MONSTER BASH Bruce LaBruce takes on grave matters.

Photograph: Christian Vagt

Avant-garde filmmaker and zombie-rights activist Bruce LaBruce is standing up for the undead in his latest, Otto; or, Up with Dead People. The film follows Otto, a gay Berliner who rises from his grave only to find that he’s pretty bad at being a zombie. When a documentarian casts him as the lead in her political zombie flick, the sad-but-sweet goth boy begins making friends, remembering his past as a young vegetarian in love and dabbling in a bit of blood play. LaBruce’s previous works, like the 2003 terrorist art-porn The Raspberry Reich, also focus on the outcasts of society, with a smattering of explicit sex thrown in for good measure. We caught up with the director to find out why radical gays make such great film monsters and how zombies like to get it on.

Time Out New York: Has anyone done gay zombie porn before?
Bruce LaBruce: There’s a little bit, and there’s some straight zombie porn as well. Mostly there are all these extreme torture movies. Our culture is moving in the direction of extremes, and zombie porn would be a logical extension of extreme sexual fetishization. I predict there’ll be a big explosion of zombie porn over the next five years.

TONY: What’s so appealing to you about zombies?
Bruce LaBruce:I think most people identify with them on different levels. And I was just getting tired of seeing zombies treated like they are worthless homeless people, like you can hit them on the head with a shovel and knock their heads off and laugh about it like it’s a sport. It’s too much like what people do to real homeless people. I wanted to make a zombie who was sensitive—with an eating disorder—one who doesn’t follow the usual zombie behavior.

TONY: And what would that be?
Bruce LaBruce:Well, they’re conformists, they’re interchangeable, they eat the same things, they are drawn to the same places, they have indistinguishable body parts and they kind of act all the same ways. They’re the ultimate consumer. And they’re viral; they have a disease aspect to them. All those things make them a kind of modern monster. But I wanted to get to the idea that monsters are actually sympathetic nonconformists, people who live on the fringes of society, outcasts.

TONY: Like gays.
Bruce LaBruce:The movie is that kind of allegory. Otto is a very sensitive gay man, or was when he was alive. He was a vegetarian. And now that he’s dead, he doesn’t like to eat meat or be violent. I was referencing how difficult it is for young gay kids when they come out. There’s a lot of disapproval and hostility and violence directed toward kids. That’s how I felt when I was a gay teen—isolated, alienated from the rest of the world.

TONY: That’s something that comes up in your other films too, isn’t it?
Bruce LaBruce:Yes, my films are often about outsiders or a group of outsiders who don’t necessarily conform to the mandates of the dominant ideology, and they’re quite often homosexuals, though they don’t necessarily identify as gay. I deal with skinheads, male prostitutes, extreme left-wing revolutionaries.

TONY: Speaking of skinheads, Otto is set in Berlin. What’s your connection to Germany?
Bruce LaBruce:My producer Jürgen Brüning is based in Berlin, so I shot my last two films there. And visually, it’s the way to get spectacular locations cheaply. There are some great graveyards. I was going for a German expressionist vibe.

TONY: You make graveyards look so romantic.
Bruce LaBruce:There’s something extremely melancholy about them. They’re peaceful, but they’re also full of ghosts, I guess. I have a cemetery in almost every film I’ve ever made. Quite often people are having sex in them, for some reason.

TONY: What is zombie sex like?
Bruce LaBruce:You can create your own orifice, which is very convenient. And the characters get extremely bloody; there is blood all over the room. It’s kind of unsafe sex. But the blood is fake blood, so it’s actually safe sex.

TONY: Are you into blood play?
Bruce LaBruce:There’s something really cathartic about it. I just did a live performance in Barcelona, and had three guys dress up as militant intellectual zombies. The public was invited to pose with them, naked and spattered with blood, and I took Polaroids. The room and the Catalonian flag in the back were completely drenched in blood. People were really into it! Blood play is a great release of energy. It brings out people’s primitive emotion. But you can’t use real blood, because it just smells horrible.

TONY: Do you have other monstersyou’d like to work with in the future?
Bruce LaBruce:Yes! I really like the genre of a visit to a small planet, or of someone coming from another planet and sort of observing Earth.

TONY: What would they find?
Bruce LaBruce:That’s the thing—they’d find that it’s pretty fucked up.

Otto; or, Up with Dead People starts Fri 7 at IFC Center.