Sunday, November 3, 2024

The Horrors of Tacky Jewelry

Bluray outer cover for SEX DEMON AND OTHER HAUNTINGS
Well, this was supposed to be my Halloween post, but alas, I have minimal control over how my time is prioritized and bosses usually aren’t sympathetic to employees taking a half day off for, well, anything, but especially for finishing a blog post. But that’s fine, because in the U.S., November 2024 is way more terrifying than Halloween ever thought about being. So, consider these porno horrors a respite from the terrors of real life.

I first learned about the 1975 movie SEX DEMON from an episode of the Ask Any Buddy podcast I’d listened to a couple years ago. Host Elizabeth Purchell’s excitement at having found a print of director J.C. Cricket’s long-lost film was infectious. I immediately wanted to see it, but it turned out I’d need to book a flight—on a time machine. The podcast dropped on October 8, 2021, and it was largely promoting upcoming screenings of the film in New York and Los Angeles. So, like my wanting to look like Jake Gyllenhaal, I had to accept that viewing Sex Demon was another thing that wasn’t going to happen for me.

Vintage newspaper ad via 
Dirty Looks.
Fast forward to this year. I’m still no closer to looking like Jake Gyllenhaal (apparently that requires more than prayer), but Sex Demon did get released on Blu-ray by AGFA and is now sold through Vinegar Syndrome’s sister site, Mélusine.

Steve Spahn and Jeff Fuller in a scene from SEX DEMON
Lovers Jim (Steve Spahn, left) and John (Jeff Fuller) begin
their third (or second) year together.

A still from the 1975 film SEX DEMON
A traditional gay anniversary gift.
At the movie’s opening, Jim (Steve Spahn, who looks like Heather Matarazzo cosplaying as a young John Travolta) awakens his older lover to announce it’s their third anniversary (referenced later in the movie as their second because Sex Demon has more important concerns than continuity). Jim then presents a tube of KY to his boyfriend John (Jeff Fuller, who sort of looks like Chris O’Dowd if you’re not wearing your glasses). John forgot their anniversary so, even though Jim sucked him off anyway, he rushes to a Christopher Street antiques store for “something special for someone special.” The special something he buys is a godawful gold medallion that Flava Flav would find a little much, overpriced at $20. Jim loves it, though, and refuses to take it off, even wearing it while he and John finally get around to using that KY.

A still from J.C. Cricket's 1975 movie SEX DEMON
The curse of bad taste.
But, as we learn via an unpacking flashback scene at the antique shop, complete with a Vaudeville-style voice over, “THIS MEDALLION IS CURSED!” The first sign of the curse occurs while Jim is doing dishes. He breaks a glass, then cuts his hand trying to pick it up. He then passes out, which isn’t surprising as he spills enough blood to make one wonder if he hit an artery. Then the cabinet doors fly open, and a box of cake mix falls to the counter and a colander falls to the floor. Scary! Later, though, John asks about why all the dishes were on the floor, suggesting that director Cricket initially had something more spectacular in mind than the ejection of a single box of cake mix.

A scene from J.C. Cricket's 1975 film SEX DEMON
In the kitchen with Pazuzu.

Jim dreams of an occult orgy, the participants of which are all wearing white eye shadow and gold glitter face paint. The sucking, fucking and fisting (yikes!) all takes place around a small altar displaying that cursed medallion front and center, along with a ceramic skull and a bunch of candles for extra spookiness. John awakens early in the morning to hear animal like grunting coming from the kitchen and goes to investigate, losing his tighty whities along the way. He discovers his lover sitting in front of the open fridge, eating raw meat.

A still from the 1975 film SEX DEMON
Foreshadowing.

An unhappy ending.
Now fully possessed by the sex demon, Jim goes to the nearest gay theater, the Gaiety Male Burlesk, which was managed by Cricket at the time. In the theater’s restroom Jim forces a guy to blow him (never mind that the guy pretty much offered to do so willingly). Jim then bends the guy over a sink and fucks him, breaking his neck and killing him the moment he cums. Another trick gets taken back to the apartment. After another forceful fuck (“Cum, you bitch!”), Jim stabs the guy in the ass with a screwdriver. A horrified John can no longer deny that his lover is possessed.

A scruffily attractive Good Samaritan, who had come to John’s aid earlier when Jim assaulted him on the street and who remains by his side for the remainder of the movie, has remarkable insight on the situation, even knowing from which antiques store John bought the cursed medallion. John and Scruffy immediately go searching for a priest to exorcise Jim. Panama Johnson is the unfortunate man of the cloth tasked with casting the demon out of young Jim’s body, getting a mouthful of piss for his trouble. God’s one weakness! But it turns out what God can’t fix, a flight of stairs can.

A scene from the 1975 film SEX DEMON.
Even an exorcist cant help: Panama tries to cast out Jims demon
while John and a scruffy Good Samaritan look on.
So, was Sex Demon worth the wait? Yes and no. If you approach it as a grimy gay indie, Sex Demon can be a lot of fun, especially if watched with other people (those New York and L.A. screenings must’ve been a blast). It’s over the top in the best way, a cult movie in need of a cult. Cricket may be spoofing The Exorcist, but he wisely plays it straight, as it were. Fuller gives a more believable performance, but it’s Spahn who steals the show, never letting his limited acting skills stop him from just fucking going for it.

A still from J.C. Cricket's 1975 film SEX DEMON
John hopes using the anniversary KY will vanquish
 Jims medallion demon.
Sex Demon is less successful as porn, with only Spahn’s flair for sucking cock and that occult orgy saving it from being a total erotic failure. Put another way, only those turned on by that scene in Pink Flamingos where Divine sucks off Danny Mills will need to have tissues and Jergens (and maybe a therapist’s phone number) handy while watching Sex Demon.

Sex, Murder and Crisco

Though I was glad to finally have a chance to see Sex Demon, I’d feel kind of cheated if I’d paid almost $30 for one hour-long movie. However, I paid almost $30 for three hour-long movies (the disc’s full title is Sex Demon…and Other Hauntings). Plus, you get trailers for other vintage gay porn titles. What a value!

A still from the 1971 gay adult horror DEADLY BLOWS
Possibly the former lady of the house.
The homo horror continues with 1971’s DEADLY BLOWS, directed by Max Blue. Our lead is a young, overall-clad man who kind of resembles an extremely stoned Elijah Wood. (Though performers are listed, their roles aren’t. Stoned Elijah may be the performer credited as Stewart Morrison, but I could find no confirmation). Anyway, Stoned Elijah spends his days at his(?) large, Spanish colonial house, working in the garden or just chilling in his treehouse. He doesn’t seem to get out much, but he does get a fair number of visitors. “Many people come to my house. Each one comes for his own reasons. None of them were invited” says a narrator who sounds better suited for narrating a film warning teens about the dangers of drugs than a gay porno. He certainly doesn’t sound like the sleepy-eyed, curly-haired stud we see on screen.

A still from Max Blue's 1971 film DEADLY BLOWSS
Stoned face.
Among those visiting Stoned Elijah are a handsome dark-haired artist and a friendly looking, bearded hitchhiker. Stoned Elijah seems welcoming at first. The artist initially wanted to draw Stoned Elijah’s house, but suspecting there might be more going on beneath those overalls asks to draw Stoned Elijah instead (“I could his eyes stripping away my clothes and my defenses,” intones our narrator with all the passion of a loan officer explaining the terms of your mortgage). The hitchhiker is treated to a bowl of broth and some bread (“I was in one of those paternal moods,” explains the narrator), then offered use of the shower, which he is more than happy to share with his host.

Stoned Elijah does indeed have a beautiful body, so it’s easy to understand why his visitors are so taken with him. But Stoned Elijah also has a big sexual hang-up: he can’t finish without finishing off the guy he’s fucking. The artist he beats to death with a hammer. Fittingly, the artist appears to have red paint running through his veins. Using that red paint as lube, Stoned Elijah strokes his cock in time to a Johan Sabastian Bach composition (Invention 4, maybe?). Sexy.

A still from the 1971 film DEADLY BLOWS.
It's one way to avoid an awkward encounter with a former trick afterward.

At least the artist got to cum first. Stoned Elijah strangles the hitchhiker mid-fuck, which is just plain rude.

A still from the 1971 gay adult film DEADLY BLOWS.
The fine line between erotic asphyxia and murder is about to be crossed.
A still from the 1971 gay adult film DEADLY BLOWS.
Murder is wrong, but the hair of Stoned Elijahs
visitor is a crime.
Our homicidal hunk worries that his next unexpected visitor is a policeman even though he’s driving a green muscle car (“Maybe it was the police, and they were using a special trick car that didn’t look like a police car,” wonders our narrator). But it’s the artist’s roommate, who’s got too much sideburns and not enough mustache. Also, he might be wearing a wig. Stoned Elijah is at first evasive, then invites Sideburns inside. The artist is quickly forgotten, the two guys making out as Toccata & Fugue in D minor blares on the soundtrack. (“The whole thing was not what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to do it,” says the narrator, now sounding like he’s reading the transcript of a Sarah Palin press conference). Sideburns is extended the courtesy nutting before Stoned Elijah attempts strangling him. Things don’t go as planned, though, and Sideburns gets away. Stoned Elijah realizes there’s only one way his story can end, and that way ain’t prison.

Deadly Blows kind of has as similar vibe as Tom DeSimone’s Sons of Satan, which isn’t a surprise. Max Blue was a nom du porn of Nicholas Grippo, who produced many of DeSimone’s films before becoming a caterer to the stars. Deadly Blows is better than Sons of Satan in many ways, with a simple but slightly elliptical storyline, lush cinematography and a better-looking cast. Unfortunately, the sex scenes are as bland as those in Sons of Satan, with little variation in the action and, apart from Stoned Elijah and the hitchhiker, little heat generated by the performances.

Only the third feature, 10:30 P.M. MONDAY (1975), directed by Lucas Severin, really delivers as porn, albeit porn aimed at specific tastes. With its black and white wrap-around and surreal narrative, it’s also the most artsy movie on this disc if not the most original (it’s basically a grittier rip-off/homage of Wakefield Poole’s Bijou). The main characters are a couple in their mid-to-late 30s. One of the men—tall, lanky and bearded Jeremy Wheat—is still very much in love, but his boyfriend—Jeff Staller, stocky, with a thick mustache and dick—is growing bored. Staller openly cruises other guys in front of his lover and ignores Wheat’s attempts to initiate sex, preferring to jack off instead.

A still from Severin's BIJOU homage 10:30 P.M. MONDAY
Marriage.
A screen grab from the film 10:30 P.M. MONDAY.
Getting ready for his big night.
The next day Staller puts a letter in their mailbox before he leaves for work. Wheat opens it later, and all it says—spelled out in letters cut from a magazine—is “10:30 p.m. Monday.” Wheat doesn’t know what it means but gets ready for whatever it is when the hour nears, taking a shower, blow-drying his hair (and balls) and donning his freshest denim ensemble. At 10:29 a Rolls-Royce pulls into the driveway and, voila, 10:30 p.m. Monday is in color. The car delivers Wheat to a warehouse, where he’s greeted by a sexy bartender in leather chaps (Sextool’s Val Martin), who gives him a beer. Other men arrive, all of them wearing strategically ripped jeans. Hands begin to wander as the men drink their beers. One man bends over the table, offering his ass up as a snack to the guy next to him. Others follow suit

A still from the 1975 film 10:30 P.M. MONDAY
Getting the party started.
A scene from 1975's 10:30 P.M. MONDAY
A sensual moment before breaking out the Crisco.
A still from Severin's 1975 film 10:30 P.M. MONDAY
Weeeeee!
So far, so good. A cast of rugged guys, all into what they’re doing and enjoying doing it. Then the fisting started. A whole bunch of it, and not the comparatively reserved ass play seen in Sex Demon and
Left-Handed, but full-on, Crisco-up-to-the-elbows, let-me-see-if-I-can-reach-your-esophagus-from-here handballing. For me, this is when 10:30 p.m. Monday became a horror film. The cast, however, appears to be having a good time. Per Elizabeth Purchell’s commentary track, the cast features men from L.A.’s leather scene, so all this fisting was, well, just another Monday night for them. It’s the cast’s excitement for what theyre doing that really sells 10:30 p.m., making it the hottest of the three movies on this disc, though only if you’re into fisting. Like, really into it.

Jeff Staller and Jeremy Wheat kiss after doing so much more in 1975's 10:30 P.M. MONDAY
Another relationship saved by group sex and fisting.
All in all, Sex Demon…and Other Hauntings is best enjoyed as a time capsule, a journey back to when, as Purchell has noted, there was no distinction between gay porn and gay cinema. Consequently, the sex in these movies often seems incidental to the filmmaking, rough though it may be. But regardless of erotic impact, Sex Demon is worth the investment. There are certainly worse gay takes on The Exorcist you could watch.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Artfully Blending Gothic Seriousness with Camp

Cover for 1985 paperback edition PICTURE OF EVIL
I probably would’ve never picked up a Graham Masterton novel if I hadn’t read Grady Hendrix’s fantastic Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction. I was aware of Masterton’s best-known title, 1975’s The Manitou, but only because I’d seen its cheesy/awesome 1978 movie adaptation. Even then, though I knew it was based on a book, I couldn’t have told you who wrote it.

Paperbacks from Hell covers The Manitou, of course, and several other Masterton novels get name checked as well. However, the Masterton novel Hendrix chose to highlight was 1988’s cannibal cult novel Feast (published as Ritual in the U.K.). “Wherever you think this book won’t go,” Hendrix writes, “Masterton not only goes there, he reports back in lunacy-inducing detail.” I was sold, and immediately sought out the novel, thrilled I could find the Pinnacle paperback with the die-cut cover.

The cover for the 1988 paperback edition of FEAST
Die-cut covers excite me.

Though I didn’t find Feast to be as over-the-top as Hendrix did, it’s a fun ride. It’s the literary equivalent to watching a B-grade horror movie from the same period (kind of a Phantasm vibe, but with cannibals), with Masterton keeping me guessing where the book was going and usually surprising me when he got there. Sure, it’s kind of silly in places, but Masterton’s writing ability makes the book such a fun read you don’t care.

Masterton’s 1985 novel PICTURE OF EVIL (a.k.a. Family Portrait) has a more serious tone than the pulpy Feast, yet it maintains an undercurrent of camp that becomes more overt as the story progresses. The campiness is perhaps fitting given it’s a riff on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, even going so far as to make a pun of that book’s title.

Vincent Pearson, a well-to-do New York art dealer, is the owner of the titular picture of evil, a portrait of 12 people—all hideous—painted by Walter Waldegrave, a mediocre talent at best. Not only is the painting’s subject unpleasant to look at, the painting smells as well: A thick sweetish smell, like chicken skin that has decayed and gone green, only more pervasive, more cloying.

Vincent has no intention of selling the painting, telling his young executive curator Edward that it’s part of the Pearson private collection, explaining the painting was his grandfather’s. “He used to say it was like a family charm—that as long as we kept it, it would keep us safe.”

But on the same December day Vincent leaves the gallery early, a mysterious woman— well dressed, beautiful, very pale—visits the gallery. She introduces herself as Sybil Vane (yeah, the Dorian Gray references aren’t always subtle), and she’s interested in a specific painting, and it’s the one Edward can’t sell her, the Waldegrave. She doesn’t take no for an answer, but Edward, though entranced by the woman’s beauty, stands his ground, shaky though it is. Sybil Vane promises to return the next day to speak with Vincent.

Meanwhile, the gum-chewing sheriff of Litchtfield County, Conn., Jack Smith, whose job usually consists of keeping an eye on properties owned by wealthy New Yorkers, suddenly has a killer on his hands, and a very nasty one at that. The corpse of a young man has been fished out of a Connecticut reservoir, with all the skin peeled from his body. The coroner tells Jack that the skin was removed with surgical precision, mostly likely while the victim was still alive. “Otherwise, what on earth would have been the point of doing it! This is torture, in my view,” says the coroner, one of many characters whose dialog will have readers wondering if the Connecticut in Picture of Evil is the name of a village in England.

The woman seeking the Waldegrave painting and the skinned corpse are not unrelated. “Sybil Vane” is really Cordelia Gray, who, after several decades of exile in Europe, has returned with the rest of her family to the United States to reclaim the Waldegrave painting, and with it, return fully to the life they had when the painting—a family portrait—was first completed in the late 1800s.

The Grays are undead, but they are not vampires. It’s more like they’re immortal but not ageless and are prone to decay without Waldegrave painting in their possession. To keep up their appearances the Grays must steal a new skin suit, usually taken from whatever unfortunate hitchhiker Cordelia’s brother Maurice can entice into his old Cadillac Fleetwood. Maurice then takes them back to the family home in Darien, Conn., drugs them (usually), then carefully and expertly removes his victim’s skin. As described by Masterton, it’s the removal of skin that’s the hard part. The recipient of the new epidermis can slip into it like it’s merely a very bloody onesie. Once the skin has “settled” onto its new body, the recipient is almost good as new—on the outside at least.

Cordelia, still quite rotten on the inside, returns to Vincent Pearson’s gallery, only to again just miss him. Vincent has gotten an early start on the weekend, heading to his house in Connecticut with Charlotte, the “the youngest woman board member of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Also, by far the most beautiful.” Charlotte is literally Vincent’s lady friend, for even though they have kissed and cuddled, they are not fucking (yeah, I had a hard time buying that, too). Vincent does have a girlfriend, a 21-year-old, large-breasted editorial assistant named Meggsy, a moniker more befitting a Bichon Frisé than a person. Meggsy has absolutely no bearing on the narrative and seems only to exist to assure the reader that Vincent is a heterosexually active man, despite what might be inferred by his sexless relationship with Charlotte.

Edward and Cordelia fuck, however. Under the guise of hiring the executive curator to help her seek out pieces for her art collection, she makes a date for lunch, after which the pair return to Edward’s apartment where Cordelia wastes little time seducing her mark. Masterton isn’t terribly graphic (a minor disappointment as I expected more smut from the author of How to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed and The High Intensity Sex Plan), but he makes it clear that Cordelia is an incredible lay, and that maybe Edward is well-hung, or at least thinks he is:

She was yielding but cruel, continually biting his neck and his nipples, continually scratching him, but then parting her thighs widely and wantonly, or twisting around so she could take him in her mouth, so deeply he couldn’t imagine why she didn’t choke.

Once Edward drifts off into a post-nut slumber, Cordelia slips out of his apartment, taking his keys to the gallery on her way out. Once she’s gone, we learn she’s done more than drain Edward’s balls. Here, Masterton is much more graphic:

As Edward slept, a small off-white maggot emerged from the warm, sweaty crevices around his testicles and slowly made its way up his hairy thigh, its brown-tinged, sightless head weaving from side to side. Soon it reached the crest of his flaccid penis where it rested against his leg. The maggot crawled over the top of it, and then underneath it, until it found the crevice of his urethra. It waggled its way gradually inside and disappeared.

Yeah, Edward’s not coming back. Vincent does, however, discovering that the door to his gallery unlocked and his executive curator nowhere in sight. Nothing is taken, however. The Waldegrave, the one painting that was of interest to the thieves, was already gone, taken to Aaron, the “big and gingerbearded” art restorer who lives in Lichtfield County, Ct. Vincent, equal parts concerned and pissed off, goes to Edward’s apartment. When Edward doesn’t come to the door, Vincent badgers the concierge into letting him inside, where he discovers his employee’s body is now home to a million maggots. The police, understandably, don’t believe Edward was still alive when Vincent saw him three days ago and consider him a suspect. 

An Eviscerated Cat, a Clairvoyant Housewife
and a Punchable Art Expert

Vincent continues to find himself at the periphery of strange and disturbing events. After discovering the maggot-riddled corpse of Edward, he learns that Edward’s ex-fiancée Laura has disappeared and that Aaron’s cat Van Gogh was killed, found skinned and hanging from a tree. Bizarrely, the cat’s likeness has suddenly appeared on the lap of one of the women in the Waldegrave portrait. Then Vincent learns that Ben, the adult son of his God-fearing housekeeper, paralyzed after a fall suffered during a roofing job, has attempted to slice off his own face with a piece of broken glass.

Jack has heard about Ben’s self-mutilation as well, and rushes to the hospital when he learns that Ben was terrified that someone or something wanted his skin. It’s here that Picture of Evil becomes kind of goofy. Like, climactic scene of The Manitou goofy. Enter Pat, the clairvoyant housewife. Pat is a friend of Jack’s wife, and while he’s skeptical of her “gift,” he’s also desperate. His only lead has been young hitchhiker named Elmer, who managed to escape Maurice Gray, but the sheriff's attempt—with an assist by the Darien police chief—to question him go nowhere, with Maurice insisting on seeing a warrant first. Upon learning that Ben has only hours left to live, Jack decides to ask for Pat’s help, never mind that it’s 3 a.m. when he does so.

It's at the hospital that Jack and Vincent finally meet. Jack is initially resentful of Vincent, put off by “the lord-of-the-manor way in which Vincent had walked into the observation room and taken over the situation as if he had some kind of royal authority.” However, upon hearing about all the events that have surrounded Vincent—Edward’s death, Laura’s disappearance, Aaron’s skinned cat—the sheriff begins to believe that Vincent might be useful in prosecuting the Grays. Furthermore, Vincent is on board with using Pat to communicate with Ben via a séance.

Pat arrives at the hospital with curlers in her hair (a detail the reader will be reminded of throughout the chapter), annoyed by the inconvenient hour she was summoned and doubtful a séance will do much good. Interestingly, she’s the only one to express any real skepticism. Even Ben’s doctor is willing to give this psychic shit a try. The séance, conducted in the doctor’s office, gets off to a slow start, but dramatically kicks into high gear, with the participants plunged into complete darkness even though the lights are on, voices heard through static, showers of white specks, and ghostly howls (it’s really hard not to visualize this scene through the eyes of the late William Girdler, clumsy composites and all). Ben dies during the séance, but not without imparting one cryptic message, because of course any message was going to be cryptic: Lichtfield Cemetery…Johnson…next to the oak.

Everyone immediately goes to the cemetery, only to be disappointed that there is nothing about the grave that implicates the Grays. Except, Vincent realizes later, there is: the Johnson grave is a tomb, a walled grave. Waldegrave.

While Jack and Vincent are participating in séances and visiting cemeteries, Cordelia and Maurice have been busy eliminating Sheriff Smith’s sole witness, Elmer, gaining access to his cell by claiming to relatives. After they left, Elmer’s body was discovered, consumed by maggots. The Gray family also dispatch the Darien police chief, George Kelly, whom they catch snooping around their house in the early morning hours.

Meanwhile, Vincent and Charlotte become lovers (better late than never), their afterglow dimmed by the arrival of Vincent’s neurotic bitch of an ex-wife, dropping off their tween son Thomas a day early to spend Christmas with his father. Luckily for them, the boy is easily pawned off on family friends, allowing Vincent and Charlotte time to do research into Vincent’s family history and the Grays, making the connection that readers made before chapter five: the people depicted in the Waldegrave portrait are the Grays.

Pat’s services are enlisted once again, this time to communicate with spirits through the Waldegrave portrait, which now has a new addition: Laura, wearing a black maid’s dress, the skirt hiked up to reveal her cooch. If the description of the first séance suggested B-movie cheese, or at least an episode of Ghost Hunters, the second one is more akin to John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. Laura appears in the room and Jack tries to communicate with her, to ask where she’s being held, but Laura’s vaporous image only does a sexy dance in response. They realize too late that Pat hasn’t summoned Laura; she’s summoned the Grays’ toxic psyche. Before it’s all over, Pat is will be brought to death’s door, twice. Once when she appears to have been stabbed, and again when she vomits up copious amounts of blood. Both instances are illusions. The scars from the experience are very real, however, and Pat urges Vincent to destroy the Waldegrave portrait.

Except, destroying the portrait could mean destroying Laura. Hoping to find an alternate way to stopping the Grays and save Laura, Vincent, Charlotte and Jack pay a visit Dr. Percy McKinnon, who, per Charlotte, “knows everything anyone would want to know about art and magic.” He’s also a pompous asshole; however, he doesn’t dismiss Vincent’s claim that the Waldegrave portrait is what allows the Grays to live eternally. While his validation is gratifying, it doesn’t make the punchable art expert’s lecturing any more palatable, and when Dr. McKinnon offers a theory that things imagined by artists and writers can become real, Vincent begins to suspect this expert is talking out his ass.

While Vincent, Charlotte and Jack are trying to wrap their heads around the magical properties of art, Thomas has returns early from visiting a friend. Parked in front of his fathers house is an old black Cadillac, and waiting beside it are a man and a woman, claiming to be family friends…

Nitpick? I Darent, but Let’s

I found Picture of Evil to be almost as enjoyable as Feast. Masterton’s writing is strong, vividly evoking a mood with his descriptions and use of spooky metaphors (“the lapels lifted up to enclose her face like the petals of a black tulip”). There are several moments that instill dread, such as the skinned body being fished from the Connecticut reservoir and Cordelia and Maurice coaxing Thomas into their confidence. The final chapters, in which Vincent enters the world of the Grays’ impressive art collection, are particularly fun, though Vincent’s entry into this fantastical realm—via a hastily painted portrait and repeating some Latin phrases—is eye-rollingly silly. However, the artful blending of the serious and the silly is part of the book’s charm.

I do have some notes, however. For starters, Meggsy has no fucking reason to exist in this book and wouldn’t be missed if cut. I’d also argue that Laura should have been Edward’s fiancé rather than his ex, just to raise the stakes. I mean, how many bosses are going to care that much about an employee’s ex? They don't care about employees’ current partners. Or lose Laura completely, have Vincent and Charlotte already be lovers in the book’s early chapters and then have the Grays take Charlotte. That could really crank up the tension.

I’d also argue Picture of Evil’s story starts at the wrong point. The first chapter introduces us to Maurice and Cordelia while they are still living in France. It’s not a bad chapter, illustrating Maurice’s M.O. of picking up hitchhikers and skinning them, but it reveals too much too soon. The book’s third chapter, when the skinned corpse is dredged from water, would’ve made a stronger opening, leaving a little bit of mystery. As it is, when that body is discovered, we already know the who and the why, diminishing some of the book’s suspense.

More of an issue is the book’s setting, or rather, Masterton’s failure to portray it. For all his strengths as a writer, Masterton—born in Edinburgh, now living in Surrey, England—nails the American voice about as successfully as Kevin Costner nails a British accent. Sounding British works for the Grays, but you will never believe Vincent, Charlotte, Edward or Sheriff Jack are from the United States. The author’s “Rules for Writing” article on his website notes the importance of believable dialog and using correct idioms, yet Vincent twice uses the contraction daren’t, which isn’t exactly a common part of modern U.S. speech (my spell checker sure has a problem with it). The characters of Feast sounded British as well, but not as distractingly. Pictures of Evil’s story would’ve worked just as well, if not better, had it been set in the U.K.

Pictures of Evil may not be in the running for my favorite Masterton novel, but it’s still pretty damn entertaining, solidifying Masterton as another reliable writer to seek out when I’m shopping for paperbacks of a certain vintage. I daren’t pass up another opportunity to read another one of his books. 

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Short Takes: ‘Arabella: Black Angel’ (1989) ★★

Bluray cover image for 'Arabella: Black Angel'
One thing that can be said for the late entry giallo Arabella: Black Angel is that it doesn’t waste time. Before the movie has reached its 12-minute mark the main character, a sexy redhead with silly gold glitter streaks bracketing her eyes, goes to a sex club, The Infernal Regions (also simply called Hell), slinking past various sexy tableaux, including two women, tits out, lighting their cigarettes from another woman’s candle strap-on and two men in black banana hammocks wrestling, before submitting to two hunks wearing high-waisted black vinyl pants. This encounter is interrupted by a police raid and the red-headed woman is apprehended by gruff vice Det. Alfonse de Rosa (Carlo Mucari). “I’m not a whore,” she cries. The detective decides to let her go free—after he rapes her.

The main character is Deborah (a striking, and frequently naked, Tiní Cansino). She is not a whore, or a redhead, but the raven-haired wife of Frank (Francesco Casale), a best-selling author who’s been confined to a wheelchair after a wedding day car accident (Deborah really should’ve waited until they got to their hotel to blow him). Frank is also kind of an asshole, prone to throwing tantrums whenever Deborah or his mother Marta (Evelyn Stewart, a.k.a. Ida Galli) ask how the new book is coming.

Deborah, however, has bigger problems than being married to a temperamental paraplegic, like the fact that she has not one but two guys trying to blackmail her, one for sex, the other for money. If only they realized that Deborah and Frank have an understanding: at night she dons her red wig and goes looking for some strange as Arabella, then tells Frank about her extramarital adventures the next morning, which he then incorporates into his novel. Had the blackmailers known this, they might still be alive, because another one of Deborah’s problems is people who fuck/fuck with her tend to get their genitals mutilated by a scissors-wielding maniac. Can Inspector Gina (Valentina Visconti), a straight man’s lesbian fantasy, find the scissor killer is before Deborah mounts her next cock? More importantly, will Gina, who wears the same black plaid blazer for most of her scenes, ever find her way to a TJ Maxx? (Or a Castel Romano Outlet, as shes in Italy. The point is, bitch needs to add to her wardrobe.)

Arabella: Black Angel isn’t much of a giallo. It’s certainly one of director Stelvio (Emergency Squad, Convoy Busters) Massi’s lesser films, something he was obviously aware of given he’s hiding behind the generic—but appropriately porny—pseudonym Max Steel. However, if you’re looking for sleaze, Arabella’s got plenty, with copious nudity (mostly of the female variety), simulated humping and gruesome murders, including the graphic emasculation of one of Arabella’s hookups and two scenes where a killer uses scissors like a vaginal speculum. It’s no New York Ripper, but it’s far superior to Delitto carnale. At least Arabella doesn’t forget it’s a giallo, though you’ll likely spend more time puzzling over the movie’s lost-in-translation dialog (“This evening I’m going to nab you with your hands in the chili, young lady”) than you will its central mystery.

Sunday, August 11, 2024

More than Man Enough

Promo art for the documentary 'Mr. Angel'
I first became aware of Buck Angel nearly two decades ago, while perusing videos on TitanMen.com (I’m a patron of the arts). Buck was featured in the 2005 video Cirque Noir (only watch at work if you’ve already turned in your two weeks’ notice), but the trailer is very discreet about what makes Buck stand out from his porn star brethren. I ultimately passed on the video because fisting, but the Cirque Noir trailer did pique my interest in this Buck Angel guy. That’s when learned Buck Angel is not like other men.

Buck Angel is “a man with a pussy.”

I’ll admit my interest in Buck Angel the porn star pretty much ended there (I like dick, OK?), but several years later, when director Dan Hunt’s 2013 documentary MR. ANGEL hit Prime, I decided to learn more about Buck Angel the man, for reasons I’ll elaborate on later.

Like the Cirque Noir trailer, the first few minutes of Mr. Angel are coy about what makes its subject unique. Scenes of Buck in the shower, shot from the shoulders up, touching up his bald pate with a razor are intercut with home movie footage of Buck as a little girl, let us know he’s trans, and Buck lets a Berlin cab driver (and audience) know that he’s in the sex industry, telling the driver that he prefers Berlin’s openness with sexuality (“[The U.S. is] very scared of naked people,” he laughs). It’s not until Buck arrives at his Berlin destination, the Venus Show, where a life-size poster of him nude adorns the wall of his booth, that the audience learns what made Buck unique among porn performers of that time.

Buck Angel in the 2013 documentary 'Mr. Angel."
Buck Angels beauty regimen.

At first, he seems surprised by the poster or, rather, that event organizers went with such a graphic image, but he’s happy with their choice as it confronts attendees at the Venus Show with his exceptional anatomy. “With pants on I just look like a dude.”

Buck Angel poses with fellow TitanMen performers.
Buck Angel with his co-workers.
Buck Angel in a scene from the documentary 'Mr. Angel."
Just another day at the Venus Show.

It’s getting to know the Buck Angel with his pants on that is the primary focus of the documentary. Though there are many segments focusing on Buck Angel, porn performer, Mr. Angel is not a porn documentary. Instead, it shows audiences that while Buck may not have the genitals of a cis-gendered man, and his job isn’t a typical 9-5 office gig, he is, basically, just a dude, albeit one who must see a gynecologist.

Buck’s a pretty likable guy. Quick to laugh, thoughtful and, considering some of the shit he’s had to deal with, remarkably positive. I mean, these people might not like him but fuck them.

Bored now.
Yet even in the world of adult entertainment people can’t see the man for the pussy. A meeting Buck has with Lucas Entertainment founder Michael Lucas proves disheartening, the pouty-lipped porn star/mogul, who has made a video catering to fart fetishists, sees little market value in videos featuring a man with female genitalia. No cock, no sale.

“Just because I have a pussy does not make me not a man,” Buck says, later asserting, “I’m not an ‘it.’”

For the record, Buck says he decided against bottom surgery because penises created in the operating theater just aren’t up to snuff. Given that phalloplasty sounds like a grueling ordeal to go through only to wind up with dick that can’t even get hard without use of a prosthetic, it’s easy to see why he’s better off just using a strap-on.

Buck shows off his tattoos.

Still, it’s not easy for people to understand how someone can identify as one gender while having the parts of another. I certainly didn’t, which is what led me to watch this documentary initially. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get the message my first watch.

Learning I was the Asshole from a Man with a Pussy

I don’t come out well in this story, but here goes. Way back in 2012, my husband and I were having lunch with some friends. At the table was a friend who came out as trans a year earlier. I’ll call him Frank. Frank was in town for the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta, and he mentioned seeing Buck Angel, who was a featured guest at the conference that year. This is when I decided to make what I thought was good point: “But Buck Angel still has a vagina. Would ‘he’ even count as a trans man?”

Yes, I said that. Aloud.

A publicity still of Buck Angel
Buck Angel is poised and ready to blow narrow minds.

It was a stupid comment. I know this now. It was uttered in ignorance, not malice. This probably doesn’t make it better, but I kind of meant it as a joke. Frank, however, didn’t take it that way. “Why should that even matter!?” he asked angrily, and a bit too loudly for my comfort. I, in turn, reacted like a Boomer comedian told his rape joke was offensive and tried to justify my wrong-headed observation (i.e., that unless a person got top and bottom surgery, they were merely transvestites), which only made Frank more indignant. I recall someone else at the table—not my husband, BTWmaking a clumsy attempt to defend me, but all that did was draw fire until someone else mercifully changed the subject.

My ignorant comment was a teachable moment. If society is grappling with the concept of nonbinary identities now, they weren’t even acknowledged in 2012. We didn’t even know the word nonbinary existed. Even within the LGBTQ+ community there was a reluctance to embrace the “Ts.” Unfortunately, instead of explaining the dynamics of gender identity, Frank chose to dress me down for being a transphobe. The lesson I learned that day? Don’t talk to trans people.

I didn’t say much for the remainder of that lunch, and I was the first to announce our departure (my husband had to leave with me; I was his ride). Months later, when there was another get-together occasioned by Frank being in town, I declined to attend. In fact, a full year passed before I agreed to be in the same room as Frank, and while he didn’t appear to have any hard feelings—our previous interaction was never even brought up—I was still wary, and chose my words carefully in his presence, if I spoke at all.

Wendy Williams and Buck Angel in a scene from 'Buck Fever'
MTF performer Wendy Williams and
FTM performer Buck Angel are about to
fuck with viewers minds in Buck Fever.
That humiliating lunch with Frank was very much on my mind when I decided to watch Mr. Angel the first time. Consequently, I was less interested in being educated than vindicated. And I thought I was. Early in the documentary, MTF porn performer Wendy Williams (not the beleaguered former talk show host) comments that even she was perplexed by Buck Angel. “I was doing all the things that make me mad,” she admits, like using the wrong pronouns. I took Wendy’s admission as absolution. I wasn’t the bad guy! Even other trans people questioned whether Buck Angel really “counted” as a man.

Except, that’s not what Wendy said. Wendy herself hasn’t had bottom surgery. It wasn’t until I rewatched the documentary for this review that I realized her shock had nothing to do with Buck’s identity. She just hadn’t seen “a man with a pussy” before watching one of Buck’s videos. Today there are entire websites dedicated to FTM performers; they were still an anomaly in the early 2010s. 

My repeat viewing of Mr. Angel made me reassess that cringey lunch in 2012. I had to face the fact that Frank might have been unfair, but he wasn’t wrong. I was the asshole.

It would be nice to say that I’ve since reached out to Frank with my belated understanding, but it’s too late for such tidy closure. Frank died of a heart attack in 2018.

Transitioning from Porn to Activism

If I had trouble wrapping my head around Buck’s gender identity, it was doubly so for his family. “It’s easier for me to deal with the transgender side than it is the porn side,” his sister Tracey says. “I almost feel it’s like you hit people once with being transgender, now you smack them again because you’re in porn.”

Buck Angel and his then-wife Elayne on Tyra Banks’ show.

His father Bill, whom Buck describes as a man’s man, had an especially hard time accepting Buck for who he is. Though Buck appears to have a good relationship with his parents at the time this documentary was shot, you can still see his father struggling to accept his son. Bill’s a good sport when they watch Buck being interviewed on Tyra, laughing when Buck tells Tyra Banks that he loves his vagina. But when Buck complains about the interview being on an episode focused on “sexual oddities,” Bill doesn’t understand the objection. “But you are…. ‘Oddity’ means you’re not with the norm.”

Photos from the documentary 'Mr. Angel.'
Selections from Bucks 1980s modeling portfolio.

Photo used in the 2013 documentary 'Mr. Angel'
Angel-in-progress.
But while his family may not entirely understand Buck, they are grateful he’s still with them. He attempted suicide in his teens, which led to an extended stay in a psychiatric ward, during which his father never came to visit. As a young adult Buck found some success in the 1980s as a model, but the money from that also gave him the means to get drugs and alcohol. Addiction led to the end of the modeling career. Self-harm, homelessness and sex work quickly followed. His parents realized they were going to lose their daughter one way or another. Gaining a trans son was preferrable.

A scene from Dan Hunt's documentary 'Mr. Angel."
Bucks mother Patty visits him during his recovery
from a hysterectomy.

“There are a lot of people like me,” Buck explains to his father. “I consider myself very normal. …I don’t want the world to go around thinking people like us aren’t normal.”

This is a hard sell now, and it was a hard sell then. Here’s a sampling from Buck’s inbox:

  • You are one mixed-up individual. You need help, and bad.
  • Well, I can’t really be nasty to you because you’re a girl, but people like you should be put to death.
  • I hope you die of AIDS, you freak of society. You’re so arrogant and disgusting you have to change your sex trying to play God. I swear if I ever cross paths with you, I will have a gun and it’s going in your face.
Offsetting the hate mail are the messages from trans youth. Though many of them are asking for money to pay for their surgery, their messages also emphasize Bucks position as a role model, something he embraces. He speaks on a panel at Yale (“It’s totally weird being here. I didn’t even fucking graduate high school.”) and posts videos about trans issues on his website, which he still does today.

A scene from the 2013 documentary 'Mr. Angel'
Buck, his future ex-wife and their dogs relax at their home in Mexico.

The documentary itself serves as an extension of Buck Angel’s outreach. Buck may not be ordinary, but his day-to-day life appears perfectly normal, especially the scenes of him with his then-wife, body piercer Elayne, at their home in Mexico, where the couple moved after marrying in New Orleans. She seems wonderfully supportive (“That’s not a small cock, it’s a huge clit,” she helpfully explains to one middle-aged attendee at the Venus Show)—that is, until the cameras stopped rolling. A year after this documentary was released, Buck and Elayne divorced, very messily. Though she said in Mr. Angel that Buck was “the man of [her] dreams,” Elayne was suddenly a TERF in court, claiming their marriage wasn’t legal under Louisiana law because Buck never got bottom surgery, and therefore not a man, and not entitled to spousal support. The judge ruled against her.

A still from Buck Angel's YouTube channel.
Buck Angel, circa 2023.
Buck is still going strong. Now in his early 60s, he’s become a motivational speaker, hosts a podcast (saw that coming), and sells his own brand of sex toys. He’s still quick to laugh, still thoughtfully outspoken, and still just a dude.

Buck also sells merch, like this “Tranpa” mug.