Eating Out

Bad for you, but tastes so good

I'm not trying to pivot to a health blog here - I am, of course, discussing the seminal (in both senses of the word, probably) film series of campy gay sex comedy. There are five of them (far too few, in my opinion) and you should look them up for proper context (I'm never the person you should got to to get a story straight) but director Q. Allan Brocka (Boy Culture, Rick and Steve) was largely involved.

There are two things you need to know about this series of movies. 

1. They are absolutely terrible.
2. They are absolutely amazing.

I should probably go into how. Because I'm guessing the terrible designator is a bit easier to understand - they're low-budget, raunchy, gay rom-coms. So just from knowing that, you can expect a lowered level of polish in everything from filmography to writing to acting to costumes and makeup. So don't go in NOT expecting that - there are issues across the board there, and if you're a bit of a whore for perfectly executed cinema, these may not be for you.

HOWEVER, what I will say is that these movies do so much with so little. I'm probably being a little bit won over buy how they're packed with hot guys doing things to each other, and showing a fair amount of skin as they do. It veers away from porn, in that all the sex is only simulated, but it's there, and outside of sex, they don't shy away from even full-frontal male nudity.

But that's just the candy coating, because these movies do actually have a lot going on for them in terms of plot. Because they are funny - they are SO funny - and I really feel like a lot of that is carried along by the incredibly talented Rebekah Kochan.

She plays Tiffany. In the first movie, she's a shameless slut, who's mostly there for comic relief. In the second movie, she's still a shameless slut, but she doesn't want to be anymore. She drives the plot in that one a lot, and we even get a character arc for her as she finds love. Then in the third one, she's basically the architect of the entire plot, and drives the movie from start to finish.

She's sadly less of a presence in the fourth and fifth movies, where she only briefly makes an appearance as an acting coach and burying a body while on the phone with one of the main characters. (Respectively.) But she's hilarious, and just because she's the best character doesn't mean she's the only one that's well crafted and funny.

There's probably some clunky handling of certain topics in there, but I'm not the person to comment. But they do bring them up, which is pretty impressive for a movie series from over 10 years ago. There a bisexual man and transgender woman that make their appearance over the series, and they at least bring bisexual erasure and transphobia into it - although I'm not sure how gracefully they manage it.

But on the whole, I loved them. I think I probably saw the middle one, years ago, when I was given a hard drive full of gay movies from a friend, so this also links back (for me) from a time when getting to see all these gay movies (however badly made) was very liberating.

So if you're not too picky about film quality, and you'd like a couple of hours of campy, smutty fun - I highly recommend them.