Throwback Thursday: Safe

Restrained but emotionally involving, this harrowing tale of a woman who becomes physically allergic to the environment doubles as an AIDS allegory. Safe, an indie classic from Todd Haynes, was greatly misunderstood back in 1995, when it was first released. Over the years, it has become a critically-acclaimed cult classic and has garnered a reputation as a subversive stand-out of the New Queer Cinema movement.

 

Safe © Criterion Collection

Safe © Criterion Collection

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Buddies © Vinegar Syndrome

Throwback Thursday: Buddies

David (David Schachter), a naive graduate student, has volunteered to work as a ‘buddy’ for people dying of AIDS. Assigned to the intensely political Robert (Geoff Edholm), a lifelong activist whose friends and family have abandoned him following his diagnosis, the two men, each with notably different world views, soon discover common bonds, as David’s inner activist awakens and Robert’s need for emotional release is fulfilled.

Buddies © Vinegar Syndrome

Buddies © Vinegar Syndrome

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Midnight Cowboy © The Criterion Collection

Throwback Thursday: Midnight Cowboy

One of the British New Wave’s most versatile directors, John Schlesinger came to New York in the late 1960s to make Midnight Cowboy, a picaresque story of friendship that captured a city in crisis and sparked a new era of Hollywood movies.

 

Jon Voight delivers a career-making performance as Joe Buck, a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy city women. He finds a companion in Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida, played by Dustin Hoffman in a radical departure from his breakthrough in The Graduate.

 

Midnight Cowboy © The Criterion Collection

Midnight Cowboy © The Criterion Collection

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Edward II © Film Movement

Throwback Thursday: Edward II

Back in 1991, Christopher Marlowe‘s notorious 16th century play was radically adapted into this gay cinema masterpiece by the late, great queer iconoclast Derek Jarman – and it’s easily one of his most powerful films.

 

Using anachronistic imagery, modern dress, gay activists battling riot police and Annie Lennox singing Cole Porter, the story of Britain’s only openly gay monarch and the persecution he suffered is given a contemporary resonance by Jarman, paralleling the injustice with prevailing modern-day homophobia.

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Female Trouble © The Criterion Collection

Throwback Thursday: Female Trouble

“Where do these people come from? Where do they go when the sun goes down? Isn’t there a law of something?” -Rex Reed

 

Glamour has never been more grotesque than in Female Trouble, John Waters‘ 1974 classic, dubbed at the time “a new high in low taste.” The film injects old-school Hollywood melodrama with anarchic decadence. Divine, Waters’ larger-than-life muse, engulfs the screen with charisma as Dawn Davenport, the living embodiment of the film’s lurid mantra, “Crime is beauty,” who progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting ‘cha-cha heels’ for Christmas to a fame monster whose ego-maniacal impulses land her in the electric chair.

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Throwback Thursday: Rock Hudson’s Home Movies

Although it’s attitudes and perspective are somewhat dated, this strange pseudo-doc is often hilarious, highly original and still pretty convincing.

 

Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, originally released in 1992, offers up a revisionist interpretation of Rock Hudson’s film career and life – and seeks to discover the “real” Hudson through his “reel” persona. Was this Hollywood hunk completely out of touch with his secreted sexuality, or did he, throughout his entire career, offer subtle – or not so subtle – hints at his homosexuality?

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To Play or To Die © Water Bearer Films

Throwback Thursday: To Play or To Die

A highly obscure 48-minute short film from the Netherlands, released way back in 1990, To Play or to Die, based on a story by Anna Blaman and directed by Frank Krom, a former assistant to Paul Verhoeven who made his own cinematic debut here, is a still a powerful psychological drama, but feels a bit taboo when viewed through a modern lens.

 

The film follows Kees (Geert Hunaerts), an introverted young boy who attends an all-male Dutch school where powerful bullies and sadomasochistic games are the stock in trade. Kees is fascinated by the extraordinarily handsome young Charel (Tjebbo Gerritsma), ringleader of the tormentors. Seeking to turn the tables and stem his victimization, Kees invites Charel back to his house while his parents are away. His plan is to take revenge… but Charel gets the upper hand. So begins a difficult and painful pas de deux with surprising results.

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Throwback Thursday: The Consequence

Hollywood action director Wolfgang Petersen (the man behind Enemy Mine, Troy, Outbreak, Air Force One, In the Line of Fire, The NeverEnding Story, The Perfect Storm, Das Boot and more) made this surprisingly tender, though highly controversial prison-set gay German romance way back in 1977.

 

Jurgen Prochnow stars as Martin, who is sent to prison for the seduction of a minor. There, he meets and is immediately drawn to Thomas (Ernst Hannawald), the teenage son of one of the guards. After Martin’s release, the boy runs away from home to live with him. And despite threats from the boy’s father and the authorities, their love flourishes as the two are determined to live their life together – unprepared for the wrath triggered by their actions.

 

The Consequence (c) Water Bearer Films

The Consequence (c) Water Bearer Films

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Fogi is a Bastard (c) Water Bearer Films

Throwback Thursday: Fogi is a Bastard

A very pretty sixteen year-old boy falls in love with a dangerously screwed-up rock-n-roller in this stunning Swiss film from 1998. Though it’s complicated, to say the least, Fogi is a Bastard contained some of the most tender sex scenes we had ever seen in a gay film up to that point in time. The film takes the audience on a turbulent ride through two young men’s exciting but troubled relationship.

 

Clean-cut 16-year-old Beni (Vincent Branchet) is a Zurich high school student just itching for an alternative life. He follows the rock band “The Minks” around and falls madly in love with Fogi (Frédéric Andrau), the dangerously attractive and quite gay lead singer. With looks suggesting a thuggish Keanu Reeves, the 26-year-old Fogi surprisingly takes to the cute, but coltish youth. He hires him as a roadie and the two begin a wild sexual attraction that hardens into love and devotion for Beni but wears off for the soon bored Fogi.

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