Screening at Fantastic Fest 2025, The Cramps: A Period Piece pokes fun at that time of the month with drag queens and a killer Aunt Flo.
One of my favorite horror films of the last 20 years is Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth, about a chaste teenage girl who discovers she has vagina dentata — yes, teeth in her vagina — that she wields like a superpower when fighting off predatory men.
While watching Brooke H. Cellars’ The Cramps: A Period Piece, which screens at Fantastic Fest this weekend, I had the same feeling I had while watching Teeth. Oh, this is a campy, comically gruesome take on the female body!
Apple-cheeked Agnes Applewhite (the adorable Lauren Kitchen) gets a new job at a hair salon, much to the detriment of her uptight mother and sister, and soon discovers her menstrual cramps might be more than a monthly pain when they start jumping out of her body in the form of a glittery red clump and terrorizing prospective suitors and even OBGYNs. And of course, like most women, she has questions about what exactly is going on.
The Cramps: A Period Piece often plays like a long RuPaul’s Drag Race sketch (complimentary!) — this film would surely win the challenge, especially with names like Holiday Hitchcoker (the hilarious Michelle Malentina) and —- my personal favorite character — satanist Teddy Teaberry (Wicken Taylor). And of course, drag burlesque performer Martini Bear as Laverne Lancaster often runs away with all the best cuntiest lines. My only wish is that I got to experience this film with a huge crowd, as it’s fit to be seen on screen, preferably at midnight. With its ’60s motifs and grainy cinematography, Cellars’ The Cramps: A Period Piece would make John Waters proud — and every woman who’s ever felt like they were in a horror film during that time of the month.
The Cramps: A Period Piece is screening at Fantastic Fest 2025.
