HARD CORE VIDEO
by Jack Fritscher
TURNED ON
A surreal male sex fantasy worthy of Fellini. Surprisingly, AL PARKER isn’t your ordinary porn cocksucker who deepthroats dick, leaving you watching the back of a bobbing head. Parker, expertly makes camera-sensitive love featuring UNCUT MEAT. Turned On as a title is an unfortunate nothing and not likely to entice a prospective viewer’s attention to this good film. Despite its almost unforgiveable opening sex scene where the tight-bellied Parker inexplicably fucks a silly blond silly, the rest of the video happily features MANSEX. The film has more fetish awareness and outright MALE BODY WORSHIP than any film to date. It’s much more than a suck/fuck film. It remains interesting to watch even after you’ve cum. There are highly stylized sequences that work: THE ULTIMATE JOCKSTRAP line-up of nearly twenty men wearing only jocks, standing stock still, with their bulges all presented at Parker’s hungry face level; the fucker of a swarthy Italian bridegroom in his formal wedding clothes; the lumberjack; the uncut cowboy in real, worn western chaps and vest. The soundtrack is non-intrusive: that means it’s not burdened with the disco that seems to be on every soundtrack currently. The original music is by FORBIDDEN OVERTURE. The incredible SELFSUCK of satyr, SCOTT TAYLOR, is the kind of lewd, pagan sequence that C.B. DeMille always wanted. Check out the look on this goatfooted, Dionysian Pan’s face as he shoves his huge balls and bigger dick up his own ass, and then cums in his own mouth. (This beats Real People and The New You Asked For It all to shit!) The blond, moustached, lithe SKY DAWSON is cast opposite the dark bearded Al Parker with the same kind of heat as the two men in Gallipoli. Good use of erotic faces. A film of excellent parts, Turned On’s weird twist of an ending is a let-down dramatically. Filmed at The Sanctuary, The Hayloft, and MAC’s Baths, LA and Hollywood.
CENTURIONS OF ROME
If MGM produced expensive male erotic epics, Centurions would put the uproar in Leo. Made with $200,000 from the Brinks’ Robbery, the film is expensive and looks it. The money went up on the screen and not up the producer’s nose! As much SM and BONDAGE as we’re likely to get this season. Well written. Plot good. Acting good. Speaking parts not Richard Burton, but not bad. Even the fatuous Caligula comes off well. Some whipping, lots of sucking and forced fucking. Dramatic lighting and angle show off hero GEORGE PAYNE’s Steve-Reeves face. Interesting SOFTCORE FISTING. A good, episodic love story and fantasy film featuring one of the best last-reel movie lines ever: “Only two fingers, Captain?”
A NIGHT AT HALSTED’S
This dreadful rip-off is a waste of HANK DITMAR’S hunky talents. Halsted’s extended promo for Halsted’s defunct Bar/Bath is a bore, unless you’re in your 40’s, trying to be an overgrown/ with-it punk, and like to watch characterless Twinkies suck each other off. This videotape, with its beguiling picture-package, constitutes a defamation of his own reputation by a director who exploits his name in the title without ever using his at-least-once considerable cinematic talent. Fred Halsted has a great face; he should make a movie about it sometime. This video was made for cash; it is not the porn born of lust. Video rentals, courtesy of, and available at, CAPTAIN VIDEO, corner of Market and Castro, 2358 Market. 415/552-0501. Turned On photos courtesy of Le Salon Video Exchange, 1112 Polk Street, SF 94103. 415/474-1184.
California Action Guide: Vol. 1 No 3 Sep 1982