MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Gay Night’ Offers a Dark Comedy and a Grim Melodrama

The Cal State Fullerton fall movie series, which has so far offered various themed programs from film noir to a Jim Jarmusch double bill, presents “Gay Night” on Thursday with two homosexuality oriented pictures.

The free program begins with a recent release, Gregg Araki’s darkly comic “The Living End” (1992) and ends with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1975 melodrama “Fox and His Friends.”

“The Living End” starts on a sad note, with Jon (Craig Gilmore) learning that he has tested positive for the AIDS virus. Then Araki shifts the focus to Luke (Mike Dytri), a male street hustler, who’s getting by on wits and looks.

Jon and Luke soon hook up, and the movie turns into something of a wild and reckless road picture, but with AIDS as a somber conscience. The film--shot on a bare-bones budget has been described as a gay “Thelma and Louise.”

Fassbinder’s film was considered a breakthrough merely because few movies at the time focused on homosexual characters. The central figure is Fox (Fassbinder), a carnival performer who wins the lottery and is adopted by a batch of high-class friends.

That may sound whimsical, but “Fox and His Friends” doesn’t have one lighthearted moment. Fox, a simple, almost vulgar man, is victimized financially and emotionally by these new friends, who see him as an unwashed curiosity. Fox’s snobby lover (Peter Chatel) is the most destructive.

“Fox and His Friends” is, in the end, more political than anything else. Fassbinder’s commentary focuses on differences in class. Fox becomes a commodity to exploit, then abandon, in this depressing film.

* Gregg Araki’s “The Living End” will screen Thursday at 8, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Fox and His Friends” will be shown Thursday at 10 p.m. in the Cal State Fullerton University Center’s Titan Theatre, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Free. (714) 773-3501.