Dance Fire | John Stagliano | 1989
John Stagliano’s Dance Fire (1989) was intended (or at least marketed) as a takeoff on Dirty Dancing. While it does feature some dance sequences, the title and box cover are as far as that comparison goes.
The first Evil Angel release, Dance Fire is weird, creative, and frankly surprising given the kinds of videos the studio would later be known for. Beyond the surrealist sequences, there’s this near-banality to the overly-verbose dialogue scenes that go on forever that makes the whole thing border on performance art. The first sex scene doesn’t happen for 23 minutes — absolutely unheard of at the time.
It’s also likely the only instance where a scene set on Hollywood Blvd. zooms out from Hal March’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame during Stagliano’s brooding late-nite window shopping scene.
Speaking of brooding, Stagliano does a lot of that here, usually during moody, fog-drenched scenes that are straight out of a music video. The music itself is also pretty good — there’s some riffs on Smooth Operator, there’s a rap, and a neat take on the Dirty Diana bassline/groove during both (yes, both) interpretive dance sequences between Stagliano and Kathleen Gentry.
Gentry steals the show here, as does Jack Baker.
Absolutely wild little movie.
