Larkin, Christopher

1974

Jarman, Derek

1973

"Art of Mirrors . . . was a breakthrough film for Jarman. In it are the themes and images that reoccur throughout his work. The theatrical positioning of characters . . . , the mesmerized cinema of gestures to his early painting . . ." —Michael O'Pray

Dallas,

1972

Nelson, Mervyn

1971

Some of My Best Friends Are . . . is a rare opportunity to experience the plight of pre-Stonewall gay culture. It is an experience both infuriating and fascinating. Set in a New York gay bar on Christmas Eve, Some of My Best Friends Are . . . is a Grand Hotel filled with a generation of lost souls. The oppression of gay people by the very institutions that once offered them a kind of temporary safety is the subtext of the film. Yet it remains only a subtext. The overt substance of the piece degenerates into a kind of orgy of melodramatic self-pity in which homosexuals are pathetic creatures exploited by each other, as well as by their surroundings. Originally titled The Bar and cast as a kind of family affair from a group of well-known New York actors, Some of My Best Friends Are . . . contains a group of the most ghoulish and exaggerated performances ever put on screen. Rue McClanahan ("Golden Girls") plays Lita Joyce, a bitchy fag hag. The late Candy Darling weighs in with a terrific portrait of a lonely transvestite who dreams of being a real woman. Gary Sandy ("WKRP in Cinncinnati") is the bisexual hustler who discovers Candy's secret. Some of My Best Friends Are . . . is not great movie-making and it will drive post-Stonewall gays crazy with its bleak and relentless self-loathing, but it's eminently worthwhile as a history lesson, as well as classic camp.

1971

Hart, Harvey

1971

John Herbert's famous stage play about the horrors of prison life, transformed into a sexually explicit movie about "a country club for sadomasochistic homosexuals," according to Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet. It's a tough, tragic drama involving violence, sex roles, and epic bitchiness. The film was made under difficult conditions: the actors suffered in subzero temperatures on location in a real, disused Quebec prison, and first director Jules Schwerin was replaced by Harvey Hart. "Lester Persky, the producer, wanted only a kind of sex fantasy," says Schwerin, "He wanted a great deal of nudity and was interested only in the exploitation element." The movie is saved from its exploitative tendencies by the performance of Michael Greer, fresh from The Gay Deceivers. Greer stars as the prison's resident outrageous drag queen, a role he had also occupied in more than 400 performances of the Sal Mineo stage production.

Morrissey, Paul

1970

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Miami, Harold Ajzenberg ran away at 15 to the excitement of New York, where he was quickly transformed into Holly Woodlawn ("Holly" after Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany’s; "Woodlawn" for the famous cemetery). When Paul Morrissey cast Holly in Trash, he’d never met him. Holly had claimed to be one of Warhol’s Superstars, and Morrissey was intrigued by this bald-faced lie. So Morrissey cast Holly sight unseen, working on a hunch that Holly would be perfect as a drug addict who lied, stole and cheated to get something out of life. The hunch was right on – as Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, "Trash is alive. Holly Woodlawn, especially, is something to behold, a comic book Mother Courage who fancies herself as Marlene Dietrich but sounds more often like Phil Silvers." We begin our tribute to Holly with the legendary Broken Goddess. Holly floats through the film, painfully depicting a desperate woman in the style of the great silent film stars.

1970

Since 1945, the Athletic Model Guild has been the seminal purveyor of gay-boy beefcake and softcore homoeroticism…This charming feature takes us deep within the bowels of AMG to meet an endless myriad of naked young men, a few shady characters and AMG founder and chief pervert, BOB MIZER.

Kessler, Bruce

1969

Yes, Virginia, there were other gay-themed films of the ‘60s besides Boys in the Band—and The Gay Deceivers is the best of them. The plot's simple: two straight all-American boys play sissy to dodge the draft; they move into a swishy all-gay L.A. apartment complex, and a comedy of misunderstanding ensues. The Gay Deceivers is like Love, American Style on drugs; it's lurid, weird, and unintentionally funny. What makes the movie really treasurable, however, is Michael Greer (who went on to feature as another queen in Fortune in Men's Eyes); his swishes and turns were such a hit with audiences that the distributor switched ad campaigns after a week's release, billing him as the star.

Straiton, John

1968

In 1968, John Straiton took the published works of Muybridge and created from them a fascinating and hilarious film. A tribute to the serious maker of the first nudie before the invention of movies