Out on DVD: Ex-gays and gore, melodrama and bad mamma-jammas

Chad Allen and Robert Gant shine in the earnest ex-gays-find-love drama Save Me, new on DVD today. Other new releases include a splatter opera, a soapy classic and some kick-ass cartoons.

Find out more after the jump!

The big gay DVD release of the day is Save Me, an indie that stars Chad Allen as a drugged-out slut who gets put into a Christian ex-gay rehab. Naturally, he falls in love with the similarly-struggling Robert Gant. BFF to all gays Judith Light turns in a poignant performance as the well-meaning lady who runs the place and who is still trying to cope with her own gay son's death.

While Save Me occasionally gives into movie-of-the-week self-seriousness, it does an admirable job of showing compassion to Christians who think of homosexuality as an affliction to be cured while also demonstrating that such "cure" programs don't really work. Would that the love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin crowd could ever show similar even-handedness to the gays.

Also out on DVD today is Repo! The Genetic Opera, about a future dystopia in which replacement organs can be purchased—but they can also be repossessed if you don't keep up with the payments. Featuring splattery gore and an operatic rock score performed by the likes of Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy), Sarah Brightman, Paul Sorvino and Paris Hilton, Repo! predictably galvanized critics. Still, it has its defenders, so if this sounds like your cup of viscera, give it a shot.

The Criterion Collection continues its wonderful set of Douglas Sirk soap operas with the new release of Magnificent Obsession, starring gay icon Rock Hudson as a rich rotter who devotes his life to medicine in the hopes of restoring the eyesight of the woman he loves (Jane Wyman, Hudson's co-star in Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, which was the main inspiration for Far From Heaven). Oh, did I mention it's Hudson's fault she got blinded? Keep the Kleenex handy.

Finally, what better role models could today's gay man have than three spunky young girls who love neon pastels almost as much as they love mopping up the floor with super-villains? Check out the 10th anniversary box-set of The Powerpuff Girls: The Complete Series to watch this trio of right-on heroines save the city of Townsville over and over again.