Cinema: Demolition Derby

LOOT

Directed by SILVIO NARIZZANO Screenplay by RAY GALTON and ALAN SIMPSON

The point of the late Joe Orton's play Loot—not the only point, but a prominent one—was outrageous and exhilarating bad taste. Director Silvio Narizzano, no stranger to bad taste himself (Georgy Girl, Blue), changes Orton's cyanide cocktail into a fey demolition derby.

Loot looks like an unlikely hybrid of the Marx Brothers, Agatha Christie and a training film for the Mattachine Society. Narizzano has directed the bad taste in bad taste, clumsily camping it up at every opportunity, blunting Orton's coruscating wit. That this comes through at all is owing less to...