(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. 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. Whether that someone was Castellví or someone else, bless them.

Our male lead is Miguel Ortiz, who plays Santos, the lead singer 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 storyline, 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 the 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 prey? 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 other than his chewing out the jugular of one of the members of the hunting party we’re never shown how Santos achieves this. He reconnects with Lola after an extended scene of her dancing wearing a leather, metal-studded bikini for an audience all-male skinheads in club in which the décor includes a pen full of goats. (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 as 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 what 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 Santos’s and Lola’s quest for vengeance, with Castellví favoring bloody 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!