WATCH: This steamy Spanish comedy brings music and murder to a gay bathhouse – Queerty
Ah, the bathhouse. A place for sweating it out, taking in the sights, and… lavish song-and-dance numbers harkening back to the golden days of the Hollywood musical???
There’s all of that and more in the campy horror-comedy-musical The Phantom Of The Sauna from filmmaker Luis Navarrete.
Lovingly ribbing the melodrama of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s The Phantom Of The Opera, this Spanish-language feature follows young gay man Javi (Nestor Goenaga) as he starts his new job at the local sauna club. Within its tiled walls, Javi gets so much more than he bargained for when he spies the alluring phantom, a masked man who may be behind the establishment’s recent string of murders.
But could this mysterious figure just be a misunderstood romantic? Lonely and lusty, Javi’s willing to find out.
Related: How a gay, musical genius created one of Broadway’s biggest bombs
It’s all told through a chorus of drag queens, singing their way through Javi’s perilous predicament with stunningly choreographed musical numbers. Fans of Drag Race España will surely clock a few familiar mugs, including host Supremme de Luxe and Season 1’s Miss Congeniality, Pupi Poisson.
Described as a joyful celebration of “male bodies and hot sex,” The Phantom Of The Sauna is a colorful, hilarious, and incredibly gay romp that puts the “spa” in “sparkle.”
The Phantom Of The Sauna was just announced as part of Austin’s 35th annual Prism Film Festival (a.k.a. aGLIFF, the “All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival”), where it will screen on Sunday, August 28.
But, if you’re not in the Austin, TX area, the film is also currently available to stream for anyone subscribed to GagaOOLala, Taiwan’s international LGBTQ streaming platform.
Check out the trailer for The Phantom Of The Sauna below: