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Joe Gage's HANDsome (1981)

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  Directed by Joe Gage *** Handys across America. An atmospheric mood piece about jacking off. Very dark and raunchy in places, the medium of the dirty phone call leading to some bizarre and almost free associative erotic fantasies. Interestingly some of the spoken fantasies blur the lines of gay/straight desire, men talking about being turned on by men engaged in sex acts with women. Jacking off leads to a kind of more extreme and unusual sexual fantasy than can take place in reality so it's interesting to see an erotic film try to capture that. There's something strangely offputting about this film, the excellent Man Parrish soundtrack new wavey but also ominous. One sequence in a car in the middle of the woods feels exactly like a slasher movie, whispered voyeurism, really dark cinematography and threatening moments. In the Ask Any Buddy podcast, Evan and Tyler argue the mood of the scene shifts, but I was still highly unnerved by it. As a film, it is fairly erotic, but also...
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Forbidden Letters (1979)

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Directed by Arthur J. Bressan Jr. ***** Been trying to think of the right words to talk about Forbidden Letters for a couple days now. After seeing the new restoration on PinkLabel.tv, I was blown away. Each scene has complex thematic exploration and is visually stunning. Forbidden Letters is a film about distance, longing and being closeted even when you're out and proud. Richard has been in prison for a year, while his boyfriend Larry waits and remembers. Today is the day Richard is released. They've had little communication, the letters they've so desperately wanted to write never sent for fear of outing Richard and increasing his jail time. So they wait in their pain, the ache getting stronger and stronger. The film opens on a strange avant-garde montage of a lawyer explaining the situation, which is later revealed to be Larry's dream. He is woken by a call from his friend, Iris, the rare female character in a gay porn film. She's a fun presence, but her role be...
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The Light From The Second Story Window (1973)

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  Directed by David Allen * Godawful slice of 70s gay erotica. The first hour contains 6 sex scenes all of which are pretty bad, the second contains 1.5 which are better but the whole film feels strangely paced and dull. David Allen wrote, directed, produced and starred in this film and it feels like a vanity project, lacking in many of the things that make gay erotica from this period interesting. A bit of a mess, but sadly not a very fun one. The attempt to make a Hollywood expose in the vein of All About Eve with the scale of Gone With The Wind is a flawed exercise from the start. The corresponding episode of Ask Any Buddy is helpful as ever, detailing how much of this was connected to the works of Pat Rocco and his fan club, SPREE (Society Of Pat Rocco Enlightened Enthusiasts). I also love their description of David L. Allen as "the world's oldest twink" who never gets a hard-on.
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Drive (1974)

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Directed by Jack Deveau **** The gay porn equivalent of a midnight movie. The lead character, Arachne, feels like Divine's distant cousin who just stepped out of a Warhol movie. She's a masterwork of camp, first appearing in a gorilla suit, riffing on Marlene Deitrich, and later giving a surprisingly moving monologue. Her goals are clearly defined and motivated, unlike the cheating James Bond-esque man trying to defeat her but constantly getting distracted by sex. It's hard not to be disappointed by the ending which as well as being very unsatisfying falls prey to some lazy gender politics. The sex here is notably unerotic, overlaid with strange animal sounds and chaotically edited. Also, has an insane fisting jump scare which has to be seen to be believed. I've often wondered, as I've been watching the Ilsa films, what a gay version of them would look like. The final third kinda answers that; irresponsibly horny and ending in a giant orgy. One of the tortures is ki...
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Take One (1977)

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Directed by Wakefield Poole ****1/2 I decided to watch Take One because of Evan Purchell's Ask Any Buddy podcast. I've been following him and his film for a little while, desperate to see it and to seek out some of the films used to create it. Gay erotica is an interest of mine, especially this vintage stuff which I think can tell stories about sex in a way that mainstream cinema and even porn nowadays refuses to do. So, I was delighted to see that he was releasing a podcast where he would discuss each of the 186 films he used at length. I'll be trying to watch and listen at roughly his pace. WARNING: For your enjoyment, do not try to understand this film: there is nothing to understand. It is only real people doing reel things and making them reel together. Poole's delightful, dreamy Take One feels distinctly un-porn like. Yes, there are the requisite sex scenes, but structurally, Poole plays with levels of reality and fantasy, the two constantly intermingling and unde...
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Passing Strangers (1974)

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Directed by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. ***** Incredible. Bressan's debut feature is a remarkable work of erotic cinema that feels unlike anything else I've seen. It's less interested in fucking than it is about romantic connection, bridging the gap between experience and coming out and the yearning to be with someone. The first half is a beautiful but quietly devastating portrait of loneliness, the black-and-white cinematography just making their sadness more stark. Yet, there are moments of light and passion. The sex is hot and the artistic flourishes Bressan uses are delightful. A dreamy bubble sequence is full of intense close-ups and joy. In the film's second half our two lovers meet and the world bursts into gorgeous colour. What struck me most about this wasn't that it was some fantasia. That beach date and subsequent sex are rooted in reality. Flying a kite together is stupid and silly but it's also so so sweet. It kinda reminded me of my first dat...
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The Raspberry Reich (2004)

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Directed by Bruce LaBruce **** To watch a Bruce LaBruce film is to wait patiently for it to exhaust itself or to give up and get intensely frustrated. It's why they tend to work better when you're thinking about them afterwards. The Raspberry Reich is this at it's most extreme. LaBruce's provocations are incredibly overbearing here. Not just in sexually explicit material, but in the style of performance and visual appearance, splashing text all over screen to deliberately challenge and subvert the visuals, most often during those sex scenes. So, there'll be two guys fucking while CORNFLAKES ARE CAPITALISM flashes on the screen like a hyper socially conscious Noe. And that gets exhausting after a while. But as I sat in bed, trying to go to sleep, I couldn't shake the idea that The Raspberry Reich had something more important to say. And then it hit me, this is perhaps the only film I've seen that comes close to examining the overwhelming s...
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