Plot

Mr. Choade, the director of The House of Choade, a Grand Guignol theatre, has made an evil bargain with the Medicine Man, who has promised to help him make an artistic leap. A young girl, Linda, who has just been released from a mental hospital, gets a job performing at the House of Choade and becomes embroiled in these machinations. Linda's ex-girlfriend Roxy re-connects with her and attempts to save her. This film, a dark comedy by first time director James Habacker, was shot in Manhattan and features many luminaries from the downtown performance art scene centered around the Slipper Room.—Slipper Room Players

This dark, storybook fairy tale is a genre - defying mixture of comedy, horror, sex, fantasy, freak show, dream and cartoon. On top of that, it's loaded with underground (and some mainstream) marquee names: Mat Fraser (from American Horror Story: Freak Show), his wife, the burlesque performer and choreographer Julie Atlas Muz, Slipper Room founder and Artistic Director James Habacker (who wrote and directed), Mistress of the New York School of Burlesque, Jo Weldon, and an impressive list of downtown New York performers, musicians, and artists such as Stormy Leather, Joe Coleman, and Bunny Love . The film is an ensemble piece that showcases much of the talent that lives and works within the orbit of The Slipper Room, the New York City Variety theatre that is the birthplace of neo - burlesque. The Cruel Tale of the Medicine Man has the delirious and free attitude that has been the linchpin in New York underground film since the sixties - sophisticated, daring, dirty, heroic, playful, defying category and the expectations of the "market," essentially giving the finger to anyone who thinks it's "weird," even as it entertains the hell out of those willing to go along for the ride.