Short Takes: ‘The Holiday Exchange’ (2024) ★ 1/2

Does anyone really care whether rich people find love? Like, has anyone kept up at night worrying—about bills, about work, about the next four years—ever spared a thought about Peter Thiel’s love life? I know I haven’t. Though, now that I’m thinking about it, is Peter Thiel even capable of love?* 

Anyway, because Christmas—or rather, because there is a dearth of LGBTQ+ holiday TV movies this year—I decided to check out The Holiday Exchange, which re-teams two of the stars from Shoulder Dance as two rich, attractive gay men who exchange houses when faced with the prospect of spending the holidays single, which, in the world of TV Christmas movies, is tantamount to a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

In Los Angeles, we have Wilde, played by Taylor Frey, who has recently broken up with his actor/screenwriter boyfriend Sean. Across the pond, Oliver, played by Rick Cosnett, a well-mannered and well-off divorce attorney, has just found out that the man he hoped to spend the holidays with has other plans that pointedly don’t include him. Fortunately, there’s an app to the rescue: Grindr mister B&B. Wilde treats himself to a holiday vacation, and rents Oliver’s cozy manor house in the fictional Brilfax. After a quick FaceTime call, Oliver decides to rent Wilde’s garish Los Angeles mansion. Wilde’s U.K. vacation is interrupted by Oliver’s movie actor cousin Henry (Daniel Garcia), who shows up needing a place to stay after the pipes at his house freeze. Oliver, on the other hand, ingratiates himself with self-help author Julius (Samer Salem) at a book signing. Low-key conflicts arise (Julius is butt-hurt when he learns Oliver is a divorce attorney; Wilde jumps to conclusions when he sees Henry at a pub with another man), but love, Christmas, etcetera.

I promised myself going in that I would give The Holiday Exchange a chance, even though it is directed by Jake Helgren. There’s a scene early on, when Wilde’s ex Sean (Kyle Dean Massey) shows up to discuss their breakup, that has the expected energy of holiday rom-com, as does a later scene featuring Ashley Fink as a spunky bookstore manager. But these moments are mere teaspoons of rum in a what is otherwise a full glass of egg slog. Most attempts at humor fall flat, such as Wilde being locked out of Oliver’s house after a snowstorm, wearing just a scarf and plaid boxer shorts, his motivation for going outside in the first place not readily apparent. Some actors, such as Kyle Richards (as Wilde’s overly supportive mom Lola) and Camila Banus (as Julius’s publicist/friend Naomi), deliver sit-com style performances, talking really fast and loudly, with nothing funny to say. Richards’ performance in particular leaves the impression that Lola is the type of mom who tried to bond with her son by sharing her cocaine.

The Holiday Exchange is more concerned with the rom than the com, anyway, but even there it falters. Cosnett’s Oliver is blandly charming and there is some chemistry between him and Salem, but Frey’s Wilde is spoiled and smug to the point that I was more invested in him getting punched in the face than kissed. However, this holiday lump of coal isn’t entirely Helgren’s fault. He didn’t write this fucker, his leading man Frey did. However, characters doing an ad read for mister B&B? That has Jake Helgren all over it.

*Thiel has a husband, BTW, though being married isn’t the same as being capable of love, so that question remains unanswered.

Short Takes: ‘Shoulder Dance’ (2023) ★ 1/2

The actors are given nothing and the
audience gets even less.

In writer-director Jay Arnold’s Shoulder Dance, Josh (Taylor Frey, sporting a splotchy spray tan and prominent package), a stage actor/chorus boy, and Ira (Kyle XY’s Matt Dallas), Josh’s older, uptight talent agent husband of 10 years (sure), learn their time together at their Hamptons home will be interrupted by a visit from Roger (The Flash’s Rick Cosnett), Ira’s childhood friend that he hasn’t seen since Roger moved to the U.K. 24 years ago. Josh is annoyed his and Ira’s limited time together is being intruded upon, while Ira is just agitated, though he won’t say why.

Then Roger and his model/actress girlfriend Lilly (a feisty Maggie Geha) arrive, ready to party. Josh is immediately transfixed by Lilly, the two becoming best girlfriends in less than three minutes. Roger acts like only six months have passed since he and Ira last saw each other, not two-plus decades. Ira has already warned Josh that Roger is “touchy-feely,” and girl, is he ever, though not in the way one would attribute to a straight guy. Rather than bro hugs and playful punches to the shoulder, Roger prefers cuddling. You know, like straight men do. Is there something about their past relationship Ira’s not sharing? Guess we’ll have to wait until Josh and Ira finally agree to do molly with their houseguests to find out.

Viewers might want to dose as well, if only to distract themselves from such questions as: would someone leaving the U.S. for London at age 16 really come back with a British accent? Lilly, who we learn moved from New York to the U.K. at a much younger age, would be the character who’s more likely to have a British accent, yet she sounds very much American. Also, does anyone really believe that Josh, a professional actor, whose best friend is vapid party queen Shawn (Samuel Larson), seldom even smokes pot, but his uptight boyfriend is a total pothead? Guess that’s less of a mystery than two men living fairly conservative lifestyles having a trunk full of wigs and ladies’ evening wear. (Because they’re gay? Because Josh is an actor?) However, perhaps the second biggest question viewers will be asking (How long is this thing? is the first) is: Wasn’t this movie supposed to be a comedy?

My husband wanted to watch this because he’s a Matt Dallas fan, but even his Dallas fandom failed to sustain his interest. The actors try their best to make uninteresting characters engaging, unbelievable interactions ring true, stale dialog sound witty, but Arnold’s script gives them nothing, and the audience gets even less. The movie got a couple chuckles out of us (“I just had the best pee of my life!”), but neither those sparse laughs, nor Frey, Dallas and Cosnett’s nude scenes made up for the very, very long hour-and-43-minutes spent watching Shoulder Dance. For that, the male leads would have had to take off their clothes after the opening credits and never put them on again until the end.

‘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.

Throw it Back on the ‘Gaystack’

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