The Cockettes (2002) User Reviews

Dressed to kill!

[jotix100 · 7/10 · 4 July 2002]

Perhaps I was expecting more from the documentary. Don't get me wrong, it captures the era and the craziness of the time, but sometimes it goes flat. A little more gay wit should have helped here. The directors have captured the idea behind the Cockettes in their heyday in San Francisco.

Unfortunately, behind the happy facade of the parties, the theatre performances, we never get to really know most of the people who created the scene.

The main character, and the "mother" of the Cockettes, Hibiscus, is an enigma. He's obviously so high on LSD and other drugs of the period to make any sense at all. Hisbiscus did have a vision, but carrying it to the stage was another story. Most of the skits kind of fall flat. I guess that in order to have appreciated the group at the Palace Theatre in San Francisco in its prime would have required tons of acid to view what went onstage as probably Hibiscus conceived it.

The people that survived the Cockettes talk to the camara and tells us what it was like. It's great seeing the survivors as they look now and they looked then. Director John Waters is very effective in telling us his part of the story. The fabulous Devine, who only appears briefly in the film is a welcome distraction since she was the queen of all queens!

The Cockettes were way ahead of their time. When you see today's drag queens, they pale in comparison to that group which were probably the idea for most of the ones around today.

Go see it and enjoy a bygone time that will never be able to capture again.

Dredged up some old memories I had (hopefully) forgotten

[rlcsljo · 6/10 · 5 August 2002]

This film aptly tries to place the cockettes at the burgeoning of the gay sexual revolution. Apt, since other "revolutions" were in full swing at the time. But, as the film suggests itself, most of what they did was old hat to the rest of the world, that is, New York.

Most of these guys, and few gals, were just a bunch of talentless gays that wanted to take drugs, screw and make jerks of themselves on stage (Mick Jagger are you listening?). The few "talented" ones did make a mediocre impact on the arts, but for the most part the phenomenon was forgettable.

Amazingly, the cockette phenomenon lives on as the "Midnight Rocky Horror Show" crowd.

If you want to see the (mostly) gay side of the sex, drug era as pertains to the theatrical "arts", this is an amusing excursion.

Ab Fab!!

[utzutzutz · 10/10 · 18 June 2002]

Three years of obviously hard (but undoubtedly fun!) work went into The Cockettes--and the results are as charming and uplifting as they come. While certainly a dream project given the raw material, the directors went far beyond merely letting the vintage footage speak for itself. I defy anyone to walk out of the theater not feeling a strong sense of joie de vivre (along with a keen desire for some windowpane, perhaps?). An uplifting (for the most part), frequently hilarious reminiscence that doesn't camp out in nostalgia-ville, this is a must-see for anyone who's been a drag queen or hippie, been raised by drag queens or hippies, or just plain adores drag queens and hippies--and creative, exuberant '60s-style, acid-tripped-out theater. Watching a skit like "Tricia's Wedding," an ever-so-fabulous version of that staid Nixon family affair, it's a great reminder that even in an age of Republican despoilers, it's possible for a huge reservoir of creative juice to be oozing around under the surface. GO! See! Enjoy! Take yourself out of reality-based reality for 100 whole minutes!

Fascinating, exhilarating

[preppy-3 · 10/10 · 7 July 2002]

Documentary about a late 1960s-early 1970s San Francisco theatre group called the Cockettes. They all lived together in a commune and were quite a mix...gay, straight, bi, men, women. They all wore incredible, colorful costumes (most of the guys were in drag) and put on musicals that were very mean, vicious, explicitally sexual...and hilarious!

This is a truly incredible movie about an unjustly forgotten group. The movie includes some footage of the actual stage shows they put on along with interviews of the surviving cast members. It gives a view of the 1960s in San Francisco that I've never seen. Just absorbing from the word go. A must see!

Highlight--their parody of Tricia Nixon's wedding is hysterical.

See it!!!!!

I couldn't stop smiling

[king-27 · 9/10 · 28 May 2002]

San Francisco crazies, unbridled idealism, articulate interviewees, and LOTS and LOTS of original footage combine to form a highly entertaining and endearing history of the dance troupe from the late 60s to the early 70s. Great storytelling of a fascinating story.

As shimmery and funny as it is informative!

[colberino · 10/10 · 25 April 2006]

I saw the film The Cockettes after a long, seemingly endless stream of disappointing documentaries. It was such a great pleasure to finally see these filmmakers take a veritable goldmine of fascinating material and do it justice. While including enough supplemental material to keep the interest moving, this film really sticks to its guns and offers a satisfying glimpse at the rise and fall of The Cockettes.

I was also really impressed with the quality of archive footage that appears in the film. At first, I had to lean into my screen and ask myself if these were re-enactments. Really, truly stunning.

I think the best measure of this film is the sense of loss one feels when the credits roll~ a mourning that one wasn't there to experience the subject firsthand and be in on the party. But what a wonderful hour and 40 minutes!

This film is inspiring to artists everywhere

[TheMikeJustice · 24 August 2003]

I really enjoyed this film. It's odd that I would because I have almost no interest in hippies or drag queens. But, something about their DIY (do it yourself) aesthetic really resonated with me. They wanted to be "stars," so they dressed up in crazy outfits, dropped acid, and put on "shows" consisting of whatever interested them that week. If they wanted to make a film about Trisha Nixon's wedding, they grabbed a camera, dressed up, make makeshift sets, and shot one. This film was really inspiring to me as an artist.

Waaaaay Off-Broadway

[NoDakTatum · 10/10 · 21 November 2023]

The brazen devil-may-care attitude of this avant-garde theater troupe is infectious. In the late 1960's and early 1970's in San Francisco, the hippie movement was in full force. The Palace Theatre showed midnight movies, everything from art films to big budget Hollywood musicals from the 1930's. The shows were popular because they were cheap. On a few occasions, people would get up on stage and entertain the crowd during intermission. Thus, the Cockettes were born. George Harris was a young actor who changed his name to Hibiscus. He and other members of his commune dressed in loud drag, wore more glitter than a person has a right to, and performed theater pieces lampooning current events and the old musicals. The ball started rolling as the performers became more popular than the films, and the Cockettes were headed to New York City and Broadway, which turned into a bigger disaster than anyone ever anticipated.

There is nothing funnier than seeing a person the same age as my parents talk about all the LSD they used to ingest, complete with full nude photos from back in the day. The Cockettes were doing the drag thing long before Rocky Horror came along, but the group fell victim to infighting and success, just like a lot of rock bands. Not all the men in the Cockettes were gay, interview subject Marshall wasn't, he wishes he was after what women have done to him, but drug abuse took some of the members, and AIDS took more. One of the interview subjects here died of AIDS shortly after the filming, which almost brought me to tears. You may be wondering: why should we care? The Cockettes, in their prime, were doing their own thing and not giving a flip what other people thought. They lampooned then-current events like Tricia Nixon's wedding, showed their love for the Hollywood musical, and just had a lot of fun doing it. There was a East Coast-West Coast drag rivalry that shows how stupid the rap rivalry is more than anything! Gay men in drag tripping each other in Max's Kansas City in NYC is funnier than the actual shootings of recording artists. The film was directed by Bill Weber and David Weissman. They found a ton of backstage and onstage footage, and a lot of interviewees who were not embarrassed with what they did. Watch for Jilala, who models many of his bizarre fashions, still making a statement today. The pacing is excellent, the rise and fall of the Cockettes over a three year period follows a classic story arc, and I came to feel real affection for all the "characters." "The Cockettes" is a great documentary about a time we cannot possibly relive or recreate. Thank goodness Hibiscus put that dress on and dropped that acid.

You had to be there, I guess

[mgmax · 28 October 2004]

Imagine if people told you about a wonderful party they had... and you said, sure, sounds like you had a great time... and then they handed you a two-hour movie of the highlights. What are the odds you would have as good a time as they did? Not very high, especially if you AREN'T high...

That's the problem with The Cockettes, the story of a once-heralded, now largely forgotten theater troupe in San Francisco whose hippie drag shows were a sensation circa 1970. It's an interesting slice of that era, for a while, but neither the vintage footage (they filmed themselves a lot) nor the modern-day interviews are that much more compelling or moving than what you were up to in 1970, or what you think about it now as a respectable middle- aged person. (It is pretty funny to see a pleasant-looking gay bourgeois in his 50s with a neat haircut and mustache be identified by a name like "Scrumbly" or "Kreemah Ritz." One of them, by the way, is the pianist Peter Mintun, well known in San Francisco for reviving 30s society music in venues like the Fairmont Hotel. Funny, the word "Cockettes" doesn't appear on his own website offering his sophisticated musical services, though it does have a picture of him with the most famous Cockette alumnus, disco-era figure Sylvester.)

To judge by the vintage footage, in fact, their stage parodies of old Hollywood movies were pretty terrible, though they might well have been fun in the right altered state of mind. John Waters recalls the spirit of tolerance that greeted him when he came to San Francisco with his movies and was embraced by The Cockettes, but maybe it's that California laidbackness that was responsible for The Cockettes' work seeming so slapdash and slack next to his own films-- they didn't have the sense of outsider desperation that runs through his films like an exposed nerve (or, similarly, through Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films when he put actresses acting like drag queens through the old Hollywood paces). Nor did they have the classical discipline that Charles Ludlam brought to his brilliantly campy farces at the Theater of the Ridiculous in Greenwich Village. (It was a disastrous trip to New York, facing crowds who expected something cleverer than hippies sashaying in the nude in a bad conga line, that pretty much ended the party.)

Ultimately, for all the talk about them being pioneers in genderbending and transgressive art, it's hard to say that The Cockettes had a real point of view about sexuality-- what they mainly had was a good time, which the audience of a documentary will only share in bits and pieces at this late date.

New York Times Aug. 17

[dfoley-6 · 19 August 2003]

The Times fashion insert on Aug. 17 contained a story on Hibiscus, from his first blush of fame as the young guy sticking the flower in the rifle of the National Guardsman in the famous pic taken at the anti-war rally in Washington up to his death 20 years ago. Interviews with his sister and brother as well. Fascinating read.

RUNAWAYTRAINNEVERCOMINGBACK...

[yaaah_69 · 28 July 2002]

Although I lived in San Francisco from 1961 to 1966 and saw a few great "Drag Shows" there was nothing to compare to the Cockettes. I'm not sure I would have gone to see this show at the Palace, although some friends might have talked me into it.. and saying that I would never have gone back to see them again. I rated this movie for the nostalgia. Living just off of the Height-Ashbury-Filmore district we often went down to Height St. To watch the beginning of the Flower-children movement and we were always entertained. Great small food places opened up and you could go Cajun , East Indies, Jamaican, Russian, Jewish, etc and the armosphere was great. The best Drag shows in town were at Finocchio's, the Black Cat, and the Gilded Cage. If I remember right Charles Pierce 'Torch Song Trilogy' ( who passed away in 1999, in a town named Toluca Lake Calif). He was the reighning 'Queen Of Drag', and he did a smash-up job of Betty Davis, Tahlulah Bankhead and many more , we all loved him, Bit** that she was. So, I know I have drifted, but had to inject the lagit shows in S.F.

As the New York critics said of the Cockettres, "anyone can drop acid and get up on stage and wiggle there as*, show their private parts, sing off tune and wear women's clothes, but a good Revue this does not make.

So 4 stars for reminding me of all the great times I had in good old San -Francisco-by-the-bay- don't call it Frisco, and you do not wear white after labor day. Herb Cain, Count DeMarco , the fog, trolley's , what a great time............ ciao yaaah69