Sorry Australia, no Dong of the Dead for you!

As anyone who's attended a circuit party knows, there's nothing shocking about muscle-bound gay men stumbling around like flesh-hungry zombies. But apparently the authorities in Melbourne, Australia disagree. (What? Have they never been to the Sydney Mardi Gras?)

In a press release issued earlier this week, Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce -- the auteur responsible for such queercore classics as No Skin Off My Ass, Super 8 ½, and Hustler White -- announced that his latest magnum opus, L.A. Zombie, had been banned by the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Now, it may not seem startling that a movie starring French porn icon François Sagat (above), written and directed by an upstart with a penchant for raunchy gay sex, fascist skinheads, and other taboo topics, won't be shown at a prestigious international festival. But MIFF previously screened La Bruce's Otto; or Up with Dead People, a prequel of sorts of L.A. Zombie that also showed at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals, as well as over 150 others. And here's the truly rotten part: L.A. Zombie had already been accepted as an official selection, and announced in the Melbourne festival catalogue!

But wait, there's more: The version rejected by the Australian Film Classification Board was the "softcore" one. According to LaBruce, it features no explicitly penetrative anal sex. There are a few brief glimpses of flaccid male members, but the only erect penis on display is the alien zombie's -- and it's a prosthetic! Charlize Theron gets a goddamn Oscar for disfiguring her best assets in service of a role, but when François Sagat makes a similar sacrifice they bring in the morality police. Sheesh.

Here's what LaBruce had to say about the whole dust-up:
"L.A. Zombie is about an alien zombie who emerges from the ocean and proceeds to find dead bodies in Los Angeles with which he has sex in order to bring them back to life -- not as zombies, but as true resurrections. Although apparently the Australian Classification Board has no problem passing all manner of mainstream torture porn movies which feature, amongst other things, the rape and dismemberment of women, it's interesting that they have no stomach for a movie that reaffirms life. The alien zombie may or may not be a homeless schizophrenic, so the film also serves as a kind of document of the epidemic of homelessness that currently ravages the city. Censorship in any form should not be tolerated, but to ban a film that one programmer at a major festival has called 'a masterpiece of melancholia' is truly beyond the pale."

There are no penises, fake or otherwise, visible in the trailer (after the jump) but the brief, albeit rather repetitive, clip would seem to underscore LaBruce's assertions about the film's content. A hardcore version of L.A. Zombie, which presumably will showcase more of Sagat's better-known on-screen abilities, is scheduled for release circa Halloween, after the edited incarnation has made the festival rounds.