Director:
Todd Haynes
Summary: Two films from indie director Todd Haynes (FAR FROM HEAVEN, SAFE) - POISON and anthology of three shorts and the short film DOTTIE GETS SPANKED.
DOTTIE GETS SPANKED - the story follows a young soon-to-be-gay six-year-old named Steven Gale (Evan Bonifant). Obsessed with a television star named Dottie Frank (Julie Halston), Steven is both ridiculed by his school friends, and worried over by his parents. The highly feminine kid gets a chance to see his heroine in action on a visit to the television studio where Dottie plies her wares. But whilst there he sees her character receive a spanking, sending mixed messages to his brain as he relates it to the prospective punishment his father has been threatening him with. A brilliant, assured debut from Haynes, DOTTIE GETS SPANKED offers an innovative glimpse of a future-talent unfolding.
POISON, is a collection of three stories, each told in their own unique cinematic style, illustrate the lives of a people living outside the fringes of "normal" society. There is ‘Hero’, the pseudo-documentary about a seven-year-old boy who kills his own father; ‘Horror’, a sci-fi spoof about a brilliant research scientist who becomes the victim of his own biochemical discovery when he finds the source of the human sex drive; and ‘Homo’, a noirish drama exploring the obsessive, and sexual, relationship between two male prisoners. As each compelling story is told, their themes become inextricably linked, and the tension intensifies, culminating in an explosive climax of unsettled emotions. POISON is perhaps Todd Haynes most experimental, and most controversial, film.