelty of arranged marriages and all the other customs that have oppressed Chinese women from antiquity to the present.

Ippo Pohjola’s “Daddy and the Muscle Academy” (Friday at 9:30 p.m.) is an illuminating--and erotic--documentary on the late Tom of Finland, a Finnish advertising man who in his spare time over the last 35 years became the premier illustrator of gay fantasy figures. Tom of Finland’s men are always handsome, muscular, sexy--invariably in uniforms or leather--yet for all their super-virility they are also always warm and friendly in their joyous sexual activity. Tom, who died recently in his early 70s, comes across as a candid, reflective, unpretentious man, is rightly credited by other interviewees for his profound impact on the many gay men who, through hours at the gym and in their dress, have modeled themselves on Tom of Finland’s macho yet loving icons.

Jaime Chavarri’s thoroughly entertaining “The Affairs of Love” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m.) is likely to be the greatest crowd-pleaser in what is a richly varied and largely admirable festival. Set in Franco’s rigid, oppressive Spain of the 1940s, it’s a warm, exuberant show-biz saga--with a difference. It involves a fiery beauty (Angela Molina) and a handsome young man (Manuel Bandera) who team up to become the singing and dancing idols of Spain’s music halls. If the film were in fact the vintage Hollywood backstage musical to which it pays homage, Bandera would be vying with the team’s jealous pianist (Angel de Andres Lopez) for Molina’s love; instead, Bandera’s star entertainer is a proud homosexual dangerously open for the times.

Nicole Conn’s “Claire of the Moon” (Saturday at 9:30 p.m.) commences on a note of archness that matches that of its heroines only to grow along with them; they are a popular satirist (Trisha Todd), a confident, independent beauty with bold Georgia O’Keeffe features, and an elegant lesbian psychiatrist-author (Karen Trumbo), a reserved woman recovering from a love affair, who initially clash when they meet at a conference for women writers (most of whom are relentlessly caricatured). “Claire of the Moon” overcomes its first-film uncertainties to end up as the best American lesbian drama since “Desert Hearts.”

For full program, which runs through July 18 and includes many fine shorts: (213) 650-5133.