"Sorry, membership's full."
directed by: Joe Gage (1982)
Starring: Roy Garrett, Casey Donovan, Richard Locke, Clay Russell, Clinton Coe, Bud Wallace, John Steele, Richard West, and of course, The Gage Men.
My all-time favorite gay porno movie, I watched Heatstroke last Thursday night, as well as earlier today. I was gonna post that great Casey Donovan orgy/fantasy sequence with the hot, filthy monologue, but I decided to go with this scene instead. If you've been taking notes, you'll remember that in both El Paso Wrecking Corp. and L.A. Tool & Die, there's a brief scene where one of the lead character's takes on a homophobe (Halsted throws one through a window; Locke engages in a playful fist fight). In each of those, a straight guy is in a gay bar, but feels quite free to put down the queers around him. In Heatstroke, the setting is again a "gay space" but the problem isn't a str8 man, but rather, the door policy at a sex club. You know, "no fats, no fems," etc. I think it's a great sequence, with cute lil' Bob Shane as the clerk who won't let over-the-hill John Steele into the club. Rejected and dejected, Steele slowly leaves, but is joined by another rejectee, Bud Wallace (too preppy). A brief commerseration leads to, of course, hot sex! What grabs me is that not only does Gage throw in the social commentary on the emerging gay scene of the early 80's, but unlike some of his other sequences, this one isn't just a couple of guys helping each other get off, this one has real passion, including a good deal of kissing that is sometimes missing from other scenes (usually related to the specifics of the sex dynamics of the particular scene). Maybe the men are free to kiss as it's quite clear from the setting that both are gay; maybe each needs to "prove" how hot he is, to himself or his partner; or maybe the common bond of not fitting in, which you'd hope wouldn't be the case at a gay club, allows them to let loose; or maybe the two actors just were really attracted to each other, and the director was smart enough to take advantage of that - in any case, it works for me.
There's a lot more about this film that I love, like the scene where Richard Locke meets his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, Clay Russell. Clay tries to convince Richard to have sex, which of course he does, but not before Richard remarks: "Well, I've never done anything like that before." Of course it's so funny to hear him say that, because of course by then, in 1982, it's become such a cliche' in gay porn; but it's also a hoot because it's RICHARD FUCKIN' LOCKE, star of Gage's 3 previous gay porno films (yes, Richard, you've done it numerous times before, and we loved you everytime!), not to mention that one of those times involved him having sex with, yes, Clay Russell (who can forget the hot scene in the desert in El Paso while Fred Halsted gets it on with the gas station attendant)!