This screwball comedy from 1969 has a pretty wild premise: two guys try to fake being gay just to dodge the military draft. If you watched this today, it would probably come across as super offensive, and I honestly have no clue how people felt about it back when it first hit theaters. My guess is it probably wasn't a huge hit. The humor is really broad and kind of goofy, with a lot of obvious puns that actually reminded me of those cheesy sitcoms from the 80s and 90s. It makes me wonder if this movie actually inspired some of those later shows. The story follows two best friends, Danny and Elliot, who are desperate to get out of the draft. They decide the best way out is to pretend they're in a relationship, but the Army doesn't just take their word for it and puts them under surveillance. Even though they’re both young and have girlfriends, they’re forced to move into an apartment building full of gay residents to keep up the act. It’s a total mess because they’re trying ...
Once you reach the sky, there is only downfall from there when it involves sex and drugs. We see multiple characters and their stories which eventually connect. After having. Lived a life of illicit drug use and unprotected sex in Manhattan, Dale has now moved to a small quaint town trying to keep his mind away from excitement of NYC. Mistress DaTina runs a sex and drug den. She opens up her place for gay sex and drug usage but only for as long as the guys strip down when they arrive and stay naked while there. Rob is homeless, gay and young and uses sex and drugs to find a place to sleep and he does not care who takes him in; including some really old and disgusting folks. Christian deals with loss and feels helpless. He uses drugs as a means of escape from the loneliness and hurt that he feels and all this does is make feel even lonelier and feel the hurt more intensely. These storylines come together to give us a look at addiction and sex.
The film is narrated by a character known as the writer who records the characters and their stories and the director tries to take us to the underground into the dark where sexuality and drug use come together. The big problem here, like most of Verow's films is that the man has ideas, but he has absolutely no clue on how to present those ideas in a form that is consumable and makes sense to the general audience. And it's not about the low budget production values, it's more about the narrative and storylines, always convoluted and disoriented. The subject is drugs within gay community is still quite prevalent and needs to be addressed but in a manner that would help us, nit in a way where it ends up being soft core porn. This one, like most of his other films, is again completely avoidable. (1.5/10)
Comments