Out on DVD: Spanning the gay globe and rediscovering some camp classics

This week's new gay and gay-interest DVDs include the final film from a legendary gay documentarian as well as trips to Spain, England and Japan.

Here's the rundown.

The big release of the day is Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which not only boasts one of Allen's best scripts in years but also lots of terrific performances. (Penélope Cruz got an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a volatile bisexual artist, but the screenplay branch surprisingly withheld the love for Allen's writing.)

Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson play two American post-graduates who spend a sexy summer in Barcelona falling for Javier Bardem as a seductive painter. ScarJo winds up in a steamy ménage with Bardem and Cruz, and even Kinsey Sixes like me can appreciate the heat these three generate. (If you've never seen Jamón Jamón — a previous Bardem-Cruz collaboration that spends much of its running time focusing on Bardem's bulging crotchal zone — check it out immediately.) After years of waiting for another great Woody Allen comedy, we finally got one with VCB.

The great Marlon Riggs was taken from us before his time, but he left us a rich cinematic legacy. He's best known for Tongues Untied, a movie about the black gay experience that made Jesse Helms exceedingly uncomfortable when it aired on PBS, but that was film was just one of many Riggs made about African-American life and culture. His last film, Black Is...Black Ain't, premieres on DVD today and it's a must for fans of this great artist. 

The Secret Policeman's Balls is a compilation of five Amnesty International benefit shows that brought some of the UK's greatest musical and comedic talent together. You'll see rare reunions of the members of Monty Python (including the late Graham Chapman, the troupe's only gay member) and Beyond the Fringe, as well as Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry and Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders. And that's just the comedy half — the Balls include musical performances by Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Pete Townsend, Sting, Bob Geldof and other greats.

Two new releases of specific gay interest hit the shelves today. Whirlwind, from director Richard Le May (200 American), follows a group of gay friends in New York City and their escapades in and out of bed.

And from Japan, there's Schoolboy Crush, a melodrama about a schoolteacher who hires a rent boy, only to have that hustler turn up as one of the students at the prof's exclusive boys school. It's Japanese, so you can pretty much count on a tragic ending.

And for lovers of old-school tear-jerkers, two more new releases of note. The Warner Bros. Romance Classics Collection includes four exceedingly campy Troy Donahue titles: Palm Springs Weekend, about suspiciously old-looking college students (including Stephanie Powers, Connie Stevens and Robert Conrad) finding love over Easter break; Rome Adventure, in which Donahue romances Suzanne Pleshette in Italy (it must have worked, since they got married in real life after shooting was over); Parrish, in which Donahue talks about how being in a submarine full of sailors trapped under ice made a man out of him — go figure; and Susan Slade, which includes the scene that John Waters says made him want to become a filmmaker (it involves a lighter and an incredibly fake baby).

Also making its DVD debut is Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a musical remake of the MGM classic about a futsy schoolmaster whose life is changed when he takes a vivacious wife. Peter O'Toole plays the teacher and Petula Clark is the music-hall actress he marries; while the film was panned upon release — it had the misfortune of opening the same year as if..., which attacked the British educational system — the Leslie Bricusse songs are lovely and O'Toole and Clark have real chemistry. If you like that sort of thing.