2024 Entry #41 04-13-24 “The Monkey’s Mask” is an international co-production 2000 thriller film directed by Samantha Lang based on the 1994 verse novel of the same name by celebrated Australian lesbian poet Dorothy Porter. It stars Susie Porter and out lesbian actress Kelly McGillis. Porter plays a lesbian private detective who becomes entangled with a possible suspect (McGillis) in the disappearance of a young woman.
I’d seen this once before but I barely remembered anything about it, save that it featured Kelly McGillis, a lesbian storyline, and that the film was set in Australia. I also remembered that I didn’t like it as much as I’d hoped to. This second time I felt like I might have been too harsh in my earlier reactions as I enjoyed most of the movie. However, it stumbles horribly at the end, in which the “killers” are revealed but are then painted (via voiceover) as accidental killers, when the actual revelation is played as far more malicious and randomly, graphically, sexual. I think this might be the only movie I’ve ever seen in which the shaft of a lead actor’s cock (or maybe a stunt cock) is suddenly displayed, with none of the other bits, just as a crime is confessed. Even if the killers didn’t murder the victim on purpose, they hid the body and they played out some pretty twisted shenanigans after the fact – including threatening a detective. And that ending would be fine – if there was some resolution beyond it, but there’s nothing.
The film, which only just preceded the release of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, features two actors from those films: Marton Csokas, who played Lord Celeborn in all 3 films and John Noble, who portrays Denethor in the latter two films. Csokas also played Xena’s lover Borias in “Xena: Warrior Princess”.