Short Takes: ‘Latin Blood: The Ballad of Ney Matogrosso’ (2025) ★★ ½

Watching Latin Blood: The Ballad of Ney Matogrosso (a.k.a. Homem com H) wasn’t the first time I wondered about the logistics of filming R-rated rim jobs (that would be when I watched the HBO series Looking), but it was the first time I was prompted to do some online research on the subject. And now I know that yes, there are modesty garments that cover actors’ buttholes, dashing any notions I had that Jesuíta Barbosa (as Ney Matogrosso) and Bruno Montaleone (as Marco, the tragic love) were staring directly into each other’s naked assholes when filming their sex scene.

Sorry, I really shouldn’t begin a review obsessing about the particulars of filming simulated sex, but it was top of mind when I finished watching Latin Blood. The movie is not about actors tossing salad, however. It’s a biopic about queer Brazilian singer Ney Matogrosso, known as much for his outrageous costuming and androgynous appearance as for his voice.

That Matogrosso (né Ney de Souza Pereira) rose to such heights is a testament to his talent and determination, given that his father, portrayed in the film by Rômulo Braga, was a harsh, borderline abusive, disciplinarian who seemed determined to break the young Ney’s will at every turn. Then again, proving our parents wrong can be a powerful motivator. After brief stints in the military and performing in a Brasilia college choral group (and having an affair with an older man), Matogrosso moves to Rio de Janeiro in the late 1960s, where he ultimately joins the rock group Secos & Molhados (Dry Ones & Wet Ones), becoming its art director as much as its lead singer. The band is an immediate hit, yet as much as it owes its success to Matogrosso’s stage presence, the film suggests the Secos & Molhados’ founding members—both straight—wanted him to tone it down. Instead, Matogrosso goes solo, to even greater success.

Director Esmir Filho, who co-wrote the script with Laura Malin, has crafted an entertaining film, featuring some superb performances, especially from Barbosa, and a few questionable wigs. It’s not a very impactful film, however. The problem with biopics that go from cradle to grave—or cradle to present day, in this case—is they tend to play like highlight reels. Latin Blood rapidly cycles through Matogrosso’s life, from 1949 to present day, barely allowing the audience time to get its bearings before jumping to the next decade, only slowing down for the 1970s. Characters appear with little introduction—perhaps, in the case of Cazuza (Jullio Reyes), because the filmmakers believe none is needed. But if you’re unfamiliar with Brazilian musicians of the ’70s and ’80s, you’ll think he’s just one of Matogrosso’s fuck buddies, until it’s revealed in another time jump that he was a famous singer in his own right, and an AIDS casualty a scene after that. There is no time for tears, however, before the Latin Blood hops to another moment in Matogrosso’s life as it races to a finale concert by the real, present-day Matogrosso.

You may get more out of Latin Blood if you’re already a fan of Matogrosso’s music. If not, at least appreciate that, despite often playing out like a Wikipedia page with sex, nudity and a soundtrack album, it’s not some Bohemian Rhapsody PG-13 bullshit.

A Gay Man Watches Straight Smut #6*: ‘The Passions of Carol’

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Reading Roundup: Sin in the Suburbs More Fun Than Small Town Secrets

The cover for the 1962 paperback
 edition of John D. MacDonald’s
Soft Touch suggests it’s a novel about
 a vacation fling gone wrong. Regardless,
I wish the eBay seller I bought this
from had chosen a different spot for
their barcode.

As important as the setting can be to a story, I often encounter authors (and sometimes filmmakers) who treat it as inconsequential. This is especially true of books about the sexploits of the beautiful people, which usually do little more than mention the city where the characters reside/travel to (Los Angeles, New York, Paris) and a few chic locations (Rodeo Drive, Le Cirque, Maxim’s) before focusing on excessive cocaine use, backstabbing and fucking. Of course, there are other authors who go too far in the other direction and use up a lot of ink with florid descriptions of every vista observed, every street traveled, every room entered, every zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

But most authors get it just right, careful to evoke their story’s setting without writing about it to distraction. Not surprisingly, one of those authors is John D. MacDonald, whose 1958 thriller SOFT TOUCH provides a snapshot of suburban depravity, where bored couples fill their empty existences with liberal amounts of alcohol and casual flings. For Jerry, suburbia is a stifling prison, made unendurable by his wife Lorraine, described as “unhappy, shallow, lazy, short-tempered, cruel and amoral.” Lorraine spends most of her time partying with the neighbors, only coming home to sleep it off or pregame for the next night. Jerry wants to divorce her and hook up with Liz, the attractive secretary at E.J. Malton Construction Company where he works. Except, the construction company is owned by his father-in-law. If only he had the capital to start his own company, he could make a clean break and start over with Liz.

Enter his old war buddy, Vince Biskay, who now works as a pilot doing odd jobs for a South American dictator. Vince has come to Jerry with a scheme to intercept a suitcase filled with the dictator’s cash in Miami before it’s handed over to an arms dealer. Jerry is resistant at first but is ultimately swayed when assured he’ll be little more than a getaway driver.

Things don’t go as planned, and they get worse as Jerry’s increasing greed and paranoia clouds his thinking. The ever-reliable MacDonald ramps up the tension as Jerry tries to stay one step ahead of real and imagined threats, convinced he’s pulling it off despite his near-misses and total fuckups, which includes a fight with Lorraine that ends very badly and a tryst with one of the neighborhood’s bored, horny housewives who steps naked out of the bedroom at the worst possible moment.

Soft Touch is a lean, fast-paced thriller that proves once again that MacDonald was a master of the genre. I’ll also recommend the 1961 movie adaptation, Man-Trap. Though Ed Waters’ screenplay takes a lot of liberties with the book’s story, giving it a much happier ending, the movie is largely worth watching for Stella Stevens’ enjoyably nasty performance as Lorraine (re-named Nina in the movie for some reason).

The model’s expression on this 1975
paperback edition of The World They Wanted
is less “Come hither,” and more “What
 the hell do you want?”

Sticking with another tried-and-true author, I selected something from the Herbert Kastle bibliography, THE WORLD THEY WANTED, in which suburban malaise moves to center stage.

Though the cover of the Mayflower Books edition I have makes the novel appear to be about bed-hopping in the 1970s, the novel was originally published in 1962, when women weren’t expected to have ambitions beyond becoming a housewife, when $17K a year was a decent income, and when a three-bedroom split level could be purchased for $20,000. And $20 grand is what it costs to buy such a home in Birch Hills, a development that’s the brainchild of builder Matt Swain, who hopes there are New York City residents willing to make the move to a more bucolic setting.

Plenty are. Among the first to buy homes in Birch Hills are the Rands, who hope that their juvenile delinquent son George will start flying right once he’s moved away from the bad influences of the city. Joe Bialdi, who has been struggling with mental illness much of his adult life, thinks owning a home in Birch Hills will give him plenty of projects to occupy his troubled mind. Only the Lerners make the move to the ’burbs for typical reasons—more space for the kids—though Miriam Lerner wishes her husband Dave would consider some place closer to NYC, a place that is known to have a Jewish community. Dave, who wants only to assimilate into WASP circles, is drawn to Birch Hills precisely because it affords him an opportunity to deny his Jewish identity.

Of course, the move doesn’t mean their problems stay behind in the city. George Rand finds different ways to rebel, mainly by boning the Bialdis’ overweight daughter, Josie, who has decided the best way to attract boys’ attention is to put out (well, she’s not wrong). Meanwhile, his parents’ marriage begins to fall apart. Steve Rand becomes an alcoholic, and his wife Nancy reveals herself to be a judgmental, antisemitic bitch who hates sex. Is it any wonder that Steve cheats on her?

The move also threatens the Lerners’ marriage. Dave, a commercial artist, is experiencing a career slump and takes his frustrations out on his wife—violently at one point. Miriam, who’s seen how Matt Swain looks at her, contemplates having an affair. Joe Bialdi, on the other hand, seems to get what he wants out of the move, but mowing the lawn and chopping wood can’t keep his inner demons at bay when he discovers George is “taking advantage of” Josie.

It's tempting to label The World They Wanted as a soap opera and, well, it basically is, but it’s more John Updike than Grace Metalious. It has plenty of lurid parts, but they are written to make a point rather than titillate—and much less explicit than similar scenes in Kastle’s later books. Kastle certainly had the talent to pull off a more ambitious novel, and he almost does it with The World They Wanted. Unfortunately, it’s brought down with a wrap-around narrative concerning Matt Swain and his sales director Adeline Teel. I found myself way more invested in Matt’s business challenges than whether he’d finally come to his senses and marry Adeline (or whether “Addy” would finally come to hers and move on). Worse, Kastle gives the book a corny ending that’s so Hollywood romance you can practically hear the swelling orchestra as you read the final paragraphs.

Avon at least got its cover right for its
1982 paperback edition of
Family Reunion.

Still, I’ll take an OK Herbert Kastle novel over a dud suspense novel, which is what I got when I picked up 1982’s FAMILY REUNION by Joyce Harrington, an author primarily known for writing short stories.

Ten years have passed since Jenny Holland left behind her mother and the small town she grew up in for New York City. Though she hasn’t once visited during her decade away, she has kept in touch with letters to her mentally unstable mother, who never replies, and her cousin Wendell, who writes frequently, never mind that Jenny rejected his wedding proposal before lighting out for NYC. (As for that whole cousins thing: Our cousinship was far enough removed to make this union not only feasible but appropriate.) Recently (roughly 1979 or ’80) Wendell has been writing to Jenny about a planned family reunion at River House, her late grandmother’s estate that has been vacant since her passing. Jenny, who has some unanswered questions about her late father as well as hoping to make amends with her mother, decides the reunion is as good a time to visit as any, and books a flight.

Returning to her hometown raises more questions than answers. An antique straight razor frequently disappears, only to reappear in different parts of River House. The door to the house’s cupola has rusted hinges but a shiny new padlock that is sometimes locked, sometimes not. Jenny returns to her room to find her new clothes cut to ribbons. A heavy dresser in an upstairs children’s room is mysteriously overturned while all adults are on the ground floor. Jenny hears ghostly voices calling to her from across the nearby river. The face of an old hag appears in a kitchen window, disappearing just as suddenly. Are these events supernatural, or part of a sinister real-world plot? Also, what really happened to Jenny’s father?

These mysterious goings-on and past secrets might have yielded an intriguing Midwest gothic (assuming Jenny’s hometown is a fictional stand-in for Harrington’s hometown of Marietta, Ohio), if only Harrington hadn’t written the suspense out of her story at almost every turn. The characterization of Jenny, our narrator, is uneven to the point of being annoying. She is at once quirky and independent, passive and needy, depending on what the story needs her to be. There are a few passages that imply she’s possibly unwell, such as when, seemingly possessed, she contemplates slicing her wrist with that straight razor. One could argue that revelations later in the book would explain some of her behavior, such as her becoming more unsure of herself once in the presence of her family, but Harrington never quite makes that connection.

But Jenny isn’t the only problem character. There is Wendell’s sister Fearn (probably pronounced Fern, but that extraneous “a” had me wanting to pronounce it Fee-urn), who is mildly bitchy at best, a total cunt at worst, and she’s usually at her worst. When she’s not berating Jenny like a high school bully she’s yelling at her children whenever they move, being downright abusive to her daughter Millie. However, there are moments when she’s suddenly nice to Jenny, which immediately struck me as suspicious. These moments come to nothing, though, and Fearn resumes being her usual unpleasant self. Another thought was Fearn was being set up as cannon fodder and I eagerly awaited the moment she was killed by whatever/whomever is terrorizing this family reunion, or at the very least, that someone would beat the shit out of her. Instead, Fearn remains unharmed for the entire book, with no one, not even Jenny, bothering to call her out on her shitty attitude.

Most of the other characters in Jenny’s family are written as either judgmental biddies or close-minded yokels, suspicious of Jenny and her big city ways. The few exceptions are Aunt Tillie, a sharp-tongued retired schoolteacher, and another conveniently distant cousin, David, a hot, motorcycle riding hippie who lives in Tucson with his young son Malachi. David becomes Jenny’s closest ally and eventual love interest, Harrington having a thing about keeping romance within the family.

To Harrington’s credit, she does effectively capture the setting of River House and its nearby town, though her description of the unnamed town’s named neighborhood of Muley is cringeworthy: It wasn’t quite the town ghetto, but a few [B]lacks lived there. Oof! Too bad Harrington seemed more concerned with writing about Jenny’s hometown like a high school outcast with an axe to grind than crafting an entertaining gothic thriller. Had it been kept to 200 pages, Family Reunion could have been a tight tale of suspense. Instead, it’s a long-winded and tedious 304 pages, not really kicking into gear until its final 75. Like most family reunions, this one’s best avoided.

What if ‘Hellraiser’ was Gay(er) and DTF?

Are men with giant bird heads scary? Moreover, are they hot?

Kinda? (Photo from BJ’s Gay Porno-Crazed Ramblings)

Those are but two of the questions you’ll ask yourself while watching the late Michael Zen’s 1976 gay porn horror film FALCONHEAD and its mid-1980s sequel, FALCONHEAD II: THE MANEATERS. Both films are considered classics of the gay porn genre, even likened to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, writer-director Zen telling dark erotic stories—often abstractly—through dreamy imagery, effective, if unlicensed, music, lots of smoke, and, of course, lots of cum-drenched sex scenes.

However, while both movies are classics, they aren’t exactly scary.

Though both movies they have their moments.

What the Falconhead movies lack in genuine scares is made up for with mood, which is decidedly unsettling, somewhat creepy, often disorienting and just a wee bit pretentious. The first Falconhead is the more cryptic of the two films, with a barely-there storyline that waits a good thirty minutes to present itself. More immediate is the movie’s theme, narcissism, making it perfect for the age of social media.

Vince Perilli’s good side.

The titular Falconhead—a tall imposing man with, yes, a falcon head—descends a long outdoor staircase (UCLA’s Janss Steps in fact) to where a naked Vince Perilli waits, spread-eagle and ass-up. After Perilli licks the Falconhead’s leather boots, he is presented with a mirror. Suddenly, Perilli is licking and caressing his own reflection. A title card appears onscreen, reading: “He gazed into a mirror and was consumed by it.” Falconhead’s storytelling may be surreal, but its messaging isn’t subtle.

From there, we are dropped into a scene featuring one of the mirror’s earlier victims, a bearded man with a slim athletic build (“a slim athletic build” pretty much describes everyone who has a sexual role in the film). This is Adrian Wade, who was a member of the leather drag group the Cycle Sluts. His furry body is oiled and glistens in a red light. When I listened to the podcast Ask Any Buddy for background on the Falconhead films (and you can too), one of the hosts brought up that the combo of the oil and red light made it appear as if Wade was covered in blood. I guess, if you want to go there. I did not. Besides, there was more than enough bloodletting for me in the sequel (don’t worry, we’ll get to it soon enough).

Anyway, back to Wade pleasuring himself. Much of the scene is in extreme closeup, making it difficult to tell what part of his body Wade is rubbing.

Though some parts are less ambiguous than others.

A second well-hung man enters the frame; the scene is shot in such a way as to render him practically anonymous. Smoke further helps obscure his identity (Zen loves his smoke machines). There’s no mistaking what the guys are doing, however, as they kiss, the camera so close to their mouths that the scene almost becomes an endoscopy, and stroke each other, until Wade’s partner kneels to blow him. At the scene’s juicy conclusion, they kiss. The mystery man disappears, and Wade is left staring at his own bearded visage.

Next, we’re in the woods, where a heavy-set hippie dude in a black caftan is doing some sort of Wiccan shit. Suddenly his face fills the screen, and it’s one of the movie’s few jump scares. This hippie warlock who does his eyeliner with a Sharpie is Buddha Jon (a.k.a. John Parker, Brigid Berlin’s ex-husband), and what’s got him turning to the camera so startingly is his tenant, Anthony Lee (whom I think was Wade’s partner in the previous scene). Lee, tromping through the woods looking like he’s returning from a night at the Outcast, is carrying the mirror. In one of the movie’s two scenes with dialog, B.J. asks Anthony—his character name is Cat, but I’ll stick with the performer’s name—about the rent he’s owed, then asks about the mirror, accusing him of stealing it from “some trick.”

Lee ignores B.J. and retreats to his apartment. Staring at his own reflection, he fishes his cock out of a conveniently located hole in his jeans, then thinks better of it and stuffs it back in his pants, figuring it will be easier to just finish unbuttoning his fly. His stroke session becomes more intense, Lee ripping up his wifebeater and swallowing his own fist.

Gulp.

Mark David’s hot pants.

His hand isn’t all Lee swallows, as we soon see after he spews his copious load all over the mirror. It’s a moment that could easily be featured in this particular cumpilation [the whole goddamn post is NSFW, so you do the math regarding the links]. The scene segues into Lee’s post-nut fantasy (um, aren’t the fantasies before and during a stroke sesh?) A blond dude appears, his dick dangling out of a pair of crotchless leather shorts. Per Ask Any Buddy, it’s Mark David (a.k.a. Mike Daniels), one of the few members of this cast of one ’n’ dones to have a had a career in gay porn, albeit a short one. It’s at this point the movie moves beyond beating off and blowjobs to feature some rimming and fucking. The scene concludes with Lee, naked and asleep, his head resting on the mirror, while Buddha Jon looks through the window.

Next, fluffy-haired blond Joe Deitrich, wearing aviator sunglasses and black muscle tee, steps into an antiques store to browse. Deitrich is immediately drawn to the mirrors on display. Deitrich inquires about a mirror behind the counter—the mirror—and is told it’s $85. When he says he’ll take it, the manager (artist SabatoFiorello) hands it to him. “It’s yours,” he says with a knowing smile (I think it’s given to him free of charge, but the movie doesn’t clarify).

Mise en schlong.

Back at his ‘70s AF apartment, complete with mirrored walls and shaggy orange bedspread, a naked and glistening Deitrich snaps on a cock ring in preparation for some self-gratification (all the guys in this movie take their masturbation very seriously). However, Deitrich isn’t so serious that he can’t enjoy a joint with his wank. It’s at this point that another pair of hands slide up around his torso. The hands belong to a beefy stud wearing a leather hood, not credited but according to Ask Any Buddy it’s Glenn Robinson, also in Wakefield Poole’s Take One. It’s a pretty hot scene, with one of the more artfully shot rim jobs you’re likely to see in gay porn (as opposed to, I don’t know, the MCU).

The Falconhead gets some head.

The Falconhead and Vince Perilli reappear in the film’s last act. After artist Perilli, tellingly sketching falcons, finds the mirror in the woods (though I think it’s clear at this point that the mirror finds those who deserve it), he takes it home and—you guessed it—starts jacking off in front of it. In fact, he seems to be performing for the mirror. Just as he’s recovering from his orgasm, Perilli is seized by the Falconhead. This is where the movie goes in more of a BDSM direction, with Perilli’s arms suddenly bound behind his back by leather cuffs than chains. Perilli sucks the Falconhead’s dick, which is covered with a black condom. It’s an unexpected twist, given this movie pre-dates safe sex by a decade. Perilli gradually works the condom off the falcon cock. I wondered if he’d actually swallowed it, but then the Falconhead sticks his gloved hand into Perilli’s mouth and retrieves the rubber, which he then stretches over his hand, breaking it, then rubbing it all over Perilli’s face.

Just when it looks like Perilli is going to get fucked by the Falconhead, he finds himself atop black sheets, in a black room. In the room are Deitrich, wearing nothing but a metal-studded belt with matching cuffs, and Lee, with only a leather collar around his neck. They pounce on Perilli like tigers thrown a slab of raw meat. Perilli seems into it at first—I can certainly think of worse fates than getting my ass eaten by Lee while Deitrich feeds me his cock—but then the sex becomes rough; Lee and Deitrich become violent. Perilli’s pleasure means nothing. He’s there to be used. Worse, there’s no escape. He, like them, is now trapped in the mirror.

Doomed to be fucked by Joe Deitrich for an eternity.

While Perilli presses his face against the mirror’s glass, there are some shots of Buddha Jon laughing maniacally and shaking burning smudge sticks, and Sabato Fiorelli gazing mysteriously into a fishbowl, suggesting the two men are behind the fate of the men trapped in the mirror. This kind of makes sense. B.J. and Sabato would likely be rejected by men like Lee, Deitrich and Perilli, and would therefore want to see them punished by their own narcissism. People punished for their narcissism. This is a fantasy!

According to the hosts of the Ask Any Buddy podcast, Elizabeth Purchell and Tyler Thomas, Falconhead is considered the Hellraiser of gay porn, which I hadn’t heard before, but I can see the connection. The puzzle box functions the same as the mirror, after all, though being trapped in a mirror to have rough sex for eternity doesn’t quite have the same stakes as being ripped apart by Cenobites—or forced to watch Hellraiser: Relevations.

Falconhead and his pet.

Making the Most of a Backyard Pool,
a Smoke Machine and Saran Wrap

After directing a couple of porn movies for the heterosexuals (Reflections; The Filthy Rich), Zen returned to the Falconhead myth, releasing Falconhead II: The Maneaters in 1984. Though just as dreamlike (and pretentious) as the original, the sequel has something of a plot.

Manimal after dark.

Derek (bleached blond Rick Taylor) dreams of the Falconhead, now in the muscle bear form of Paul Barresi (girl, there are stories…), and showing more skin because of that fact. The Falconhead is in what at first appears to be a lush tropical garden but is more than likely the landscaped surroundings of someone’s backyard pool. After appearing to roar as falcons do (I write “appearing to” because the soundtrack is largely electronic music and narration), the Falconhead pulls his dick out and jacks off. This backyard is that nice.

The end of the dream is cut in such a way that it appears the Falconhead’s load lands on Derek, but then as Derek rubs it onto his chest lather appears. He is in the shower. In V.O., he talks of being haunted by the dream, though he’s clearly very turned on by it. Let’s just say his privates are thoroughly lathered during this shower. Still, he’d rather get off to memories of a recent tryst in “the mountains” (but the same backyard pool setting as the Falconhead dream). I get it. It’s like when you click on a porno video that has acts/themes you’re not comfortable responding to (I can’t be into stepdad-stepson piss play, can I?) and jump to something more familiar. Derek just isn’t cool with being aroused by falcon/muscle bear hybrids.

Paul Baressi has a proposition for Rick Taylor.

As Derek is rinsing off his splooge a man decked out in full leather gear (also Baressi) enters his home, careful to take the phone off the hook as he approaches the bathroom. This sequence is quite effective, actually, and one of the few moments in either of the Falconhead films that feels like a conventional horror movie. Derek, however, seems more annoyed than threatened (“Who the fuck are you?” he asks in a distinctly British accent). The leather man ignores his protests, informing Derek in a slow, gruff whisper, that he is perfect (i.e., a total narcissist) for the assignment, which is to find the Falconhead and “rescue” the leather man’s slave. All Derek has to do is enter the mirror and resist the temptations he finds there. Derek agrees, but only after the leather man promises to set him up “for the rest of [his] goddamned life.” As for the identity of the leather man’s “boy,” Derek is only told that he’ll know him when he sees him.

Sabato Fiorelli (right) wonders what the hell is that
on Rick Taylor’s head.

The leather man disappears and suddenly Derek is at a costume party, wearing some sort of horse headdress constructed of leather and chains. This is like Hellraiser, albeit one of its lesser sequels. It is here that he’s presented with various temptations, the first being two young men with “identical” cocks. “Now they can masturbate and be fucked at the same time by the same cock,” explains a narrator, who just might be Derek. These two men are Paul Monroe and, sporting a ’stache and tattoos, Brad Mason, and their scene together is quite intense. I was also surprised to see it features an instance of a performer spitting in another’s mouth (Monroe into Mason’s, specifically), which I thought was more of a 1990s thing—especially in the videos by TitanMedia.com—as sort of a safe sex workaround to guys taking loads in the mouth. To be clear, Falconhead II was made just ahead of gay porn incorporating safer sex precautions, so the spitting here is just to spice things up.

Rose-y Palmer

But Monroe and Mason’s scene is merely a warm-up. Derek still must find the mirror, which he discovers in a bedroom that’s surprisingly free of any horny party guests. It is the same mirror from the original film, and when he dons the leather man’s glove that has been left in front of it, he is transported into the “hall of mirrors”—so, mirrors within a mirror. The first mirror he gazes into is presented by Sabato Fiorelli, the only performer from the original, dressed as a white-faced nun. Derek gazes into a white room inhabited by straight performer Blake Palmer, back when he was young and cute, dressed in a loose white shirt and tight white pants. Palmer gradually strips while posing with a rose. As he does so, a narrator recites a piece about the “rape of humiliation,” which includes this passage: “I dreamed a Nazi tried to rape me in an alley, but I bit his tongue and the blood dripped swastikas.” Palmer ultimately jerks off with the rose, piercing his bottle-shaped dick with its thorns and using the blood as lube. Um, no thank you.

Derek next encounters a middle-aged drag queen in a wedding dress. The queen bride presents a mirror that shows a master-slave scenario. Steve Collins, dressed much as he was in Gayracula, sans cape, summons his servant, who appears wearing a mask/headdress and little else, proffering a tray with an apéritif. Collins removes the servant’s mask to reveal we’re getting a second and welcome appearance by Brad Mason. Mason immediately drops to his knees. Here Zen uses a Vangelis track, the jaunty electronica working especially well when Collins fucks Mason, almost in time to the music.

“Nothing saves like Saran Wrap®.”

The master then becomes the slave. Mason strips Collins, then wraps him in Saran Wrap (“I must be wrapped as a package to make my body conform”). Though I found the plastic wrap business a little silly, the two performers make it hot. After Mason gets off (and helps himself to a taste) he dresses in Collins’ discarded tux. When he rings the bell for the servant, Collins appears, wearing the same mask/headdress that Mason wore at the scene’s beginning.

Paul Monroe goes down on a motorcycle.

We’re not done with Mason yet, or Paul Monroe, as they both return for the penultimate sex scene, which involves Monroe jerking off on a motorcycle while recalling a grungy encounter with Mason. I’m all for another helping of Mason and Monroe, but I’ve seldom seen the sex-with-a-motorcycle motif not look dumb. Fortunately, Zen focuses more on Monroe than the bike, but Monroe still incorporates the bike into his jack-off session. Then again, I drive a Kia Soul, so what do I know about being sexually aroused by vehicles.

Having successfully resisted the temptations along the way (never mind that only one drag queen offered), Derek is granted access into the Falconhead’s smoky garden lair, the same backyard with the tropical landscaping seen earlier. The Falconhead hands Derek a sword, which makes the leather man’s trussed-up slave appear, somehow. Naturally, Derek can’t resist the temptation of the leather man’s “boy.” The slave is played by Danny Combs, who’s got a sweet ass and big dick, so it’s understandable why Derek would want him for himself. This doesn’t sit well with the leather man, however: “You…mother…fucking…bastard. He’s mine. Mine!” The leather man vows revenge, teasing a third movie that never happened.

As is its custom, Bijou features
photos from a completely
 different movie on its DVD
 cover for Falconhead.

Comparing the two movies, the quality is about equal, though according to the hosts of Ask Any Buddy Falconhead II is the more popular movie, probably because it does have more of a narrative. While I thought Falconhead II was good overall, with Zen making the most of a backyard pool, a smoke machine and Saran Wrap, I prefer the aesthetics and the cast of the first film. Not only that, I also found the action of the first Falconhead to be hotter. I might’ve gotten into the second film a bit more if Zen had cast someone other than Rick Taylor as the lead narcissist. I just didn’t find Taylor that compelling. Worse, he looks like a former frustrating co-worker, and once I made that comparison in my head, I could never see Taylor as sexy, even when he had Combs’ dick buried in his ass. I could’ve done without the bloody rose J/O scene as well.

If you want to check out Falconhead II, be aware that the versions available on adult streaming sites are severely edited, removing the Saran Wrap scene and the final scene, though it looks like “the rose scene” is mostly left intact, at least it is on GayHotMovies.com. Fortunately, there are full 80-minute versions floating around, you just need to know where to look, like here. The first Falconhead appears to be uncut, and can viewed on PinkLabel.tv, GayHotMovies.com and BijouWorld.com. Just remember if you watch either film: “Ejaculation is the final denial of death.”

Whaaa?