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

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

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

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

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

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

Though both movies they have their moments.

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

Vince Perilli’s good side.

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

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

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

Though some parts are less ambiguous than others.

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

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

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

Gulp.

Mark David’s hot pants.

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

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

Mise en schlong.

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

The Falconhead gets some head.

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

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

Doomed to be fucked by Joe Deitrich for an eternity.

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

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

Falconhead and his pet.

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

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

Manimal after dark.

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

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

Paul Baressi has a proposition for Rick Taylor.

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

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

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

Rose-y Palmer

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

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

“Nothing saves like Saran Wrap®.”

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

Paul Monroe goes down on a motorcycle.

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

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

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

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

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

Whaaa?

Short Takes: ‘Butterflies in Heat’ (1979) ★ ½

In 1986 Butterflies in Heat appeared
on video store shelves as Tropic of Desire
(no, not that one), masquerading
as a sexy romance.

I’ll give this much to Butterflies in Heat, the 1979 film adaptation of Darwin Porter’s 1976 novel: it’s got a hell of an opening shot. The first thing we see onscreen is a close-up of the lead actor’s crotch, his jeans adorned with an elaborate butterfly patch placed over the spot where the head of his dick rests. OK, I’m intrigued.

That lead actor is 1970s model Matt Collins, who plays Numie Chase, a hustler who’s come down to Key West, Florida, to put as many miles as possible between him and a potential murder charge in New York City. While there he meets Lola (the incomparable Eartha Kitt), a nightclub singer who loves white wigs, referring to herself in the third person, and pretty young men like Numie. However, she has no intention of paying for it (“People pay Lola,” she informs him). Numie then spots Anne (bland Roxanne Gregory), sitting alone in a corner of the same tawdry club, his interest in her strictly recreational. Anne resists his advances, but only because she is afraid of incurring the wrath of her domineering mother, Leonora (Barbara Baxley), supposedly a very rich and very famous fashion designer though her decaying mansion suggests the money and fame are disappearing fast. Numie instead settles for fucking (off-screen) Anne’s no-so-closeted husband (Numie says he doesn’t usually service dudes, but the watch he’s offered as payment is valued at $1,000). Rounding out the cast of characters is Leonora’s plus-sized housekeeper/assistant Tangerine (Pat Carroll), who is willing to pay for Numie’s body but settles for his friendship instead, and Sheriff Webb (Bert Williams), who appears periodically to rough up Numie and arrest him on spurious charges.

Butterflies in Heat—the book and the movie—sounds like the kind shit I’d love. It’s Tennessee Williams via glory hole or, at the very least, a queer 92 in the Shade. Instead, I found both to be tedious and frustrating. I bought a copy of Porter’s novel when it was re-released in the mid-1990s with a cover more befitting a gay porn video, my hopes high that I’d found some trash I could truly treasure. I barely made it through 75 pages before giving up. Porter, it turned out, was more interested in having his female (and female-presenting) characters deliver paragraphs of fanciful dialog than in Numie unleashing the monster caged within his butterfly-festooned jeans. Its gay sensibility was aimed not at bath house sluts, as its X-rated cover art suggested, but at drag cabaret queens.

I likely would have been just as disappointed if I bought
the 1976 paperback edition of Butterflies in Heat (left),
but at least that cover doesn't arouse expectations as high—
and as hard—as the raunchy cover for the 1997 edition.

Director Cash Baxter’s movie adaptation similarly let me down despite all it had going for it. Though the film’s budget is obviously meager, the production is fittingly seedy, and the cast of mostly TV veterans doubles its value. Kitt’s Lola—a drag queen in the book but more ambiguous here—is almost single-handedly worth the price of admission. Carroll, a character actor perhaps best-known today as the voice of Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, takes what could easily be described as The Shelley Winters Role and makes the character Tangerine her own. The least interesting performances are by Collins and Gregory, but then they are saddled with Butterflies’ least interesting characters. Though screenwriters Tony (Point of Terror) Crechales and George (The Killing Kind) Edwards reign in the book’s long-winded dialog, they also water down its gay appeal and any potential the movie had of becoming a camp classic. And forget any sexy fun. The movie’s one (one!) sex scene is fairly tepid, with only Gregory showing any skin. Despite everyone lusting after Numie, Collins, who sort of resembles Nathan Fillion in his Firefly days, seldom takes off his shirt, let alone his pants.

Butterflies in Heat was released on video in 1986 under the title Tropic of Desire—“not to be confused with the same-named porno movie,” the IMDb trivia page cheekily warns. Likely anyone renting the porn movie by mistake would’ve been less disappointed. At least that Tropic of Desire delivers what it promises; not so this cock tease of a movie.

Short Takes: ‘In the Eye of the Hurricane’ (1971) ★★★

Ruth (Analía Gadé), a wealthy, well-put-together blonde with a fondness for beige fashions and Kent cigarettes, leaves her husband Michel (Tony Kendall) for Paul (Jean Sorel). It appears to be an amicable separation. Michel tries to persuade Ruth to stay—or at least stay long enough for a farewell fuck—but then politely steps aside when Paul arrives to take Ruth away to “the villa.” The lovers’ first few days at the seaside mansion are blissful, though Ruth (and the audience) doesn’t know what to make of the sudden appearance of Paul’s gigolo friend Roland (Maurizio Bonuglia), but she quickly warms up to him always hanging around the movie’s periphery. Less so Danielle (Rosanna Yanni), the sexually ambiguous redhead who’s rented the house next door.

But there are more unwelcome developments threatening Ruth’s happiness than a layabout stud with a pencil ’stache or a shapely switch-hitter, such as narrowly avoiding a deadly crash when her brakes give out while speeding along a narrow highway, and almost asphyxiating when her scuba tank runs out of air during a diving expedition. Both incidents are dismissed as coincidental malfunctions, but Ruth is sure that someone is trying to kill...Paul. It’s only later that she realizes she’s the one who’s In the Eye of the Hurricane (a.k.a. El ojo del huracán).

Even the poster art for In the Eye of the Hurricane
and Paranoia complement each other.

This Spanish-Italian co-production had been on my watchlist for a while, and so it was a pleasant surprise when it popped up on Tubi, under the title The Fox with the Velvet Tail. It’s more a Eurotrash thriller than giallo, which is fine by me. If you liked Umberto Lenzi’s 1969 thriller Paranoia (a.k.a. Orgasmo)—and I count it among my favorites—then you should enjoy In the Eye of the Hurricane. In fact, Paranoia and Hurricane would make a great double feature, as both movies share a lot of similarities: beautiful rich women living in secluded villas, lovers with suspect motives, semi-explicit sex scenes, and bratty bisexual babes.

But as much as Paranoia and Hurricane complement each other, they are not equal. Paranoia is better, but Hurricane is classier. Not only does Hurricane director José María Forqué present his leading lady in a more glamorous light, he also injects his movie with a lot of visual style, such as a dizzying make-out scene between Sorel, hanging upside down from a tree branch, and a topless Gadé (too bad about the shitty day-for-night scenes). The version of Hurricane streaming on Tubi is English dubbed, which makes it difficult to accurately judge the acting, though fortunately none of the actors on screen have their performances sabotaged by awful voice actors. Forqué’s script, co-written with Rafael Azcona and Mario di Nardo, is deceptively simple—too simple, I initially thought, until the final denouement that surprised me with its cleverness. The point of Roland’s presence is never really explained, though the final seconds before the end credits spark plenty of speculation. At the risk of a minor spoiler, I’ll just say Ruth should have fun with him (Roland is cute, in a smarmy sort of way) but maybe keep a gun handy. Roland’s up to something.

Michel’s (Tony Kendall) inability to properly tie a tie may not be what
drove Ruth (Analia Gadé) to leave him, but I’m sure it was a factor.