Movie Review	Movie Reviews Archive

Trash
Directed by Paul Morrissey
Starring Joe Dallesandro, Holly Woodlawn, Geri Miller, Andrea Feldman, John Putnam
How to order The Uninvited
Novel by Dorothy McCardle
Starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussy, Gail Russell, Cornelia Otis Skinner
How to order Portrait of Jason
Directed by Shirley Clark
Featuring Jason Holiday
How to order Homicidal
Directed by William Castle
Starring Wolfe Barzell, Patricia Breslin, Teri Brooks, Alan Bunce, Glenn Corbett
How to order A Very Natural Thing
Directed by Christopher Larkin
Starring Robert McLane, Curt Gareth, Bo White, Anthony McKay (II), Marilyn Meyers
How to order

Rather then run off to theaters for your gay movie fix this month, here are five not-very-famous and not-frequently-seen gay and lesbian classics -- well, if not, they should be classics -- that you can Netflix into your home and watch instead of the endless presidential campaign coverage.

Who knew that lesbian ghosts were so popular in the 1940s? Lewis Allen's 1944 spectral thriller The Uninvited -- based on the popular 1942 novel by Dorothy McCardle -- is about an odd American brother and sister (played by Ray Milland and Ruth Hussy) who buy a house on the English seacoast and discover it is haunted by a lesbian ghosts -- well, one lesbian ghost and another ghost. The ghosts are trying to kill Stellar Meredith (Gail Russell), a local village girl. Meanwhile Miss Holloway (the fabulously dykey Cornelia Otis Skinner), the evil head of the local mental sanitarium, also seems intent on harming young Steller as well. The Uninvited is a prime example of how popular Freudian discourse about homosexuality was so pervasive that it even appeared in popular Hollywood movies.

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William Castle's Homicidal -- or as many of the characters in the film pronounce it "Homocidal" -- is a nifty 1961 thriller that is obviously a rip-off of Hitchcock's great 1960 Psycho, but smart and witty enough to be in a class by itself. Emily (Jean Arliss) is a pretty blonde nurse who seems to be homicidally bent on killing any number of people, probably with the large surgical knife she keeps sharpening. Homicidal was filmed on the cheap -- never let it be said that Castle, whose films House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler helped establish Vincent Price as a queer movie icon, spent much money on his incredibly popular drive-in hits. Still, Homicidal is psychologically perceptive and much queerer than most anything you'll see on screens today.

Shirley Clark was a popular avant-garde film maker of the 1950s and 1960s, one of the few women to break into the field. Her 1967 Portrait of Jason, is a riveting documentary of Jason Holiday (the stage name of Aaron Payne), a black gay man who is simply interviewed for nearly 90 minutes. The tensions rise as he gets drunker and drunker, more out of control, and -- baited by the director and her boyfriend -- more and more self-disclosing. Watching Portrait of Jason is not easy -- much of it seems to be an exercise in cruelty as Clarke keeps prodding him -- but it is always fascinating. This new DVD version of the film has several additional features that are well worth watching.

Before John Waters became famous with Pink Flamingos (and before John Waters betrayed his roots and went the way of the Broadway musical) there was Paul Morrissey, who was an off-shoot of Andy Warhol's Factory days, and who made a few now-classic, even good, films. Recently released on DVD Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), and Heat (1972) form a trilogy of sorts, but only Trash really stands up as a completely realized semi-gonzo-masterpiece. Holly Woodlawn and Joe Dellesandro are a Lower East Side couple who, well, collect trash. The film is continually vibrant with wit -- often unintended -- and even tenderness. Woodlawn, obviously a drag queen playing a woman, is particularly moving, and Dellesandro is a magnificent, beautiful drug-ruined wreck.

Christopher Larkin's 1974 A Very Natural Thing was one of the first independent films produced after the Stonewall riots. A simple and not-so-simple story of a man trying to find a boyfriend, this work was a revelation to queer moviegoers. Even with its problems, the film works as a truthful, elegant, and naively right story of a man coming to terms with himself in the early years after the gay movement has changed the world. The acting is just okay, but the film still carries the sweet power it had more than 30 years ago. Newly released on DVD (for the first time) A Very Natural Thing is not simply a product of its time, but a lovely reminder that despite the avalanche of more sophisticated, and often junky, queer-themed films these days, sometimes there is so little worth watching that returning to the roots of independent queer cinema is still often the best way to enjoy gay movies.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com