Frank Simon's fascinating documentary about a hotly promoted drag-queen beauty contest staged in New York City's Town Hall and juried by such aficionados as Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, and Terry Southern. The movie's minor defects are attributable to the modest journalistic scope of the project: a certain technical raggedness and a certain superficiality. In the best journalistic tradition, however, the movie is truly a scoop, a first; the camera and microphone are often alertly positioned, for instance when they catch a couple of sour-grapes losers bitchily dressing down the newly crowned "queen," a frail fellow named Richard Finochio (alias Harlow); and the overall attitude is detached and unjudgmental. Some critics have complained that Simon makes no attempt to dig for an "explanation" of these odd hermaphroditic people. But Simon, limiting his ambitions to what his camera can see and his microphone can hear, never presumes to take on the subject as anything more than an event. Ultimately, his movie is a model of tact and composure in the midst of a very sexually disorienting spectacle. (1968) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.