Queen Kitsch: Peaches Christ brings Bearbarella to Manchester and Glasgow

“Think of it as if a Disney movie were set in an X-rated environment.” San Francisco-based filmmaker and performer Joshua Grannell is describing the undergraduate film he made at Pennsylvania State University in 1995, colourfully titled Jizzmopper. It’s your typical porn store caretaker (the eponymous Jizzmopper) meets stripper love story. Grannell plays Peaches Christ, the busty owner of the porn emporium where the couple work and the cupid who brings them together. “Penn State didn’t really seem very proud of the movie,” recalls Grannell. “At the time, the film school there was predominately made up of straight white male students who wanted to be Martin Scorsese” – adding, in a neat reverse of classic Seinfeld episode The Outing, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Jizzmopper, as you might have guessed, didn’t really set the world on fire, but in the character of Peaches Christ, Grannell had created a force of nature. When The Skinny speaks to him 19 years after the character’s debut, he’s at Austin’s Stargayzer, a three-day celebration of queer music, where Peaches is one of the star attractions. For nearly 15 years she’s also acted as MC for Grannell’s midnight movie extravaganza Midnight Mass, which pairs cult movies with outrageous drag theatrics.

Grannell’s fascination with drag goes back much further than Peaches: like many, his introduction to the world was through the movies of John Waters and his leading lady of choice, Divine. “Growing up in Maryland as a weird queer kid who went to Catholic school, I felt completely alone, in the most clichéd sense,” he reflects. “So when I realised that this thing was happening down the road [in Baltimore] from where I was growing up, that these people were making these movies, and that there was a Mink Stole and a Divine and a John Waters in the world, it really changed everything.”

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“It’s not even just that Barbarella’s costumes look like drag, it’s that the entire movie looks like drag! The props, the sets, everything!” – Joshua Grannell aka Peaches Christ

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By the time Grannell made it to the city by the bay with a kernel of an idea to start a midnight movie series, the rep cinema boom was long dead, killed off by VHS and cable TV. But Midnight Mass had a trump up its sleeve in the form of Peaches. “I think the reason it did work is because we created an authentic experience,” Grannell suggests. “I think if we had only focused on the exhibition we’d have struggled. That was enough in the 70s and 80s, but we added this experience that you couldn’t get anywhere else and created an environment that encouraged the audience to dress up and participate.” One of the aspects of Midnight Mass that’s surprised and delighted Grannell most is the diversity of its audience. Like Waters and Divine where for him, Peaches has acted as a gateway into drag for many attendees. “We ended getting a lot of people who were like, ‘I’ve never come to see a drag queen before, but you guys are showing Evil Dead II and doing some sort of weird opera before it, so I've got to see it!’” he reveals with pride. “Even in San Francisco, people still exist in their own groups, have their own events. But I think with cult movies – a shared love for something – as cheesy as it sounds, those walls kind of get torn down.”

Manchester and Glasgow film-nuts will get a chance to worship at the altar of Midnight Mass and Peaches Christ for themselves when they arrive at, respectively, Cornerhouse and GFT in the form of Bearbarella, an ‘out-of-this-world’ event celebrating 1967 sci-fi Barbarella. With its kitsch production design, Jane Fonda’s countless costume changes and its insane plot machinations involving vampiric doll children, a sexy blind angel and an evil Sapphic overlord, a show around Roger Vadim’s camp classic was a no-brainer. “It’s so dated in that sort of beautiful way because it’s just so bizarre. The drag connection is for me is so obvious to see. It’s not even just that the costumes look like drag, it’s that the entire movie looks like drag! The props, the sets, everything!”

This won’t be Peaches' first visit to Cornerhouse. She last performed there in 2010 at a reportedly riotous screening of All About Evil, Garnell’s horror-comedy, for Abandon Normal Devices. Some grainy camera footage suggests stage invasions are welcomed and lap dances are obligatory. Or, to put it another way, at Peaches’ screenings, all bets are off: “There’s no fourth wall,” says Garnnell. “I don’t want to give too much away, but the show will be taking place in the audience. You’re coming to celebrate a cult movie, so it’s silly and ridiculous and meant to be fun. You’re not coming for a night at the theatre.”