Double Takes: ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’ (1973) ★★★/ ‘Blood for Dracula’ (1974) ★★ 1/2

Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein 
(a.k.a. Flesh for Frankenstein) fucks
life in the gallbladder.

My fascination with these two movies dates to the very early 1980s, when I lived in Clovis, Calif., and the movies were still known as Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (in 3-D!) and Andy Warhol’s Dracula, which is how the Tower Theatre in neighboring Fresno advertised them. Though I saw a lot of movies at the Tower, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Dracula would have to wait. I was 14 and both movies were rated X. The indifferent box office cashier probably wouldn’t stop me from buying a ticket, but there was no getting past my parents.

Twenty-plus years later, when Netflix was renting discs through the mail, I finally got to see Andy Warhol’s take on Frankenstein and Dracula. By this time the movies were known as Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula. Warhol had little to do with the making of either film, but director Paul Morrissey and star Joe Dallesandro, were part of Warhol’s Factory so I guess that was enough to justify sticking the pop artist’s name on them. The two movies have more in common with earlier Warhol movies—specifically Flesh, Trash and Heat, all directed by Morrissey—than they do to either Mary Shelley’s or Bram Stoker’s novels. The two movies have even more in common with each other. In addition to sharing Morrissey and Dallesandro, both movies star the late Udo Kier, feature Arno Jürging, and contain healthy amounts of sex, nudity and blood, albeit not enough to justify an X rating.

In Frankenstein, Baron Frakenstein (Kier) is trying desperately to create his own zombie army, starting with two beautiful re-animated corpses. Judging his male monster inadequate, Frankenstein and his devoted assistant Otto (Jürging) go in search of a man with a perfect “nasum” and insatiable sex drive, thinking they found him in the form of handsome field hand Sacha (Srdjan Zelenovic, whose acting style suggests he might be an actual zombie). On their way home from a brothel Sacha and his friend Nicholas (Dallesandro) are ambushed by Frank and Otto. Otto snips off Sacha’s head with a pair a giant pruning shears, a scene that would’ve been a little funnier had not Otto paused to brandish the shears at the camera in service to 3-D.

While Frankenstein is drawn to Sacha’s nose, his sister/wife Katrin (Dollar store Zsa Zsa Monique Van Vooren) is all about Nicholas’s dick, promoting the horny farm hand to house servant. Nicholas’s duties include more than fucking Katrin, however, which causes problems when Nicholas finds himself serving dinner to Baron Frank’s monsters, one of whom has the head of his missing friend. Nicholas, understandably, has questions.

You’ll have questions, too, but it’s probably best not to spend too much time pondering them as this Hammer Film gone wrong unfolds. Among some of Flesh for Frankenstein’s highlights: Otto licking the sutures of the female monster (Dalila Di Lazzaro); Baron Frankenstein fucking an open incision on the same monster’s torso, declaring “To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life in the gallbladder!”; and foreplay between Nicholas and Katrin during which Van Vooren loudly slurps on Dallesandro’s armpit.

Dracula is out for blood, but it’s 
Joe Dallesandro who gets the virgins.

The lunacy continues in Blood for Dracula, with Kier, looking like a parody of Rudolph Valentino, as the titular vampire. At the start of the film, Count Dracula is convinced by his manservant Anton (Jürging again) to leave Transylvania for Italy in search of “wer-jun” blood, believing virgins more plentiful in the largely Catholic country. (Did I mention these movies are pretty funny?) Upon arrival in Italy, Anton hears of the di Fiore family, who have four unmarried daughters. “I’m sure they are religious,” a tavern patron tells Anton. “They have a very nice house.”

Il Marchese and La Marchesa di Fiore (Vittorio De Sica and Maxime McKendry respectively) are more than happy to host the count and hope he will marry one of their eligible daughters, Saphiria (Milena Vukotic) or Rubinia (Stefania Casini). Their oldest daughter, Esmeralda (Milena Vukotic), is considered past her prime, and their youngest, Perla (Silvia Dionisio), is only 14, is too young for marriage, even in 1920s Italy. Unbeknownst to their parents, Saphiria and Rubinia said goodbye to their hymens long ago as both women have been fucking the estate’s Marxist handyman Mario (Dallesandro).

Though it contains a fair amount of bloodshed, Blood for Dracula is closer to being softcore porn, with more simulated humping than Flesh for Frankenstein. Dracula is also technically the better made of the two films, with better cinematography and slightly better acting, although its script is inconsistent with its vampire lore (Dracula has no problem walking in sunlight, but complains that his room at the di Fiore estate is too bright). Dallesandro is a block of wood in both films, but he’s more effective in Dracula, if only because he’s better at bad guy roles and Mario is not exactly the protagonist (Mario rapes Perla to save her from Dracula). Kier took it up to 11 in Frankenstein and he saw no reason to dial it down for Dracula, though Jürging’s bug-eyed facial expressions and mangled line readings (“The only thing to do left is pack your personal belongings”) as Anton threatens to eclipse him.

Though I like both movies for their campiness, deadpan humor and featuring a naked Joe Dallesandro, I prefer Flesh for Frankenstein. Both movies have pacing problems, but those problems feel more pronounced in Dracula’s 106-minute runtime. I wouldn’t describe Frankenstein’s 94-minute runtime as tight, but at least it doesn’t wear out its welcome. Another tie-breaker: we only get a glimpse of Dallesandro’s shaft in Blood for Dracula, but he goes full frontal in Flesh for Frankenstein.

Some Semi-Enlightened Enthusiasm for Pat Rocco

Even though his filmography includes over 35 titles, filmmaker and activist Pat Rocco often gets a short shrift as a pioneer in gay adult film. At best, he’s treated as a footnote, film historians giving him a brief nod as they rush ahead to discuss Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand or Fred Halsted’s L.A. Plays Itself. I don’t recall hearing about him until a few years ago, when I learned of his existence on the Ask Any Buddy podcast. Once upon a time, Rocco had a fan base so devoted to his work that it spawned a performing arts collective, the Society of Pat Rocco Enlightened Enthusiasts (SPREE), yet as of this writing, Rocco doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, though he is name-checked in Wikipedia’s gay pornography entry.

Pat Rocco introduces himself to gay porn stars Spencer Reed (left) and
 Jasper St. John ahead of the 2010 GAYVN Awards.

Rocco may not get his due, but he’s not entirely forgotten. Two movies, the 2021 documentary PAT ROCCO DARED and the 2024 Blu-ray of Rocco’s 1974 film DRIFTER, provide an ideal introduction to the director’s work and his legacy.

The title of director Morris Chapdelaine and Bob Christie’s documentary is a riff on the title of Rocco’s 1969 film Pat Rocco Dares, though I really wish Chapdelaine and Christie had titled the doc Cock Danglers, which is what gay activist and writer JimKepner labeled Rocco’s work. Rest assured, however, that you will see plenty of dangling cocks throughout the documentary.

Some of the cocks, like this one featured in Rocco’s
descriptively titled Reclining Cowboy, aren’t so dangly.

Rocco died in 2018 at age 84, but queer filmmaker and one-time star of Dante’s Cove Charlie David (who’s got a Wikipedia page, BTW) was fortunate to spend a few days with Rocco and his camera-shy partner David Ghee in 2017 at their memento-packed home in Hawaii. Though his health was failing, Rocco, dressed in a requisite Hawaiian shirt and sporting a toupee that just doesn’t want to stay glued to his head, is more than happy to let Chapdelaine, Christie and narrator David into his home to talk about his past. Rocco is less interested in discussing his present. When David asks Rocco about recent health problems (a heart attack, three strokes, failing vision), the director gently shuts down this line of questioning. “Oh, I don’t want to go into all of that. Let’s just talk about the good things.”

Filmmaker Charlie David (left) with Pat Rocco (right) and his partner
David Ghee (center) in 2017.

Talking about “the good things” means the documentary primarily focuses on Rocco’s films—the one’s he admits to making, at least. Pat Rocco Dared quickly gets through the filmmaker's biography: Brooklyn born Pasquale Vincent Serrapica, later raised in Los Angeles, initially pursued a singing career, performing on radio shows and musicals in the 1950s under the stage name Pat Rocco, and even spent three years performing on The Tennessee Earnie Ford Show. Rocco, who says he realized he was gay as early as 12 or 13 years old, is described as out during this time, though it’s clear there’s a distinction between being out and being open. Rocco talks of his first sexual experience as a teenager being with an older man giving him a ride, and that he had a boyfriend in high school, confessing to David that this documentary might be the first time he’s ever discussed either of these things.

It was in the late 1960s, when he answered an ad for a still photographer, that Rocco made the move into filmmaking. “I took along an 8mm movie camera with me, and I’d shoot a little 8mm film when I shot the stills,” Rocco says. He soon started a mail order business selling short films like Boy on the Run, which was made “just to use up film and use this guy who had one particular attribute that I knew the audience would like.”

The “particular attribute” featured in Boy on the Run, which Rocco
described as “fun nonsense—with a big dong.”

Rocco in the arms of Rev. Troy Perry in the 1970s.

Metropolitan Community Church founder Rev. Troy Perry recounts his first time seeing one of Rocco’s films in 1969. “It was the first time I’d ever seen frontal nudes. People [said to] me years later, ‘Oh, he made pornography.’ I said he never did. He made erotic movies under his name. Always, love was involved…. Even the bedroom scenes weren’t anything I couldn’t show my mother.” Rev. Perry’s mom was a lot more chill than mine was. 

Rocco’s brand of erotica, which has more in common with nudie cuties of the early 1960s, albeit a little more sexual and gay, seems rather quaint at a time when we have porn categories for CBT, gaping and fisting, but the director did dare to take artistic chances. In one of his movies, “A Breath of Love,” featured in Pat Rocco Dares, performer Brian Reynolds dances naked across an L.A. freeway, a stunt so outrageous that Rocco was asked to re-stage it for a local TV news station. Another movie, Discovery, a sweet story about two clean-cut young men who meet and fall for each other while at Disneyland, was filmed on location, most assuredly without permission. (“I broke every rule in the place,” Rocco says.) Though the nude scenes were filmed in the woods of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, this distinction was not enough to keep Disney off Rocco’s ass, the company also pissed that Rocco scored his film with Disney’s music (unlicensed, of course).

Ballet down the freeway: Brian Reynolds makes the morning a whole lot
more interesting for commuters in 1969.

“What eventually happened is they [Disney] didn’t want a bigger thing made out of it by giving great big publicity on this film,” Rocco explains. “So, they say, ‘You take that film out of circulation, never let it be seen again. You’re also banned for life from Disneyland.’” This documentary is likely the only time scenes from Discovery have been seen since the movie was made in 1969, though David makes a point of informing viewers that different music had to be used in the documentary to avoid getting slapped with a lawsuit from Disney.

In the Pat Rocco tradition: The Game (1970), a
 film made by members of SPREE.

The documentary only mentions SPREE in passing. Rocco said he merely gave his blessing to the fan who dreamt up the organization, un-named in the documentary; Dick Winters according to another source. While Rocco downplays his involvement in the group, alternate accounts and online scans of SPREE’s newsletters suggest the group did not operate entirely independent of Rocco during its 10 years of existence.

Rocco didn’t restrict his filmmaking to romantic, nudity-filled fantasies. He used his platform for activism as well, documenting protests, police raids and other events affecting L.A.’s gay community. His 1970 film, Signs of Protest, covers a protest that erupted in front of the West Hollywood restaurant Barney’s Beanery, infamous for its sign behind the bar reading “Fagots [sic]–Stay Out!” (bigots never proofread). Rocco, acting as news reporter, interviews people participating in the protest (including author Joseph Hansen, a.k.a. James Colton) and patrons in the restaurant, even getting a comment from Barney’s daughter, who doesn’t seem to understand what the fuss is all about. The sign wasn’t taken down permanently until 1984, and then only when activists and the city council stormed the restaurant and removed it themselves.

Rocco documented the LAPD raid of a gay nightclub in his
film Meat Market Arrest (1970). From left: Nude dancer
Bob Philpot, attorney Walter Culpepper and Pat Rocco.

Rocco also filmed L.A.’s first gay Pride parade. “That really set us apart from New York,” Perry says. “New York’s was a march. Ours (Los Angeles’s) was a parade.” Rocco took an even more active role in the mid-1970s when he became president of the Christopher Street West Association, organizing the L.A. Pride parade and adding a carnival as part of the celebration.

An ‘Honest Look’ at a 35-Year-Old Hustler

Rocco didn’t direct many feature length films. Pat Rocco Dared highlights 1977’s Silent No More, about a man’s struggles to get his homophobic father to accept his homosexuality and his boyfriend, but it isn’t even included on the IMDb pages for either Rocco or the movie’s star Michael Kearns and forget finding a copy on Blu-ray. It’s like the movie is locked away with Discovery, with only the few scenes featured in Pat Rocco Dared seeing the light of day. Luckily, one of Rocco’s other feature-length efforts, Drifter (a.k.a. Two-Way Drift), was resurrected on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

Drift sparkles like a teen vampire.

Shot for $50,000 in 1969 but not released until 1974 by porn studio Jaguar Productions after it was rejected by the major studios and indie outfits like American International Pictures (I’d love to see the executives’ faces during the screening), Drifter is Rocco’s take on Midnight Cowboy. The story centers on a bisexual hustler going by—what else?—Drift, who as played by Joed Adair, is at once a naïve dreamer, a cynical pro and/or a hapless victim of circumstance. It just depends on the scene. In the opening scene, however, Drift is shown to be kind of rapey as he tries to force himself onto Steve (David Russell, who may be wearing a wig), a young man who picked up Drift hitchhiking in Arizona. (An alternate read of this scene, and the one I think was intended, is Drift trying to initiate sex only to be violently rejected by a horrified Steve).

Gino (Joseph Caruso) has a proposition.

So, it’s back on the road for Drift, who, after a bite to eat at Roy & Lorene’s Diner, hitches a ride with Gino (Joseph Caruso, a.k.a. porn director Gorton Hall). Gino is more than happy to give Drift a lift to Los Angeles, provided the lanky hitchhiker understands it’s not a free ride. Drift spends the night at a motel with the portly Gino without protest or enthusiasm. As filmed, however, it looks like the two men literally just sleep together. Maybe the guys got the sex out of the way off camera earlier?

Once dropped off in L.A., Drift goes from one encounter to the next. Drifting, if you will. After a brief detour into an adult bookstore, Drift is chatted up by Wagner (Dean Shah-kee), who sort of resembles the late Julian MacMahon during his Charmed era. Wagner doesn’t waste time offering Drift a place to stay, at least for tonight. Wagner has a roommate but assures Drift it’s not a problem. The roommate works nights, while Wagner remains scarce during the day. Though Wagner is an upgrade from Gino—physically, at least—Drift is surprisingly reluctant to whore himself out for shelter. Then again, Drift’s resistance might have nothing to do with Wagner and more to do with the fact that Wagner’s apartment is a depressing shithole.

“C’mon Drift, join me. It’s more fun when there’s two.”: Drift about to
make his rent payment. Notice Dean Shah-kee’s shadow on the left.

Drift meets Wagner's roommate,
Klamath (Bambi Allen).

Other encounters include meeting Wagner’s roommate; having a meeting with Maxine (Ann Collins), a bitchy “agent” Drift was referred to by Gino; and meeting Karen (Inga-Marie Pinson), a pretty, young German woman he first encounters while on his way to Maxine’s office. They meet again at the bus stop and then spend the rest of the day together, planning to get together again after Karen is free from a mysterious work obligation.

Throughout the movie there are flashbacks to Drift’s past with Steven, scenes that further confuse the nature of their relationship. The character of Steven obviously has a crush on Drift, yet he is also totally oblivious to Drift’s sexual signals. I’m usually slow on the uptake, but if one of my friends got naked and initiated a tickle fight, I think I would suspect he had something other than platonic rough housing in mind. The intention may have been to portray Steven is a sheltered and inexperienced, but he often just comes across as having a mental disability.

Not what it looks like.

Perhaps Drift’s most startling encounter—and the movie’s most cringeworthy scene—is with Dana (Gerald Strickland, who would be right at home in a John Waters movie), on a date that was arranged by Maxine. “Do you find me…attractive?” Dana asks in a gravelly purr, not realizing that this isn’t a question you should ask if you’re not prepared for a negative answer. (“You’re OK,” is Drift’s tactful reply)

And then Dana changes clothes.

Drift’s response: “What the hell?”

As squirm-inducing as Strickland’s performance is, it’s ultimately heartbreaking when Dana reveals he plans to undergo gender reassignment surgery for reasons that seem only partially rooted in gender dysphoria. In an unsettling close-up, Dana laments: “In my world—the gay world—when you reach 50, love is not so easy to find. You’re pretty much washed up. Through those young years, when so many are willing to give, I kept myself hidden. I never let anyone know me. Well, I’ve stopped hiding now. So, come on Drift, help me say good-by as a man and make me feel like a woman.”

Who is Drift’s sex show partner? You
 get one guess.

The job that sends Drift over the edge, however, is near the movie’s end, when Gino hires him as entertainment for an all-male party. My first thought was Drift was being set-up as a bottom for a gangbang, but Gino had something more refined in mind: a live sex show. Drift is resigned to the job, until he sees his performance partner. It turns out Drift is more than just kind of rapey, after all.

I’ll admit I went into this one expecting to have a lot of fun at its expense, surprised to discover that Drifter was not so easy to ridicule. While it shares many similarities to The Light from the Second Story Window (also released by Jaguar), such as a cast of SPREE members and clumsily trying to milk pathos from its lurid story about a sex worker, Drifter is significantly less ridiculous. Rocco’s movie is rough around the edges, hindered by its low-low budget and a cast who, by and large, have calibrated their performances for the stage instead of the big screen, but the director’s technical and storytelling proficiency manage to make Drifter almost seem like a real movie.

Heterosexual mating rituals: Drift and Karen (Inga-Marie Pinson)
 have fun in the park.

Drifter’s biggest weakness is its star and writer, Joed Adair. Adair’s script, written under the name Edward Middleton, based on his (unpublished) novel, might be Oscar-worthy in comparison to David Allen’s Second Story Window, but it’s just as self-serious, with an over-reliance on melodramatic—and often self-pitying—monologues to sell us on the plight of its characters. As an actor, Adair isn’t bad, he’s just miscast as a character whom we’re supposed to believe is under 35. I couldn’t accept Drift as a young innocent reluctantly selling his body when Adair looks like he should be rattling off a menu of sexual services and prices to potential tricks, reminding them that cash is required up front.

The Parts Pat Rocco Dared Left Out

The cover for Kino Cult’s
 Blu-ray release of Drifter.

Making the Drifter Blu-ray an even greater value is its bonus features, which include four of Rocco’s “cock danglers,” the Adair-starring A Matter of Life among them. Those wanting to learn more about Rocco will appreciate the commentary track from film historian Finley Freibert, dry though it may be. While Pat Rocco Dared is a pleasant introduction to Rocco’s life and work, it’s too beholden to the narrative Rocco wants to tell (Rocco also produced the documentary), so it’s less a documentary and more a celebration of Pat Rocco. Among the parts Pat Rocco Dared leaves out:

• Before Rocco began taking photos and filming naked men, he ran a theater in Moorpark, Calif. Joed Adair was one of his employees at this time and the two men became close friends (possibly more), collaborating on theater productions. The two men ultimately had a falling out, though they later made up and made Drifter.

• Rocco later owned a coffeehouse/head shop called Bizarre Bazaar that also showed campy old movies like Johnny Guitar. The fact that Rocco didn’t bother licensing the movies he showed ultimately landed him in hot water, contributing to the closure of Bizarre Bazaar.

• Though Pat Rocco Dared leaves viewers with the impression that Pat Rocco never directed hardcore porn, he most certainly did. Under the name Brad Kingston, Rocco directed several movies for gay porn studio Jaguar Productions, including A Deep Compassion and A Dream of Body. He reportedly directed the sex scenes in The Light from the Second Story Window as well. Freibert explains these movies attracted the attention of law enforcement, and that Rocco’s home was raided several times because of them. He and his business partners were even charged with conspiracy to commit oral copulation and sodomy (the charges were later dropped). Rocco, not wanting to draw any more police or FBI attention, later downplayed his hardcore work.

Some random facts about Drifter and its cast:

• Joed Adair was born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas, where he showed promise as an actor and dancer. In addition to Drifter, he wrote scripts for the shorts A Matter of Life and Autumn Nocturne and the feature Someone. He died in 2001.

• In addition to his part in Drifter, Dean Shah-kee, who also went by the name Dean Chambers, worked as a crew member on Rocco’s movies. His resume includes stints as a model, a dance instructor and a cashier at a gay porn theater.

• Like Shah-kee, Gerald Strickland was in the porn peddling business, working as a cashier for Woody’s Adult Books, owned by Jaguar Films co-founder Woody Daniel (the store is featured in Drifter). He was later second in command at Jaguar. Strickland died the same year Drifter was released.

Product placement.

• SPREE member Bambi Allen, who plays Klamath, was also in Pat Rocco Dared. She had small parts in numerous grindhouse movies, including The Fabulous Bastard from Chicago, Terror at Orgy Castle and Hell’s Bloody Devils. She died of cancer before Drifter was released.

• Drifter was supposed to be Jaguar Films’ crossover into the mainstream (?), but the film, which barely counts as softcore, was only shown at gay porn theaters alongside decidedly hardcore fare like Fred Halsted’s Sextool. Gay porn theaters are not typically a gateway to mainstream success and consequently Drifter was a box office failure.

Short Takes: 'Covergirl' (1984) ★ ½

Covergirl is not an overlooked camp
classic; it’s a tonal clusterfuck.

On the surface, the Canadian-made Covergirl, about model Kit Paget (Irena Ferris) naively entrusting her career to fast-talking entrepreneur T.C. Sloan (the late Jeff Conaway) who vows to make her a supermodel and his bedmate, seems like it could be an undiscovered camp classic. And it might have been were it made as a melodrama about an innocent getting used and abused as she climbs the ladder to success. But the makers of Covergirl—director Jean-Claude Lord (Visiting Hours) and writer Charles Dennis (Finders Keepers)—chose a different approach: instead of delivering a bad drama filled with moments of unintentional comedy, á la The Oscar or Valley of the Dolls, they decided to make a lighthearted romp with moments of jarring drama.  

Among Covergirl’s “humorous” moments: Sloan’s chauffeur Raoul’s (Al Maini) malapropisms (“What do you think he is? Liver chops?”); the revelation that swishy fashion designer Alton Cockridge (William Hutt) is a “closet heterosexual”; and Sloan installing an alarm on his refrigerator that goes off when Kit tries to get a piece of cake.

But then Kit is sexually assaulted by a photographer. Sloan rescues her but tells Kit to “leave it behind. You have to.” The next morning we’re back to wackiness. “Do you want some coffee?” asks Sloan’s maid Dessie (Sandi Ross, who spends most of her scenes cackling nonstop). “Oh, love it,” replies Kit. “Me, too,” Dessie says, flopping down in a chair. “Why don’t you make us some?”

Also, there’s a robot. Though this robot really can’t do much beyond delivering Sloan trays of drinks, making it about as useless as today’s domestic robots, it does sort of make sense Sloan has one as his company, Leisure 80, is a Sharper Image riff. At the same time, I couldn’t help being annoyed that a robot was brought into this story about the cut-throat world of modeling before cocaine.

Covergirl does offer some entertainment value. For starters, it’s ’80s as fuck, featuring plenty of over-the-top—and just plain godawful—fashions. Although the whole movie has the glossy/tacky production design of a European softcore film, sex and nudity are scant, though you do get a full-frontal flash from Conaway, which I certainly wasn't expecting (I don’t think the Taxi star was expecting so much exposure in the final cut, either). The acting, for the most part, never falls below OK, though several actors sound as if they were dubbed, not necessarily by their own voices.

But the movie can’t overcome being a tonal clusterfuck. It’s movie where a catfight inadvertently becomes a foam party, as can happen when a five-gallon jar of bath salts gets knocked into a jacuzzi, only to have the scene’s spontaneous frivolity doused when one of Kit’s model friends, Tessa (Cathie Shirriff), rushes in to announce another character’s suicide. The partying crowd, wet and covered in suds, is immediately silent. Is this dramatic, or just part of the joke? The makers of Covergirl don’t know, either.

Double Takes: ‘Taekwondo’ (2016) ★★ / ‘Horseplay’ (2022) ★★

Argentinian director Marco Berger
takes his time developing a central
relationship in Taekwondo.

You won’t have to wait long to see naked men in Taekwondo and Horseplay, two very similar movies from Argentinian writer-director Marco Berger. A penis is shown within the first 10 minutes of Taekwondo; within the first 12 of Horseplay. You’ll have to wait considerably longer for a story to present itself.

Both movies are about a group a young, clothing-averse men who spend their school vacation at a friend’s house. All the men are straight. Or are they? Though the movies share the same synopsis, they are not identical. For starters, in Taekwondo Berger’s camera frequently lingers on his cast’s crotches while the director is more into showcasing the asses of his Horseplay cast, particularly the one attached to actor Bruno Giganti (in fairness, Giganti’s ass is almost reason alone to watch Horseplay).

But there are other differences. In Taekwondo, the men are younger (very late teens-very early twenties), slightly less rowdy and a little more likeable. They’re staying at the one-time health spa owned by the family of their host, Fer (Lucas Papa). The place is kind of shabby, but it’s got plenty of room and no parental supervision. Joining the group of mutual friends is one outsider, Germán (Gabriel Epstein), Fer’s friend from his Taekwondo class. Germán is shy, a bit bookish (he’s shown reading Catcher in the Rye and Patrick Suskind’s Perfume) and very cute in a barely legal sort of way. He’s also gay, though he’s only out to his weed dealer, who is also gay. Germán has a crush on Fer (short for Fernando) and thinks Fer might feel the same about him—if Fer is gay, that is. It’ll take Germán and the audience the film’s entire runtime to find out.

A story takes even longer to develop in
Marco Berger's 2022 follow-up Horseplay
(a.k.a. Los Agitadores)

Six years later, Berger made Horseplay, in which a group of men in their mid-twenties—almost all of whom are assholes—spend their Christmas break at the more luxurious villa belonging to Artur’s (Iván Masliah) family. This gathering is a lot raunchier, with the guys graphically talking about their sexual exploits, pranking each other, and taking photos of each other in lewd poses. Poli (Franco de la Puente) is the lone gay guy, uncomfortable amongst all this toxic masculinity. Another guy at the villa, Andy (Agustín Machta) knows Poli’s secret, and while he doesn’t identify as gay he’s super horny and not opposed to using Poli’s available orifices to get off. But Andy makes clear he could never be in a relationship with a man. He’d much rather join Nico (Giganti and his scene-stealing ass) for a three-way with woman they met online.

Taekwondo is gentler and ultimately more romantic (and for me, more enjoyable), while Horseplay has a much darker, almost nihilistic tone that nevertheless leaves you unprepared for its shocking ending. I didn’t hate either movie, but both tested my patience. Berger’s slow, elliptical storytelling can work well when he’s focusing on two or three characters, as he did in the far superior film The Blonde One (starring one of Taekwondo’s actors, Gaston Re), but it’s not as easy to appreciate when he’s seemingly unfocused on 10-15. You’ll spend much of Taekwondo’s and Horseplay’s respective runtimes watching guys sleeping (in their skivvies or in the nude), swimming, trimming their toenails, getting high, eating, playing video games, reading, taking showers, sitting on the toilet, watching videos on their phones, and just sitting around shooting the shit, before a narrative—or at least a point—ever presents itself. If that sounds kind of dull, that’s because it is, but at least you’ll have plenty of nice scenery to look at as the two movies slowly approach their respective climaxes.

(Not-So-)Short Takes: ‘Poppers’ (1984) ★★ ½

Poppers’ thumbnail image on Tubi is
 cheesy but at least it accurately
represents the movie.

The obscure 1984 Spanish-made thriller Poppers is not a gay-themed movie, but it is most definitely queer, in both senses of the word. For starters, there’s the title, which suggests amyl nitrate use figures into the story, except it doesn’t. Not once does anyone use poppers, even in a scene set in a gay bar. Maybe “poppers” has a different meaning in Spanish slang? According to my own Google search, it does not (drugs: the universal language). The movie’s alternate title, Hunting, makes a lot more sense, though the poster bearing that title is even more gay.

 This poster has little to do with the
movie I saw, but I very much wish it did.

And then there is the movie’s opening scene:

I could find nothing online to confirm definitively that Poppers’ writer-director José María Castellví (not that one) was in fact gay, but it’s hard to resist speculating. Opening your trashy thriller with a gratuitous shower scene featuring a sexy actress would be just another Tuesday in the world of exploitation cinema, but putting your male lead in a gratuitous shower scene suggests someone behind the camera is more interested in catering to male gays than the male gaze. Regardless of whether that someone was Castellví or maybe a producer, bless them.

Our well-washed male lead is Miguel Ortiz, who plays Santos, the lead singer-guitarist of a New Wave band. During a performance in a small club, he notices a guy hitting on his girlfriend. The power cuts out just as Santos lunges off stage. When the lights come back on the man flirting with Santos’s girlfriend has been stabbed to death. Given that we never actually see Santos kill the guy, I assumed that Santos was framed and finding the real killer would drive the story, but no, he did it. Santos is quickly convicted and sent to prison.

Santos doesn’t spend much time behind bars, however, paroled a mere two years later. Supposedly his early release is for good behavior, but it was actually arranged by Pablo Jordan (Alfredo Mayo), the very rich father of Santos’s victim. One of Jordan’s quirks is keeping horses in the living room of his castle so he can watch birth of a foal and play with the afterbirth. So, really, should we be surprised he is hosting a hunting party in which Santos is the game? Said hunting party includes a gay couple, prominent theater director Dan (Manuel de Blas) and his producer/boyfriend Max (José Luis de Vilallonga). Here are a couple scenes from one of Dan’s plays:

Again, this is not a gay movie.

Santos is given a bag of gems worth $1 million that’s his to keep if he escapes death, though members of the hunting party make it clear that they don’t intend to let that happen. They also make it clear that Santos doesn’t have a choice in participating, which makes one wonder why Jordan went to the trouble of paying a beautiful club dancer named Lola (Giannina Facio, a.k.a. Mrs. Ridley Scott, in her film debut) to seduce Santos the night before to put him in a more agreeable mood. The answer: to provide the movie with an explicit-as-an-R-rating-will-allow sex scene.

That R rating doesn’t permit Miguel Ortiz to go full-frontal,
but he still shows plenty.

Remarkably, Santos successfully escapes with the gems, though we’re never shown exactly how he eludes the hunters. Just accept that he does. Santos reconnects with Lola after an extended scene of her dancing for an all-male audience of skinheads in a club that includes a pen full of goats as part of the ambiance. (Goddamn, this place must reek; no wonder Lola doesn’t care that her dressing room is also the men’s room). Santos calls Lola a cunt, and she immediately offers to help him exact revenge on the remaining old Fascists. Romance blooms as the couple systematically kill off the old men, sometimes cross-dressing to gain their confidence (Ortiz makes a fairly convincing if matronly woman, but no one with eyes would mistake Facio for a leather boy).

Max (José Luis de Vilallonga) is about to get impaled,
but not in the way he hopes.

Though Poppers has plenty of WTF moments, it never quite delivers as a movie. It’s a toss-up which viewers will hate more, the characters (assholes all) or the persistent synthpop soundtrack that’s at odds with the movie’s punk aesthetic. There is not enough tension in the Most Dangerous Game first half, and there’s virtually none at all in the movie’s second half, with Castellví favoring bloody/kinky set pieces over suspense. Still, the movie is well shot (Castellví was an established photographer before directing Poppers) and I’m a sucker for WTF moments, to say nothing of well-built men in gratuitous shower scenes. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but for a specific type of audience (you know who you are) Poppers is a must-see. Happy Pride!