A QUEER KIND OF UMBRELLA

Nothing dates faster than trendy, and it's no surprise that flamboyant gay cop Pharaoh Love (A Queer Kind of Love, 1994, etc.) has become almost as much a museum piece as the starry casts of Baxt's Hollywood historicals. This time, Pharaoh starts out working undercover, conscientiously enough, to get inside a Chinatown alien-smuggling ring but ends upin the woolly, anything-for-a-laugh second halfrounding up the usual all-Asian suspects in search of Chinese godfather Kao Lee's ledger of kidnap victims, all while the bad guys get winnowed by a poison- firing umbrella. Neat, huh? With a detective worthy of The Mod Squad, a murder weapon right out of James Bond, and repartee that could have come from What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Baxt's shaggy tale makes the present look like a collection of '60s relics.