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 how gay activist and writer Jim Kepner 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 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. 

Though Rocco’s brand of erotica, which falls somewhere between nudie cuties and the early films of Andy Warhol, seems rather quaint at a time when we have porn categories for CBT, gaping and fisting, 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 “Fagots [sic]–Stay Out!” displayed behind the bar (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, isn’t even included on the IMDb pages for 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.

Drift sparkles like a teen vampire.

Shot for $50,000 in 1969 and released in 1974 by porn studio Jaguar Productions after it was rejected by the major studios and indie outfits like American International (I’d love to see the reactions on the executives’ faces when the movie was screened), Drifter is Rocco’s take on Midnight Cowboy, about a bisexual hustler going by—what else?—Drift. As played by Joed Adair, Drift is as 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 owned by Jaguar Films co-founder Woody Daniel, 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 and again at the bus stop. Drift and Karen spend the rest of the day together, and plan 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 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 stupid.

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,” Drift replies tactfully.)

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 film, but the director’s technical proficiency and grasp of storytelling 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. Adair, while decent looking, is too old for the part he wrote for himself. It’s hard to belief Drift as a hot young innocent reluctantly selling his body when he looks 35.

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 are 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 became close friends (possibly more than that), collaborating with Rocco on theater productions. The two men later had a falling out, later making up to make Drifter.

•  Rocco later owned a coffeehouse/head shop called Bizarre Bazaar that also showed campy old movies like Johnny Guitar.

•  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. He and his business partners were 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 a scene 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 movies like Fred Halsted’s Sextool. As one might imagine, Drifter failed to reach a mainstream audience and 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 post-production. 

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 to pay 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 in 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!

Slavery Sure Made People Horny

Another installment in Harry
Whittington’s plantation porn saga.

Trigger warning: It’s plantation porn. ’Nuff said.

If one were asked to name an especially horny time in American history, the 1850s likely wouldn’t make the top ten, yet SECRET OF BLACKOAKS, the second installment in Lance Horner’s plantation porn series by Harry Whittington writing as Ashley Carter, describes the antebellum South like it was the height of the sexual revolution. From its first chapter, when the new master of the Blackoaks plantation, Styles Kenric, gives his hunky young slave Moab a morning hummer before starting his day, to its last, when Moab, having since fled the plantation, lifts the skirt of his fellow escapee to remove a bullet from her leg and feels an “acute stirring in his loins” upon seeing her bare ass, sex is always at the forefront of people’s minds.

At the end of 1976’s Master of Blackoaks, the titular master Ferrell Baynard dies. However, his oldest son Ferrell-Junior, wracked with guilt over his failure to stop the gang rape of his girlfriend Lorna June, has entered a monastery to become a priest, leaving the door open for his scheming brother-in-law Styles Kenric to seize control of the plantation. In this 1978 follow-up, Styles realizes he fought to become captain of a sinking ship. Blackoaks has massive debts, its cotton crops aren’t bringing in the money like they used to, and the one product sustaining the plantation, Ferrell Baynard’s famous corn liquor, can’t be produced since the distillery burned down. Making matters worse, Ferrell Baynard’s widow, Miz Claire, showing signs of dementia (she frequently urges Styles and others to wait for her dead husband to return before making any decisions), has elected to host the wedding of her “big breasted cousin from Charleston,” piling on more debt on top of the debt incurred from Ferrell Baynard’s funeral.

But Styles isn’t going to let the plantation’s shaky finances stop him from his dream of turning Blackoaks into a premier slave breeding operation. By quickly—and coldly—selling off a few slaves and arranging a line of credit at the local bank (run by Lorna June’s husband Luke Scroggings), Styles stabilizes Blackoaks’ finances in the short term, with enough capital left over to fund future investments, i.e., slaves. Specifically, Styles wants to purchase women of Fulani origin to mate with his two prized male Fulani slaves, Blade and Moab, the whole plan discussed like he’s planning to sell purebred Rottweilers. This is not comfortable reading.

His plans are almost derailed when Jamie Lee, the aforementioned big-breasted cousin from Charleston, is caught fucking Moab by her fiancé Link Tetherow (yes, Link Tetherow), described as handsome and muscular, but walking “slightly spraddled-legged, as if he were for some reason tender of crotch.” She accuses Moab of rape, but the Baynards don’t readily buy her story since Jamie Lee has not-so-discreetly been sampling all the cocks of Blackoaks, including the one attached to Morgan, the learning-impaired youngest Baynard son, the experience turning the teenager into a compulsive masturbator. The Baynards manage to hold off a lynch mob, headed by the vile Gil Talmadge, who instigated the gang-rape of Lorna June, while a visiting Ferrell-Junior convinces Link to tell the gang of bloodthirsty rednecks that it was all a misunderstanding, implying that he might out Link as one of the Lorna June’s rapists to her husband—and the Tetherows’ creditor—Luke Scroggings (this assumes Lorna June hasn’t revealed the identity of her rapists, which actually tracks as Lorna June likely understood that she would be stigmatized, not her rapists). Nevertheless, it’s not until Miz Claire, in one of her more lucid moments, shoots Gil Talmadge’s prize slave Arthur that the lynch mob backs down. The wedding goes on as planned, and Jamie Lee and Link exit the book.

With the wedding out of the way, Styles puts his energy into turning Blackoaks into a premier slave breeding operation. To that end, he travels to Tallahassee to purchase a female slave of Fulani origin. Enter Ahma, who is tall, beautiful, barely 16 years old and very angry, with a history of running and fighting enslavement at all costs, even killing a man to get away. “You’ll never break her,” warns fellow plantation owner Cleatus Dennison. But Styles, already miffed that he’s not treated with proper deference as the new master of Blackoaks, is determined to prove all the naysayers wrong and buys Ahma anyway. The trip back to Alabama is a long one, made longer by Ahma’s behavior, starting with her attempting to flee Styles’s carriage (or kill herself):

Luckily, the carriage was moving at a slow clip or the girl would have been dead. Though she was shackled, wrists and ankles, she had lunged over the tailboard of the converted carriage. She hung there, head down, her black hair dragging on the rutted road.

Her face was pallid and she was fighting for breath, almost unconscious when Laus, Perseous [slaves traveling with Styles] and Styles ran back and lifted her again into the carriage. Styles poured her a cup of water from the canteen. She stared at him, refused to touch it. “Why do you want to kill yourself?” he demanded.

She did not answer, merely stared at him, her eyes bleak with hatred.

Later, they stop at a rundown farm to buy some food from the owners who can barely feed themselves. After Ahma spits a mouthful of clabber into his face, Styles, struggling to keep his composure, tries to sell her on life at Blackoaks, as if she has a choice in the matter.

“Two beautiful Fulani boys are waiting for you up at Blackoaks, Ahma. Blade and Moab. They will belong to you alone. You’ll live with them. You’ll have good food—none of this cracker hog-swill. Good food, a nice soft bed. Long nights with Blad in your arms. You’ll want him, Ahma. No matter how much you hate me, that’s how much you’re going to love Blade. Why don’t you behave and eat so you’ll look beautiful for Blade? You’ll make babies together, Ahma. You and Blade. Beautiful pure blood Fulani children.”

Now she spoke, moaning, a savage sound of heartbreak. “Babies? For you to sell, white Masta? Sell like you bought me yesterday?” She raged, fighting at her bonds, tears streaming down her cheeks….

Styles’s shoulders sagged. He walked slowly around the carriage and swung up into the seat, waiting for the [B]lack men to climb in. It looked like a long, hard journey home….

However, Ahma’s resistance to slavery melts—or at least temporarily subsides—the moment she meets Blade. Suddenly, fucking Blade is more important than a life of servitude, conveniently allowing Secret of Blackoaks to put a pin in Ahma’s fiery resistance until the novel’s finale.

Styles isn’t entirely reassured, however. It seemed to him that women were bitches. Some of them were violent bitches. Ahma had already proved her violence. She needed a good fucking—the kind the Mt. Zion louts called “a good horse-fucking.” But Styles soon learns he’s got bigger problems than a slave that may/may not be tamed by Blade’s formidable cock. While he was in Florida, his wife Kathy ran off with Hunt Campbell.

Sex, Booze and Yellow Fever

The British edition of Secret
of Blackoaks. The U.K. version of
Blade is closer to what one would expect,
though still smaller than the
Michael B. Jordan-esque physique 
I’d imagined.

That Kathy would have an affair with Hunt Campbell is hardly a surprise. It was heavily teased near the end of Master of Blackoaks that Kathy was strongly tempted by Hunt, and the couple’s interactions in Secret of Blackoaks make their affair inevitable. When Hunt is fired after Styles deems tutoring Morgan a waste of money, Kathy immediately re-hires him as her French teacher. Hunt is again sent packing by Styles, told that he needs to be gone by the time he returns from Florida. Styles's absence provides the Kathy with the perfect opportunity to escape (she’d resolved she could pay the price of living unmarried as Hunt’s mistress; she could not endure losing him and remaining suffocated and starved as Styles’s wife).

They end up in New Orleans, spending most of their time boning in their hotel suite. Kathy is shy, easily embarrassed when Hunt disrobes in front of her (“I’m proud of my manhood. I’ve nothing to hide,” Hunt tells her) but is suddenly as uninhibited as a Bourbon Street hooker a few orgasms later (“Do you want to—fuck me?”). Their days and nights are all fun and cum until they leave their hotel room one day and are spotted by the Bretherton sisters, old maids who live at a plantation 10 miles away from Blackoaks.

It doesn’t take long for news of Kathy and Hunt being spotted in New Orleans to reach Styles. Styles, determined to maintain his honor, explains that the Bretherton sisters must be mistaken, Kathy is away visiting family in Charleston. He then immediately plans to track her down. Instead of traveling to New Orleans himself, though, he decides to prepare Blade to make the trip. Here’s where the book really strains credulity. Styles’s plan to manipulate Blade into seducing or, better still, raping Kathy by feeding him stories about how she has always secretly desired Blade, is diabolical, but sending Blade to travel across Alabama unaccompanied in the 1850s, with nothing more than a letter of introduction, a purse full of coins and newly acquired basic reading skills, sounds like a death sentence. Still, I was entertained by the descriptions of Blade getting prepped for his journey, with Whittington always sure to keep the reader apprised of Blade’s huge dick, be it through Styles’s grooming (“[Kathy] told me she kept thinking about that big staff of yours, Blade.”), Blade getting scrubbed down by three houseboys (“Let them wash you down there, Blade—gets sweated.”) or when Blade tries on a freshly tailored suit, which shows off “the outline of Blade’s manhood at the crotch of the skintight trousers.”

Styles could, of course, just leave well enough alone as Kathy and Hunt’s relationship is rapidly disintegrating. Hunt quickly comes to the realization that life with Kathy, a woman used to being cared for by others, is an expensive proposition. His savings are rapidly dwindling, especially now that he’s rented an apartment and hired a servant for them, and he’s been unsuccessful in securing another tutoring gig, an unfortunate consequence when your approach to job hunting consists of sitting back and hoping word of mouth marketing pays off. Furthermore, Hunt becomes increasingly paranoid, certain Styles is close to finding them. He already suspects (correctly) that he’s being followed. Hunt starts drinking more to soothe his jangled nerves. It’s not long before he prefers getting drunk to getting laid.

Adding to Hunt’s stress is the yellow fever epidemic sweeping through New Orleans, killing thousands. Hunt may be hot, but he’s a coward, wanting to avoid physical pain at all costs. He knows staying in New Orleans means risking disease or, worse, being murdered by Styles. Staying with Kathy means financial ruin. So, early one morning, he leaves a letter and $500 for Kathy and flees the city.

Kathy spends the first few days of Hunt’s abandonment in denial. Then she contracts “yellow jack,” whereupon her housekeeper says fuck no! and bolts, taking the $500 Hunt left for Kathy on her way out the door. Shortly after the housekeeper exits the apartment, Joe Bullock, a sleazy P.I. hired by Styles and the man following Hunt earlier, enters. He discovers Kathy asleep in bed, covered in her own vomit. “You poor little bitch,” he remarks before leaving her for dead.

Styles Loses his Shit

Blade does eventually make his way to New Orleans, and while his journey isn’t easy, he isn’t mistreated as badly as one would expect. Styles’s letters of introduction have no sway over the pervading racism of the time, the only courtesy innkeepers extend is allowing Blade to park his carriage behind their establishment and camp out there (Blade still gets a blowjob from a kitchen slave because the demands of smut override believability).

There’s a long stretch devoted to Blade’s misadventures upon arriving in New Orleans, including his meeting a flamboyant pimp, having a night of fun on Congo Square and tangling with a vengeful cop, but let’s skip ahead. Blade finds Kathy nearly dead of yellow fever and enlists the help of a Marie Laveau-esque character to nurse her back to health, or at least healthy enough to travel. They stop at the same inn that had previously refused Blade a room, but as Kathy’s slave he is grudgingly allowed to sleep indoors, though his being permitted to sleep in her room just doesn’t track. Were she accompanied by a female slave, I could believe it. A big strapping Black man sleeping in the same room as a white lady in the antebellum South? Not so much.

The sleeping arrangement is a plot contrivance, of course, employed to facilitate Blade’s seduction of Kathy. While their eventual hooking up is consensual, it kind of plays out like a guy putting the moves on his best friend’s ex while she’s still crying about being dumped. I’ll admit I lost patience with this particular chapter, largely because Whittington draws out the will-they-or-won’t-they way longer than he should. By the chapter’s midpoint I was mentally screaming JUST FUCK ALREADY!

Long story short, Kathy gives in, has some of the most mind-blowing orgasms of her life—so powerful that she forgets the lovin’ Hunt put on her—and immediately regrets what she’s done, whereupon she kills herself. Her final thought before stabbing herself in the heart with Blade’s knife is how the knife’s hilt reminds her—I shit you not—of “the way Blade had drawn her clasped hand up and down the rigidity of his own staff.” Even when a character is committing suicide, sex remains top of mind.

Remarkably, Blade manages to hide the wound and convince the innkeeper that Kathy passed away from yellow fever. On his return trip to Blackoaks it dawns on Blade that he was used. Kathy had never desired him (Styles was actually describing his own desires for Blade’s body). He was just a pawn in Styles’ revenge plan. By the time he returns to the plantation he’s good and pissed and hungry for vengeance.

Everyone at Blackoaks is grief stricken when Blade returns with Kathy in a box, except Styles, who is described as having “the stony look of a man who has been cheated.” What pushes him over the edge is seeing the note Kathy wrote to him, revealing that she did, in fact, take her own life. Worse, is the letter’s tone, which isn’t contrite but defiant, ending with the line: I found ecstasy only with your Negro slave.

And then Styles loses his shit. He accuses Blade of murdering Kathy, and Blade accuses Styles of lying to him, and that Styles is guilty of killing her. Styles orders Blade shackled and whipped, at which point Blade, out of fucks to give, punches the unhinged master and attempts to strangle him. Now an apoplectic Styles isn’t just content with having Blade whipped, he wants him branded as well, leading to the following harrowing scene:

Styles lifted the branding iron and advanced toward Blade. Ahma screamed and tried to fight free. Perseus and Moab held her. But Blade did not move. When the huge R [for “runner”] was inches from Blade’s face, Styles hesitated, waiting for Blade to whimper, to plead.

Suddenly Styles thrust the branding iron with all his strength into Blade’s face. Ahma’s raging, animal screams were the only sound. It was as if not a man or woman breathed while that branding iron seared Blade’s face. The sharp, sizzling sound of fried flesh was loud in the silence. Blade’s left eye melted under the heat., its socket seared, red hot and empty. The flesh was burned away to the bone from his forehead, foreskull, and nose. His mouth cooked and split like broiled meat. His teeth were bared through the break in his lips in a permanent horrible grimace. His right eye broiled, gray, lying like an oyster in the heat-seared socket. He was completely blind.

The savage branding of Blade triggers an uprising, though the revolt is not led by Ahma. The other slaves think her inaction is because she’s distraught over losing Blade, who was killed—mercifully—shortly after he was branded, shot by Miz Claire at his insistence. However, Ahma reveals to Moab her real reason for not participating in the uprising: “You let them go….They scairt...they stupid n[ope!]…they don’t know they got to kill all the whites or they dead….They let one white alive to say they name—they gets killed.” Instead, she plans to escape during the ensuing melee, urging Moab to run with her.

Once Styles hears the commotion and sees most of Blackoaks up in flames (only the main house is spared), he goes outside to investigate and is immediately jumped by four men, led by Perseus, stripped and raped. They hadn’t killed him because they wanted him alive, the object of their raging scorn and ridicule, the white man who screamed like a woman as he was being sodomized in the grass.

The distasteful coda to that scene is when Styles, having mostly recovered from his gang-rape, spares Perseus’s life on the condition that “you give it to me—like did that night of the revolt.” Not only does this conflate rape with sex, but this passage also perpetuates a myth that bottoms are into pain. Then again, what was I expecting from plantation porn, political correctness?

Meanwhile, Ahma and Moab are desperately trying to stay one step ahead of a search posse—involving many of the same men who were part of the lynch mob in the first part of the book—as they make their way north. Ahma is shot, never mind that Styles strictly instructed members of the posse that he wanted the escaped slaves brought back alive. Ahma’s wound isn’t fatal, but it will seriously impede her ability to travel. She urges Moab to keep going without her, but he refuses to leave her. They’re situation seems hopeless, until they encounter an abolitionist ex machina. 

Less N-words than Django Unchained, at Least

Like its predecessor, Secret of Blackoaks was difficult to put down, no matter how uncomfortable it got. And though it takes a few side trips from its main storyline, it’s got a more cohesive plot than Master of Blackoaks.

That said, I must admit—guiltily—that I liked Master of Blackoaks more. Though Secret of Blackoaks is fairly well-paced, there are moments where the book seems stuck in place, such as Blade cajoling Kathy into having sex. Other parts seem like padding, included as just another way to work in a few more gratuitous sex scenes, even when they ultimately serve the plot, like Blade’s adventures on Congo Square in New Orleans or Moab’s continued affair with the field boss’s wife Florine.

But perhaps the book’s biggest missed opportunity—and Whittington’s biggest stumble—is the handling of the Ahma character. The story would have been more interesting had she been the driving force behind the uprising, convincing the complacent slaves of Blackoaks that even though they’re treated relatively well by the Baynards, they’re still slaves. Instead, her anger is immediately soothed by Blade’s huge dick. I know this isn’t Roots, but it would’ve been more satisfying in some instances if Whittington aimed higher than between his characters’ legs.

Though Secret of Blackoaks doesn’t pack the same punch as its predecessor, it’s still engrossing and appalling, and if nothing else, features slightly fewer n-words than Django Unchained. Recommended for Harry Whittington completists. Everyone else can be assured that they won’t be bored, but they will be judged if they dare read it in public.

I’ve only read a few books by Lance Horner (Rogue Roman,
The Mahound), but I always got a gay vibe from his writing.
So, maybe it’s not a surprise that Whittington borrowed
the name “Kenric” as the last name of Blackoaks’
sole gay character.