Word: liza
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...series of famed singers and actresses belting out "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" will bring down any house, so carefully honed are his Channings and Ellas. Co-star Hollis McLaren is inevitably overshadowed by Russell's stagewise presence, but the delicate treatment she gives to her Crazy Liza perfectly complements her outlandish buddy...
...would be little more than a walking parody without Benner's quick-fire comebacks and one-liners. But an actor can only be judged on what he does with the raw material given him, and Russell never stumbles. He may share the top billing with Hollis McLaren's Crazy Liza, but there's little doubt whose film Outrageous...
...sense, however, Outrageous! does present a distorted view of Toronto and New York, the film's other setting; aside from Liza, who goes through the motions of writhing under the willing body of a neurotic hero, Outrageous! takes an unswerving walk on the wild side. When Turner gets out of a taxi in New York and learns that his cabbie also shares his sexual persuasion, Turner flippantly asks, "Isn't anybody straight anymore?" "Sure," the driver deadpans, "my father in Montana...
...Turner's lowest point in the film; he has just finished "blowing off the lid" completely with a striking male hooker, and the wrenching innards come spilling out as he stares glazed-eyed into the shadow-draped confines of his Toronto flat. The essence of his platonic relationship with Liza reveals itself in all its poignant fullness here; comforting the dejected Turner, Liza eggs him on to do something "dazzling" for the crazies. It is Turner's and the film's turning point, the moment when the soon-to-be-fired hairdresser decides to burst out of the closet...
...Hollis McLaren is winsomely demented. When Actor Russell puts on his show, the masquerades are expert and funny enough to let straights see the bent world in a way that will not threaten most of them. Normal householders walk out of the theater snuffling happily after his exit line. Liza, who has fled to Manhattan following the stillbirth, is acting like a zombie. She says she is dead in side. "You are not dead!" says Robin, as the music rises. "You're alive and sick and living in New York just like 8 million others." The little splashes...