Mondo Queero Film Club: D.E.B.S at The Carlton Club

“This is not the Girl Scouts, this is espionage!”

There’s a sapphic spy satire on the schedule at The Carlton Club this July as Mondo Queero return to Whalley Range. The queer suburban film club have lined up a screening of Angela Robinson’s campy, cult 2004 film D.E.B.S.

For the uninitiated, the D.E.B.S (Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength) of the title refers to a secret intelligence agency dedicated to protecting the security interests of the United States. They differ from the CIA or the FBI in the fact that their uniform consists of plaid skirts, white shirts, and matching ties, while they are recruited via a secret test hidden in the SATs which helps detect candidates who are particularly adept a lying.

Star recruit Amy (Sara Foster) has tested higher than anybody else before her — it turns out that living life as a closeted lesbian has prepared her perfectly for a life of espionage. The latest threat comes from super-villain Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster), a bad-ass who is meeting up with a fearsome female Russian assassin, causing consternation amongst the intelligence community.

But this meeting is in fact a blind date, and when Amy — leading a team of D.E.B.S — interrupts, she’s more than a little intrigued by her charming adversary. Featuring bad boyfriends, campy innuendo and an explicitly queer plot, Robinson’s D.E.B.S does for Charlies Angels, something like what Austin Powers did for James Bond.

Underseen on release, this seriously unserious comedy spoof, with its mid-noughties effects and soundtrack, has been building an audience for twenty years. Recent retrospective pieces at Paste and Polygon both note that the film was either missed or misunderstood on release, while Mondo Queero reckon it came ten years too soon to achieve mainstream success.

Either way, D.E.B.S is back in front of audiences The Carlton Club this July.