Sunday, June 22, 2025
Bizarre (and Kinda' Hot) Love Triangle
Monday, February 24, 2025
Short Takes: ‘Swallowed’ (2022) ★★★
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Not to be confused with Swallow [NSFW]. |
Making Carter Smith’s Swallowed even more intriguing—for me, at least—is Smith makes his story decidedly queer. When we first meet one of its protagonists, Benjamin (Cooper Koch, recently in Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menedez Story), he’s celebrating his impending escape from his dead-end hometown in rural Canada, his joining an L.A. gay porn studio’s stable being his all-expense-paid ticket to a more exciting life. His best friend Dom (Jose Colon) thinks Ben is naïve (“Those guys are going to want all that money back, man”), but celebrates with him, nevertheless. Dom is supposedly straight, yet it’s obvious he’s not that straight. Just as obvious is Ben very much hoping tonight’s the night they take their friendship up a notch, or at the very least, Dom consents to a farewell BJ. Alas, despite pointing our minds in that direction, the movie’s title is not an oral sex reference.
On the drive home Dom takes a detour to check on his cousin, DiDi. He and Didi had worked out a deal to smuggle some drugs into the U.S, the money from which Dom was going to give to Ben as a going away present (dude, you could’ve just agreed to let Ben blow you). Except, Didi is now too stoned to act as the go-between, so Dom now must deal with her girlfriend Alice (Jena Malone), who is neither congenial nor compromising, pulling a gun when Dom balks at having to swallow condoms stuffed with product. That gun also comes in handy when Ben needs to be convinced to swallow some condoms as well.
Crossing the border into Maine is the easy part, it turns out. Complications arise when Dom attempts shitting out the contraband and discovers it’s not a drug—but its bite can induce a high. By the time Alice arrives to retrieve the product, she finds Dom catatonic and pants-less and Ben freaking the fuck out. Her boss Rich (Mark Patton) isn’t going to like this.
Though Swallowed is labeled a body horror, don’t go in expecting Cronenberg (David or Brandon) wrapped in a rainbow flag. It feels more like a homoerotic crime thriller, with the tension derived from the unpredictable situation Ben and Dom find themselves in, without any grotesque physical transformations (you can expect some blood and shit, however, as well as one prosthetic dick* that’s almost convincing). Smith has shown in his other films that he can get a lot from a limited budget, and he gets more than his money’s worth with Koch, Colon, Malone and Patton, all great in their roles. Unfortunately, Smith tacked on a silly epilogue that’s tonally at odds with everything that came before it and dismisses all Ben has gone through. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth.
*Not counted as the
movie’s full-frontal male nudity.
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Short Takes: ‘The Holiday Exchange’ (2024) ★ ½
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 of 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.
Sunday, December 1, 2024
Short Takes: ‘Shoulder Dance’ (2023) ★ ½
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The actors are given nothing and the audience gets even less. |
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 (Glee’s Samuel Larsen), seldom even smokes weed, but his uptight husband 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.
Friday, November 29, 2024
‘I Don’t Understand…This Free Love’
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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).
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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.”
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Huh? |
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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.
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Jon Iverson’s au naturale nature walk. |
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Cyrus (Jon Iverson) getting wet for Ephraim. |
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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.”
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Cyrus explains free love to Ephraim. |
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Cyrus silences Ephraim’s questions about polyamory. |
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.
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Artsy. |
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Better! Also, uncomfortable! Seriously, on the rocks? Ouch. |
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Jon Evans as Montgomery, strategically posed. |
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Tree fucker. |
A Landmark in Queer Cinema. Also, Kinda’ Boring.
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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 is prominently featured in the opening credits as the author of the source novel). 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.
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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.
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Asses up! |
*FUN FACT: Joe Tiffenbach went on to direct gay porn movies throughout the 1980s before his death in 1992.
Sunday, November 3, 2024
The Horrors of Tacky Jewelry
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.
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Vintage newspaper ad via Dirty Looks. |
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Lovers Jim (Steve Spahn, left) and John (Jeff Fuller) begin their second (or third) year together. |
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A traditional gay anniversary gift. |
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The curse of bad taste. |
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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.
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Caught. |
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Foreshadowing. |
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An unhappy ending. |
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.
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Not even an exorcist can help: Panama attempts to cast out Jim’s demon while John and a scruffy Good Samaritan look on. |
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John hopes using the anniversary KY will vanquish Jim’s medallion 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!
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Possibly the former lady of the house. |
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Stoned face. |
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.
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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.
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The fine line between erotic asphyxia and murder is about to be crossed. |
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Murder is wrong, but the hair of Stoned Elijah’s visitor is a crime. |
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.
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Marriage. |
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Getting ready for his big night. |
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Let’s get this party started. |
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A sensual moment before breaking out the Crisco. |
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Weeeeee! |
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Another relationship saved by group sex and fisting. |
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