‘I Don’t Understand…This Free Love’

There’s something horribly
wrong with Morgan
Royce’s neck!

The 1970 film SONG OF THE LOON has nothing to do with Thanksgiving beyond depicting a fantasy of how settlers in the New World interacted with Native Americans. Instead of celebrating bountiful harvests/colonization/enslavement of natives, however, Song of the Loon celebrates free love among white men and white men in redface. So…better?

The movie’s central romance is actually between two white dudes in the Old West. We meet one of those dudes at the film’s opening, Cyrus (Jon Iverson, looking like he stepped out of a Winston cigarette ad). The handsome settler, sporting a mustache that’s been sprayed gray, is walking through the woods when he happens upon two nude men on a blanket in a clearing, one white, the other also white but wearing a black wig so, “Native American.” But faux indigenous people aren’t the movie’s biggest break from reality. The Native American knows Cyrus and goes over to greet the older man. Cyrus then turns his attention to the young white guy, Luke (John Drake). “How do you like my partner?” he asks.

“You’re partner?”

“Well, lover if you like.”

Luke apologizes, but Cyrus assures him it’s cool, because in Song of the Loon, life in the 1870s western frontier was like living in the 1970s Castro District. Back at Cyrus’ cabin, while the guys sit around a fire eating stew, the older man tells Luke that he reminds him of a man he once knew, who had blue eyes and “corn-colored hair” (never mind that Luke’s hair is brown).

They’re practically twins: Luke (left) and Ephraim.

The movie then segues into a flashback that makes up the rest of the film, when the young man with corn-colored hair, Ephraim (Morgan Royce, who is indeed blond), arrived in the western frontier. “Ephraim was different….He knew nothing,” observes Cyrus in a voice over, adding: “Ephraim wanted to learn, and I wanted to teach him.”

Huh?

We have a pretty good idea of what’s included on Cyrus’ syllabus, but it’ll be a minute before he can begin instructing Ephraim in Penis Appreciation and Rectal Relaxation 101. When Ephraim paddles his canoe into the wilderness of the West (Big Pines, Calif., specifically), he is greeted by Singing Heron (John Kalfas). Singing Heron offers the blond himbo a meal and a place to rest, listening as Ephraim tells him about how his friend and traveling partner Montgomery fell for a Mr. Calvin, a spiteful preacher who turned Montgomery against Ephraim. Not that Montgomery was much of a friend/fuck buddy to begin with. “Whenever he wanted to sleep with me, he’d get drunk and say I’d forced him into it,” Ephraim says.

The Redface Tribe of Song of the Loon.

“I would show you happiness,” Singing Heron offers helpfully. Alas, despite the scene being shot like it’s for a porno film, with lots of close-up shots of Kalfas gazing seductively at Royce, nothing dirty happens.

Jon Iverson’s au naturale nature walk.

Cyrus (Jon Iverson) getting wet for Ephraim.

Nothing dirty happens when Ephraim finally meets Cyrus, either, even though the older man, now clean shaven, wastes little time encouraging Ephraim to bathe in a nearby lake (Ephraim may be cute, but he stanky), telling him he’ll join him later. Despite the set-up, the men do nothing more daring than go skinny dipping. It’s here that I should break the news that, despite its original X-rating, despite its copious nudity, and despite the fact the movie is usually streaming on adult sites (I rented it through GayHotMovies.com), Song of the Loon is not pornographic. It has more in common with a genre from the previous decade, the Nudie Cutie, except the Nudie Cuties usually tip-toed around the existence of sex. Song of the Loon does include a couple sex scenes, but they’re shot in such a way as to show fuck all of the fucking.

Hot.

The romance between Cyrus and Ephraim is kind of sweet if superficial. It’s also not exclusive, but that’s just the Old West way. Singing Heron has already chided Ephraim about his puritanical adherence to monogamy, telling him he suffers from “the white man’s disease. It’s called jealousy, sometimes selfishness.” During a tender campfire conversation with Cyrus, Ephraim says: “I don’t understand, about you, and Singing Heron, and this…free love.”

Cyrus explains free love to Ephraim.

“What free love means to you and me, it’s different to these people. It’s more of a spiritual nature. For instance, if I love someone, that doesn’t mean I can’t be with someone else,” explains Cyrus. “You have to forget your fears and jealousies.”

Cyrus silences Ephraim’s questions
about polyamory.

It’s a pitch familiar to anyone whose partner suggests opening a relationship, though I think Cyrus might be the first to attribute it to the wisdom of Native Americans (a.k.a. “these people”). To his credit, Ephraim, who is not a greenhorn so much as just plain dumb, doesn’t immediately buy into this reasoning. Cyrus’ rebuttal: “Would it make any sense if I said I was in love with you?” This brings a glycerin tear to Ephraim’s eyes—and some painful attempts at emoting to Royce’s face—and the two men kiss.

Ephraim isn’t quite ready to settle down just yet, however. He’s still on a journey, and next on the itinerary is a meeting with Bear-Who-Dreams (Lucky Manning), another member of the Redface Tribe. BWD gives Ephraim a magic mushroom and sends him naked into the woods to experience his “medicine dream” and become enlightened to the concept of free love. Stumbling around in the woods, tripping balls and with bugs biting your dick doesn’t seem like it would persuade anyone to embrace polyamory, but I’ve never done ’shooms so what do I know?

Though Ephraim is tripping solo, his mind conjures up plenty of company: Singing Heron, Cyrus and some random hot bodied Native American (possibly BWD, or maybe Iverson in a wig). Ephraim and the “Native American” get busy on the rocky shore of a river, and while this sex scene is more explicit, it’s also filmed in boner killing negative.

Artsy.

Better! Also, uncomfortable! Seriously, on the rocks? Ouch.

Jon Evans as Montgomery, strategically posed.

Another man Ephraim encounters during his medicine dream is Montgomery (beefy Jon Evans, also in Vixen!), sitting naked on rock in a position that carefully hides the good parts, pointing a gun at him. “I’m gonna kill you, you damn queer,” Montgomery snarls. But not-real Cyrus shoots an arrow into not-real Montgomery’s chest before the hirsute hunk can pull the trigger. Ephraim then wraps his arms around a tree and sobs. “You have seen many things a white man would see only in the Indian way,” BWD later pronounces, before urging the air-headed twunk to “go walk in beauty and happiness.” That walk, unsurprisingly, leads Ephraim right back to Cyrus.

Tree fucker.

A Landmark in Queer Cinema. Also, Kinda’ Boring.

Richard Amory’s gay pastoral
novel became a classic.

Song of the Loon was adapted from Richard Amory’s 1966 novel of the same name. The closest I’ve come to reading the book was attempting to buy an original paperback copy from an online queer bookseller a decade ago, only to get the disappointing news that the book had already been sold. Since then, the price of the original paperback has only gone up (it was reprinted with a don’t-give-a-shit cover design by Arsenal PulpPress in 2005). I did find this review on the Speak Its Name blog, which reports that despite the book including some cringe poetry (My hardened penis downward dips / Into your asshole darkly tight / Warmly endlessly lost from sight), it has “a tone of earnest sweetness that overcomes the camp factor.”

I found two contradictory stories regarding Amory’s involvement in the movie adaptation. According to one source, Amory wrote the movie’s screenplay (there is no screenwriter credit given in the movie, but Amory’s name and title of his benchmark novel are prominently featured in the opening credits). The more common story I found, and the one I more inclined to believe, is the author had nothing to do with the movie adaptation and was in fact disgusted by the film. All that said, the movie does strive to evoke the same “earnest sweetness” of Amory’s novel, and it often overcomes that camp factor. Unfortunately, what that means is the movie is often too inane to be taken seriously yet too well-meaning to laugh at. Also, it’s kinda’ boring.

Song of the Loon has not yet been
 released on Blu-ray, but if you have
a high tolerance of low-resolution
penises you can get a DVD
from BijouWorld.com

Though filmmaking is more competent than expected, Song of the Loon suffers the same issues of many low budget productions: the pacing is sluggish, the script unengaging, the performances community theater level—though that’s better than one would expect for a movie where the cast’s physical appearance and willingness to get naked on camera were likely given more weight than acting talent. Iverson gives the movie’s best performance while Royce gives the worst, though to be fair, I completely believed him as a man who knew nothing.

All these shortcomings might’ve been forgiven had the movie been at least titillating, yet Song of the Loon: The Movie is almost devoid of eroticism. Supposedly the novel is much more graphic (I just might have to get over my graphic design snobbery and buy that Arsenal Pulp reprint…), but the sexy content was significantly watered down for the film. One might blame this on the movie being filmed in 1969, but even at that time exploitation movies were pushing the envelope. Though Song of the Loon was lauded for being the first softcore film to portray gay love, harder fare was becoming more common when it was released in 1970. Naked men paying lip service to free love in a fantasy gay western is all well and good but personally, I prefer Tom DeSimone’s show-don’t-tell approach in Dust Unto Dust (if only the bearded blond settler could maintain wood…).

According to IMDb, Scott Hanson and Joe Tiffenbach* were hired as Song of the Loon’s director and cinematographer, respectively, but were fired when filming was nearly complete. Directing credit was given to editor Andrew Herbert, who assembled Hanson and Tiffanbach’s footage into a releasable movie. This might account for the movie’s unsatisfying conclusion, wrapping up with a montage of previous scenes and a title card summarizing “What happened to Ephraim?” The answer: he left Cyrus after a while to continue his journey. It’s a toss-up as to whether this was intended as sequel bait (Amory did write two sequels to Song of the Loon) or the filmmakers simply running out of ideas, though I’m leaning towards the latter. It might have been better if they instead ended it with some poetry about butt fucking.

Asses up!

*FUN FACT: Joe Tiffenbach went on to direct gay porn movies throughout the 1980s before his death in 1992.

The Horrors of Tacky Jewelry

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

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

Vintage newspaper ad via 
Dirty Looks.

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

Lovers Jim (Steve Spahn, left) and John (Jeff Fuller) begin
their second (or third) year together.

A traditional gay anniversary gift.

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

The curse of bad taste.

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

Considering the city’s rat problem, I’m sure most New
Yorkers would prefer a kitchen poltergeist instead.

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

Caught.

Foreshadowing.

An unhappy ending.

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

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

Not even an exorcist can help: Panama attempts to cast out Jim’s
demon while John and a scruffy Good Samaritan look on.

So, was Sex Demon worth the wait? Yes and no. If you approach it as a grimy gay indie, Sex Demon can be a lot of fun, especially if watched with other people (those New York and L.A. screenings must’ve been a blast). It’s over the top in the best way, a cult movie in need of a cult. Cricket may be spoofing The Exorcist, but he wisely plays it straight, as it were. Fuller gives a more believable performance, but it’s Spahn who steals the show, never letting his non-existent acting skills stop him from just fucking going for it.

John hopes using the anniversary KY will vanquish
 Jim’s medallion demon.

Sex Demon is less successful as porn, with only Spahn’s flair for sucking cock and that occult orgy saving it from being a total erotic failure. Put another way, only those turned on by that scene in Pink Flamingos where Divine blows Danny Mills will need to have tissues and Jergens (and maybe a therapist’s phone number) handy while watching Sex Demon.

Sex, Murder and Crisco

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

Possibly the former lady of the house.

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

Stoned face.

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

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

This is one way to avoid an awkward encounter with a trick afterward.

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

The fine line between erotic asphyxia and murder is about to be crossed.

Murder is wrong, but the hair of Stoned Elijah’s
visitor is a crime.

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

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

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

Marriage.

Getting ready for his big night.

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

Let’s get this party started.

A sensual moment before breaking out the Crisco.

Weeeeee!

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

Another relationship saved by group sex and fisting.

All in all, Sex Demon…and Other Hauntings is best enjoyed as a time capsule, a journey back to when, as Purchell has noted, there was no distinction between gay porn and gay cinema. Consequently, the sex in these movies often seems incidental to the filmmaking, rough though it may be. But regardless of erotic impact, Sex Demon is worth the investment. There are certainly worse gay takes on The Exorcist you could watch.

Double Takes: ‘Nighthawks’ (1978) ★★★ / ‘Strip Jack Naked: Nighthawks 2’ (1991) ★★★

Being gay sure seemed sexier when I was in the closet. Not that I regret coming out—Lord knows, I stayed in the closet far longer than I should have—but I when I finally did it seemed, I dunno, anticlimactic. Oh, there were tears shed by my family, with assurances that they would love me “even if you were a child molester.” (Pro tip: if someone comes out to you, please don’t ever tell them this, no matter how well meaning.) This I was prepared for and considered it the price of entry. Having paid it, I was ready for all the sexy fun. Instead, I discovered that living as an out gay man was not, as I’d hoped, like living in a Falcon or Kristen Bjorn video, but instead just as mundane as living as a straight man.

I might have been better prepared if I had watched Ron Peck’s 1978 film Nighthawks instead of all those Falcon and Kristen Bjorn videos. The movie follows Jim (Ken Robertson, delivering the film’s most natural performance), a young-ish schoolteacher who spends his nights prowling London’s gay clubs for fresh cock. That lurid premise is amplified by the film’s grainy cinematography and unpolished acting that gives Nighthawks the aesthetics of a ’70s porno flick.  

The well-built Robertson's nude scenes notwithstanding, Nighthawks isn’t all that lurid or sexy. Peck and his collaborator Paul Hallam are more concerned with capturing the awkward moments before and after Jim’s hookups, how in each instance either Jim or his Mr. Right Now make it plain that they hope this one night might lead to something more, even as they have an eye peeled for Mr. More Right. The movie perfectly captures the quiet desperation of being rejected, as when Jim waits hours in a pub for his cutest hookup to arrive for a second date, refusing to believe he’s been stood up. Yet Jim is shown to be equally callous when the hard-on is in the other man’s pants.

The film also nicely captures the delicate dance gay men of the time had to maintain between their private and professional lives. Jim is careful to drop his tricks off a block away from their jobs the next morning. Even though several of his colleagues know he’s gay, Jim tries to be discreet at his job—until near the film’s end, when one of his students asks if he is “bent.” Jim, fed up with having to hide his true self, tells the student he is, then proceeds to answer all his students’ follow-up questions, no matter how offensive. Surprisingly, he is not fired for doing so, only reprimanded, suggesting that 1978 London was still better than present-day Florida.

Nighthawks may be a significant movie, but it is not exactly an entertaining one. At nearly two-hours, this plotless film often rambles and is frequently boring, with several scenes that left me wondering if the movie had a point. There are scenes of Jim just standing in nightclubs, his eyes darting around, scoping out potential tricks, that go on for several minutes—minutes made more excruciating by Nighthawks’ atrocious ersatz disco soundtrack. 

Peck’s 1991 follow-up Strip Jack Naked: Nighthawks 2 isn’t a sequel so much as a personal essay mixed with a making-of documentary, with some bonus footage of naked men wandering around for no apparent reason other than shoehorning in some prurient content. The movie features several scenes cut from the original film (among Peck’s revelations is that the initial cut of Nighthawks was nearly three and a half hours long), and in showing them you begin to see the potential for a better edit than what was ultimately released. I, for one, would’ve gladly sacrificed one of Jim’s morning after scenes for the scene in which he goes home with a man who wants to play rough as the scene illustrates the darker side of hooking up. Then again, since this scene is explicitly sexual it may have been cut for censorship reasons. 

More compelling are Peck’s reflections on growing up queer, including a schoolboy crush gone wrong, coming out, and navigating gay life in the 1970s, when he was always on the hunt for sex but secretly hoping to find Mr. Right. “And when I thought I came close, I saw another who I thought would take me closer, and another, and another. And many a time he’d give me the slip after one night…or turn down the offer of a drink or a cigarette with a smile before walking away, as [I] did [myself] to so many others.”

Perhaps more relatable to today’s audiences are Peck’s recounting of the election of Margaret Thatcher and her government’s attack against civil liberties, specifically those regarding the LGBTQ community. The emergence of HIV-AIDS in the 1980s only added fuel to the homophobic fire. “Across the media, gay now equaled AIDS,” Peck observes. He does end Strip Jack Naked on a hopeful note, because one had reason to be hopeful in the 1990s. Not so sure about 2024.

The Bombs of Barbra

Among the many problems critics cited with the 1976 remake of A Star is Born—and they cited a bunch of them at the time—was the preposterousness of Barbra Streisand’s Lite FM pop winning over hard rock audience (mitigating factor: the rocker in question was played by country singer Kris Kristofferson, R.I.P.). To Barbra’s fans, however, this makes perfect sense. How could anyone not be won over by one of the most talented women of our time? Her fans were sold—I certainly was—and so A Star is Born became another one of Barbra’s many hit films and another fuck you to her critics.

But Barbra’s fans didn’t line up for everything she did. Though most of Barbra’s films were successful—her track record is pretty impressive—she did have a few bombs. So, while Barbra’s successes are being celebrated in the wake of her recently published door stopper of a memoir My Name is Barbra (also a hit), I thought I’d revisit her few failures, which is far easier—and faster—than reviewing that autobiography. (Nine-hundred and ninety-two pages? Oh, fuck no.) 

I’m going to bypass Hello, Dolly!, which, similar to Cleopatra, was both a box office hit (No. 5 on the list of top grossing movies for 1969) and a financial disappointment (i.e., it cost too goddamn much to make), though 20th Century Fox, as it did with Cleopatra, eventually recouped its investment. Instead, I’m jumping to Barbra’s first real flop, UP THE SANDBOX.

Margaret joins the other moms in Central Park.

Up the Sandbox just might be the closest Barbra ever got to making a small arthouse film. In this 1972 adaptation of Anne Roiphe’s 1970 novel, Barbra plays Margaret, a young New York housewife, married to a college professor (David Selby) who regularly escapes her stifling existence through vivid fantasies. Sometimes the fantasies are dark (joining a group of activists to blow up the Statue of Liberty), but most are played for laughs (Margaret pushing her nagging mother’s face into a birthday cake; increasing her breast size at will during a college faculty party).

Margaret's mother (Jane Hoffman) fights back.

Fidel Castro (Jocobo Morales) has a secret.

It's not a perfect film. The feminist messaging is a little too on-the-nose, some of the humor hasn’t aged well (“Oh my god, you’re a fag.”), and its conclusion isn’t entirely satisfying, but I still count Up the Sandbox among my favorite Barbra Streisand films. It’s certainly one of Barbra’s best performances. One of Barbra’s stumbling blocks as an actress, especially in more dramatic roles, is she can’t let us forget she’s Barbra Streisand, so her performances are always bigger than the character she’s playing. She also tends to be too self-conscious, unable to pick up a glass of water without making sure she’s showing off her manicure (as any Barbra fan knows, Babs just loves showing off her nails to the camera). It’s like director Irvin Kershner (the same one who directed this little sci-fi gem) told her to do what she usually does, just 10-15% less of it—and for once she trusted the director. As a result, she gives one of her most relaxed, natural performances.

Margaret prepares to blow up the Statue of Liberty, a scene
Barbra says likely would not be included were the film made today.

Margaret journeys to Africa with musicologist Dr. Beineke 
(Paul Benedict), but the natives are less than welcoming.

Too bad not a whole lot of people saw it. Reportedly audiences at the time were put off by how the fantasies were introduced. Instead of doing the standard harps and swirling dissolves to announce fantasy sequences, Kershner lets them happen organically, as if they are part of Margaret’s reality. It’s usually pretty easy to tell when a scene has segued into fantasy, but apparently this confused 1972 audiences, which hurt word of mouth. (Christopher Nolan would have had a very different career trajectory if he started making films in the early 1970s.)

Paul (David Selby) and Margaret get real.

The movie’s box office was further hurt by the fact that it is difficult to categorize. In the movie’s DVD commentary, Barbra describes the movie as “a drama with some laughs”—so, a dramedy. But the movie was marketed as a straight-up comedy, with a painting of Barbra, pregnant and looking startled, tied to a giant baby bottle. I like the poster, but it’s selling a wacky comedy like What’s Up, Doc?, released earlier the same year, not “a drama with some laughs.” The trailer didn’t help matters. As we’ll soon see, this won’t be the last time mis-marketing helped tank one of Barbra’s movies.

Did it deserve to bomb? No. It’s definitely worth seeking out if you’re a Streisand fan. Even if you’re not, you might still want to check it out as it’s not a typical Streisand film. It’s available for streaming. Those who prefer physical media will have to be content with a DVD, but if you go that route avoid Barbra’s commentary track, which adds little beyond proving she’s as self-absorbed as her detractors say she is.

‘A Little, European Kind of Film’

If there was any justice in the world, the next movie on this list would be 1979’s The Main Event, which I think is Barbra’s worst movie (for her co-star, the late Ryan O’Neal, worst was yet to come), but, no, The Main Event made money. Instead, Barbra’s second bomb detonated in 1981 with the release of the non-com ALL NIGHT LONG.

George Dupler (Gene Hackman) and Cheryl (you know who)
enjoy dinner at sunset.

All Night Long was originally meant to be a modest little comedy about George Dupler, a middle-aged exec for a drugstore chain who, after reacting violently to being passed over for a promotion, gets demoted to night manager of one of the company’s 24-hour stores. George then begins having an affair with Cheryl, the wife of his fourth cousin, who is also having an affair with George’s son Freddie (Cheryl, not George’s fourth cousin). Gene Hackman was cast as George, and Lisa Eichorn as Cheryl. It was the American debut of Belgian director Jean-Claude Tramont.

Gene Hackman wonders what the fuck happened
to his movie.

Unfortunately for the movie, Tramont was married to ’70s superagent Sue Mengers. Mengers represented Hackman, but her biggest client was Barbra Streisand. Mengers had wanted Barbra in the role of Cheryl from the beginning, but Barbra, then busily trying to get Yentl off the ground, passed. This didn’t stop Mengers, who began badmouthing Eichorn’s performance the moment she saw the early rushes (other people connected to the film said Eichorn was fine). Mengers’ behind the scenes fuckery is detailed fully in Brian Kellow’s biography of Mengers, Can I Go Now? (or you could just read an excerpt here), but the TL;DR version is that Mengers got Barbra to reconsider with a very persuasive $4 million payday, got Eichorn fired, and transformed her husband’s low-stakes project into A Barbra Streisand Film.

Loni Anderson says she was considered for the role Cheryl but was
beat out by Barbra. However, the one source I found that even mentions
Anderson in connection with this movie reports she was considered after 
Barbra initially turned the part down, meaning she lost the role to Lisa Eichorn.
Either way, she dodged a bullet (only to catch a much bigger bullet).

The 2004 DVD cover is closer
to the tone of the movie, but still
misses the mark. Also, did they
give Barbra a Photoshop nose job?

Except, All Night Long wasn’t A Barbra Streisand Film; Barbra was a co-star in a Gene Hackman film (All Night Long was the first time she got second billing). That didn’t stop Universal’s publicity department from making Barbra the focus of its marketing. “She’s got a way with men, and she’s getting away with it… All Night Long,” reads the poster’s tagline. Muddying the waters further is the accompanying art featuring Barbra sliding down a fireman’s pole with her skirt flying up à la Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, with Hackman, Dennis Quaid (as Freddie) and Kevin Dobson (as Cheryl’s hot-headed fireman husband Bobby) waiting below to catch her. A rollicking sex farce starring Barbra Streisand? This movie looks fun!

All Night Long is not a rollicking sex farce. It’s not that fun, or that funny. “It was really a little, European kind of film,” is how Barbra described it in Can I Go Now? She said she “felt totally betrayed” by the movie’s misleading ad campaign. Audiences also felt betrayed, and the movie quickly sank at the box office, making just under $4.5 million against its $15 million budget.

Dennis Quaid might actually be stoned in this scene.

All Night Long isn’t that funny, but it isn’t unwatchable, either. I’d describe it as a neutered Middle-Age Crazy or a second-rate Starting Over. It’s a direct-to-video movie before those were a thing. Barbra, wearing a Rona Barrett wig and push-up bras, manages to pull off the role of ditzy suburban cougar Cheryl, and it’s fun to see her play against type. Unfortunately, Cheryl isn’t a character so much as she is a collection of quirky behaviors: she rides a scooter; she has a love of the color lavender so obsessive that even her cigarettes are that color; she meticulously picks the raisins out of a cinnamon raisin Danish because she read somewhere you shouldn’t eat fruit and carbs together. In fact, most of the laughs Cheryl gets hinge on the fact that she’s played by Barbra Streisand, such as a scene in which Cheryl, composing a country song on an electric organ, proves to be a lousy singer, which got the movie’s biggest laugh when I saw it in the theater (I’m old, y’all!) Would this scene have worked if Lisa Eichorn was in the role of Cheryl? Probably, but the laughs likely wouldn’t have been as loud.

These alternate poster designs I whipped up aren’t masterpieces of 
graphic design, but they better convey the tone of All Night Long than
what Universal came up with. I made Gene Hackman's character the
focus, while Barbra is featured but not emphasized. The lazier design
on the right also makes it clear that Barbra is not the main character,
though I’m sure anyone presenting such a design in 1981 would be fired
on the spot. Sue Mengers and Barbra might even have the designer killed.

But most of the characters in All Night Long are underwritten, reduced to types rather than fully realized people, with only Hackman’s George getting fleshed out to any degree. In fact, the whole movie plays out like they were working from screenwriter W.D. Richter’s first draft. In addition to underdeveloped characters, there’s a satirical undercurrent about suburban malaise and the so-called American Dream that's never fully realized, either because Richter’s script never quite articulated it or Tramont never quite grasped it. In the end, All Night Long didn’t need Barbra to save it, it just needed rewrites.

Did it deserve to bomb? Yes, if only as an expensive middle finger to Mengers, who should’ve minded her own fucking business. (Mengers got an even bigger middle finger when Barbra dropped her as her agent shortly after. As for Tramont, he died in 1996 with only one other American directing credit, the TV movie As Summers Die.) I don’t dislike the movie—it’s way more watchable than The Main Event—but it’s hardly essential viewing. 

Cheryl enjoys one of her lavender-tinted cigs while Diane Ladd, as
George’s tight-assed wife Helen, seethes beneath her horrible granny helmet.

The Stars of Funny Girl and Pineapple Express,
Together at Last

Though Sue Mengers was the villain of the All Night Long debacle, she was reportedly one of the few people in Barbra’s life who could get away with calling the superstar out on her bullshit. And so, decades later, when the two women were again on speaking terms, it was Mengers who told Barbra to stop waffling and just accept the offer to star in THE GUILT TRIP, directed by Anne Fletcher.

“What do you mean you’re not holding?”

Seth Rogen is just as surprised as
you are that he is in a PG-13 movie.

The Guilt Trip was Barbra’s first starring role since 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces, which she also directed (can’t forget that detail!), and, to date, her last movie. Yet upon The Guilt Trip’s December 2012 release Barbra's return to the big screen was met only with mixed reviews and polite applause. That said, I’m stretching the premise by counting it as one of Barbra’s bombs. The Guilt Trip wasn’t a hit, but it did eventually make back its $40 million budget plus some. It “underperformed” rather than flopped (though there’s still that marketing budget to recoup...).

Barbra plays Joyce, a widow who dotes on her adult son, Andy (Seth Rogen), a chemist and struggling entrepreneur. Though Andy finds Joyce’s attention stifling, he does worry about her being alone and invites her to join him on a cross-country drive from New Jersey to California, with him making stops at various retail chains along the way to pitch his environmentally friendly cleaning product, ScieoClean. Andy also has an ulterior motive: learning that Joyce's first love now lives in San Francisco, he plans a surprise reunion.

Andy begins to regret inviting his mother along for the ride.

The opening fifteen minutes of The Guilt Trip suggest it’s going to be little more than a 90-minute Jewish mother joke, but the movie has a bit more to it than that. Joyce is annoying but well meaning; Andy finds her overbearing and wishes she’d just shut the fuck up and give him some space—except when he needs her. Naturally, their relationship is tested, but by the time they reach the west coast their bond is stronger than ever. 

Joyce picks up a hitchhiker.

Barbra was perfectly cast as Joyce (she got a Worst Actress Razzie nomination for this movie, but like a lot of Razzie nominations, I suspect it was more than a little disingenuous, being more about taking Babs down a peg than it was about her actual performance). The wild card was Rogen, who in the early 2010s was known more for raucous/raunchy R-rated comedies like Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. Would people buy him in a role where he never once takes a bong hit or makes a crude sex joke? (This PG-13 movie’s one allotted f-bomb goes to Barbra.) Rogen’s persona at the time had me thinking that Bette Midler would be a more believable movie parent for him, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well he and Barbra play off each other. They’re actually believable as mother and son. If only they were funnier.

Andy and Joyce celebrate her competitive gluttony victory. On the far
right is Brett Cullum as Ben, a cowboy who is apparently into older
women who like to eat.

It's not that The Guilt Trip is devoid of laughs, it’s just that Dan Fogelman’s script is more sentimental than funny (the story is based on a real-life road trip he had taken with his mother). Most of the humor stems from Andy’s sarcastic asides to Joyce’s babbling. Where this trip veers off course is when Fogelman shoves in goofy contrivances, like when Joyce and Andy are stranded in the parking lot of a Tennessee titty bar and Joyce excitedly runs for the club’s front door because she misreads “topless” as “tapas.” Then there’s the scene in which Joyce participates in a Texas steakhouse’s eating challenge, which seems to be banking on audiences finding the sight of Barbra woofing down over three pounds of beef side-splitting. Hmmm, maybe it would’ve been better if Joyce lost a karaoke contest instead? There are also some lines that just haven’t aged well since the movie’s release, as when Joyce calls Andy her “little Donald Trump.” Oy!

All in all, The Guilt Trip is the kind of movie that can be described as cute. I remember thinking it was merely OK when I first saw it, ranking it as better than All Night Long but not as funny as For Pete’s Sake, or even Meet the Fockers. I had a higher opinion of the movie after a recent rewatch. The overall sweetness of the story resonated more the second time around, possibly because I’d lost my mother a few years ago and was more receptive to the sentimentality. I also laughed more than I remember doing on my first viewing. I still consider it one of Barbra’s lesser films, but it’s a little better than I initially gave it credit for.

Fashion forward: a track-suited Joyce adjusts Andy’s rumpled jacket.

Did it deserve to bomb underperform?: No, but it’s not surprising that it did. This thing was never going to make Marvel money (though, as I write this, Madame Web is making Guilt Trip money), however Paramount could’ve picked a better release date (Mother’s Day weekend, anyone?) The days when people flocked to see a Barbra Streisand movie had long since passed (even I, who saw All Night Long on its opening weekend, waited until The Guilt Trip was streaming), and younger audiences likely only knew Barbra as Roz Focker or a South Park punchline. Rogen’s fans at the time probably just wondered what the fuck he was doing in a PG-13 movie. But ultimately, the movie simply wasn’t funny enough to make people pay $8 U.S. to see it, especially in 2012’s economy.

Barbra has said she likely won’t make another movie, which isn’t surprising. She’s in her eighties, after all, though I wouldn't be surprised if she took one final, low effort/big payday film role before she dies (Book Club IV: The Wizening). So, for a career spanning more than six decades, the fact that she’s only had three box office misfires is a remarkable record. However, she’s also not been the most prolific actor, having made only 19 films, eight of those between 1981 and 2012. She hasn’t taken a lot of chances, either, sticking to musicals, comedies (romantic or otherwise) and romantic dramas. That may be great for a studio’s bottom line and Barbra's asking price, but I feel like she would have had a more interesting career if she had accepted some of the roles she turned down. In many cases, I’m glad she said no (King Kong, Poltergeist, The Exorcist 😮), but there are other film roles I wish she had taken. Would The Eyes of Laura Mars, Bagdad Cafe, or Misery (holy shit, really?) possibly have ended up on this list if she had accepted the offers to star in them? Highly likely, but, goddamn, how fun would those movies have been if they had been Barbra Streisand movies? No disrespect to Kathy Bates—she totally owned the part of Annie Wilkes and deserved her Oscar® for it—but I would very much want to see an alternate version of Misery with Barbra in that role. I can hear the trailer narration now: “The stars of Funny Lady reunite in a film that will surprise you...”