BijouBlog

By Josh Eliot

Can we find a “gay” amongst any of our friend groups who didn’t absolutely love Kathy Bates' performance in Misery? I remember it happening in real time as her Annie Wilkes character struck a chord with America and beyond. I would venture to say that even to this day, 36 years later, whenever I see Kathy Bates' name in a movie I get a certain tingle, drawing my thoughts back to seeing Misery for the first time. That’s an impression she made! As a young director coming into my own in the 1990s, I can easily admit that some of the slightly psychotic characters of the era, like Glenn Close’s Alex Forest in Fatal Attraction, Rebecca De Mornay’s Peyton Flanders in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Kathleen Turner in John Water’s Serial Mom really made going to the movies a lot of fun. I don’t know why I, along with half of America, tend to flock to “stalker themed” movies, knowing full well that there will be a crazy psycho causing chaos, but something inside me just loves to watch how the whole mess plays out.

It’s no secret that my love of the psycho-sexual genre played a big role in my career while making movies for Catalina Video. The trick was to make the stories work seamlessly with the sexual encounters, and have the characters be believable. There has always been a stigma associated with the acting abilities of the gay adult film actors, and I would sometimes pull my hair out trying to get them to show emotion, but the majority I worked with really pulled off their characters, especially the psychotic, off-the-wall roles. Rob Cryston in Single White Male won best actor, Andy Hunter in His Terrible Twin played a good and evil version of himself. Even a relatively unknown actor, Eric Marx, played his psychotic role in Sexual Suspect so precisely that I didn’t get in too much trouble for making the movie in the first place. In fact, it opened the door in my producer’s eyes to let me do more movies with an edge. The biggest surprise for me was with Ty Fox, who looks like a million bucks, but when it came to acting he could never really pull it off. That was until I wrote and shot him in Ty Me Up! based on the Pedro Almodovar classic Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! He played a character fresh out of the asylum who stalks and kidnaps his favorite adult film star! I was very proud of his work in that movie. Anyone who knows me is familiar with my love affair – mentally – regarding Sharon Kane, and the many movies she’s worked in for me with all kinds of quirky, and one might say psychotic, characters. Her role as Joan in Cracked comes to mind, where she plays the ax-wielding killer, based on Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket and the Patty Duke movie You’ll Like My Mother. I may have made “off-the-wall, crazy-themed” movies a big part of my career, but I certainly wasn’t the first.

BijouWorld.com has a collection of iconic, pioneering directors who shot some really great films with a psychotic edge. Films that, in addition making a certain body part stand at attention, also make the hairs on your neck rise up. For example, Jack Wrangler’s partner in Killing Me Softly (1979) wasn’t just a rough trade top, he also dabbled in a little serial killing, but Jack put a stop to that in the end. The director of Killing Me Softly, Francis Ellie, also came out with The Death of Scorpio (1979), where the premise was somewhat different but the ending was remarkably the same! Shawn Gregory plays a scorned lover who seeks revenge on his ex and his ex’s “playthings,” one of them being the model Scorpio. Gregory invites the playthings over to pose for him, which then turns into full on sex with, let’s say, a not-so-happy ending for them. Gregory’s ex, poised to be the final victim, figures out what is going on and gets bitter Shawn Gregory to drink the poison-filled glass of sparkling wine by switching glasses. A much earlier movie from director Spencer Logan called Boynapped (1975) has a character obsessed with Michael Hardwick’s butch blond jock character, but to up the ante there’s also a couple of kidnapping psychopaths thrown into the mix. Icon straight adult performer Jamie Gillis (aka James Rugman for his boy/boy movies) and singer Dennis Parker (aka Wade Nichols for his adult film work) kidnap the blond stud and do all kinds of crazy things to him! It’s raw, wild and makes the viewer a little bit squeamish. Exactly what we look for in these mainstream or adult psycho-sexual works of art! Wade Nichols aka Dennis Parker released an album for Casablanca Records entitled Like An Eagle (1979), which was produced by the Village People's producer/creator. He had a mainstream career directly coincided with his adult film career. His outstanding good looks afforded him major roles in mostly straight adult movies like Barbara Broadcast (1977), Maraschino Cherry (1977) and Blonde Ambition (1981).

Currently celebrating its 45th Anniversary, and featuring an obsessed, stalker-ish lead character of its own, is the super big budget George Payne, Eric Ryan, Scorpio movie Centurians of Rome (1981). Eric Ryan plays the role of the obsessed, neurotic-erotic Supreme Commander with power and fury. He basically stalks the poor, and not so innocent, Scorpio and gets his psycho oversexed guard dogs to take out their frustrations on George Payne. But who wouldn’t turn into a rabid oversexed dog around George Payne? When done well, psycho-sexual can really work with the eroticism of a sex film and not against it.

Flash forward to modern day, as we look at a mainstream series that really blew me away: Baby Reindeer, written and directed by Richard Gadd. In the series, Richard’s character is the victim of a stalker named Margaret, played by actress Jessica Gunning. Gunning plays her character so well that she earned a Prime Time Emmy, Golden Globe Award, a Critic’s Choice Award, British Academy Television Award and European Actor Award. In addition, writer and lead actor Richard Gadd won a ton of awards as well for acting and writing including a Prime Time Emmy and Golden Globe Award for Best Limited Anthology Series. His acting career started modestly with a stint in Season 1, Episode 4 of Scot Squad in 2014. Ten guest and recurring roles later, he completed Baby Reindeer, which was based on his “one-man dark comedy show.” That’s right, he does comedy, as well, even receiving an Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Comedy Show in 2016 for Monkey See Monkey Do. Well, guess what? He’s back and with a vengeance in Half Man, a six-part British television series that premiered on HBO on April 23rd and BBC One April 24th. Homoerotic as fuck, with tension that is always present, this show is frequently over-the-top shocking. Everything we could ever love in a series or movie while taking the stalker theme to where it has never gone before. Gadd brilliantly wrote and developed these characters to perfection, and I honestly have never seen an LGBTQ+ movie or series with this depth of obsession mixed with fear and eroticism . At just 37 years of age, Gadd and co-star Jamie Bell both should get nominations, as well as their younger selves played by Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robertson. Jamie Bell won a BAFTA for his lead role in Billy Elliot (2000), which launched his career. Half Man serves up a super-dark premise with a crazier than crazy lead character that, in some ways, is totally endearing simply by the way he stares at his victim, who honestly is just as obsessed with his stalker.

Like Jessica Walter as “Evelyn” in Play Misty For Me, Gadd as Rueban and Bell as Niall are both a little batshit crazy, which makes the series extremely watchable! There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that if this series came out 20 years ago, before I retired from the adult industry, I would be writing the parody triple X version of it right now and thinking up my pitch as to how I could propose the idea to the GM at Catalina. Not that you asked for it, but I am putting Half Man on your LGBTQ+ must-watch-list. It’s a frighteningly good time!

Watch these original trailers by Josh Eliot!
Centurians of Rome 45th Anniversary Tribute Trailer
Combo Teaser: Death of Scorpio / Boynapped / Killing Me Softly
Single White Male
Sexual Suspect
Ty Me Up!
Cracked

And catch the Bijou Classics mentioned here on DVD & on our Video on Demand site:
Centurians of Rome (DVD | Streaming)
Killing Me Softly (DVD | Streaming)
Death of Scorpio (DVD | Streaming)
Boynapped (DVD | Streaming)

Bio of Josh Eliot:

At the age of 25 in 1987, Josh Eliot was hired by Catalina Video by John Travis (Brentwood Video) and Scott Masters (Nova Video). Travis trained Eliot on his style of videography and mentored him on the art of directing. Josh directed his first movie, Runaways, in 1987. By 2009 when Josh parted ways with Catalina Video, he'd produced and directed hundreds of features and won numerous awards for Best Screenplay, Videography, Editing, and Directing. He was entered into the GayVN Hall of fame in 2002.

By M. Webster

In 2019, Robert Alvarez, co-founder and editor of the groundbreaking and influential early gay porn studio and distribution company, Hand in Hand Films, kindly took the time to do a phone interview with Bijou.

Along with his partner Jack Deveau, as well as Jaap Penraat, and, later, Kees Chapman, Alvarez co-founded and was at the helm of Hand in Hand Films. Formed in 1972, a mere few years after more permissive legislation in the U.S. began allowing for the exhibition of hardcore films, the studio undertook ambitious and elaborate cinematic productions, expanding the ideas of what a pornographic film could be, and constructing their ideas into a large catalog of outstanding and entertaining narrative features. They additionally became an early distributor of the work of a number of other gay adult filmmakers, as well as their own product. A highly collaborative enterprise, Hand in Hand's films combine the creative influences of all of their participants. They continued making films until 1982 and distributing until 1988.

Alvarez, a skilled editor with a background in dance and experimental and documentary film, elevated Hand in Hand's output with his technical polish and creative flair, helping to create the distinct style and high quality level of the studio's output. From character dramas, to comedies, to outrageous psychedelic and horror films, his work on Hand in Hand's productions covered a range of tones and genres, but maintained Hand in Hand's cinematic quality and particular sensibility. With some of the studio's wilder and more avant-garde films and sequences, Bob applied complex and experimental editing and post-production effects, leading critics to frequently praise the “Alvarez effects” that enhanced scenes and often created some of the movies' best moments.

In the conversation that follows, Bob discusses his artistic background and influences, Hand in Hand's formation, his relationship with Jack Deveau, his editing style, the studio's philosophy, and more.

Bijou: I am curious about some of your filmmaking influences and your experimental film background.

Alvarez: Well, I’ve always loved movies. And, in addition to that – this goes back to 1958, maybe – I started going to see some experimental films that were being shown in a little storefront place, and I got to know about Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopoulos, for whom I worked. Not even worked – I assisted [Markopoulos], is more like it. And then I ended up being in one of his films. And then there was Warhol, but Warhol didn’t really influence me that much. I wasn't a great fan of his movies, but I did follow certain ones. Chelsea Girls is one of his early ones that I more or less liked, because it was so outrageous. The most influential [experimental filmmakers] for me were the ones that I just mentioned.

In addition to that, one of the first things that I came to New York to do was to become a dancer, because I started studying in Florida when I was about 18 or 19 and decided that New York was the only place that would be smart for me to go to. So I moved here and I kept studying dance and going to auditions, and so forth. After a while, I wound up doing Summer Stock and then a touring company. I did it ‘til I was about twenty-five and then I just decided that I should not continue to pursue it, that I should do something else. And, of course, the thing that came up in my mind first was film. I worked for [the animator] Francis Lee while I was doing the experimental film part of my life. He worked with this thing called photo animation. And he also made some experimental films, as well as regular ones.

I started getting more into film and wound up working for another animation man who did commercials for NBC, and then from that I went onto NBC and became assistant editor to the supervising editor there, and after that I got my first editing job. And, in between, I did some other stuff and wound up doing the documentaries [Woodstock, An American Family] and working freelance for mostly – it was Channel 13; it’s now PBS - until 1971 or ‘72.

It was my partner who I convinced we should get into the business of making movies, which is a story in itself, but, anyway, we turned out our first film, which was Left-Handed, and it was very unlike any other gay films that I’d ever seen. I became more and more interested in how far we could push the envelope, you know. Wakefield Poole, a pretty good friend of mine, made Boys in the Sand prior to this and that was a big success. And so we decided we would do ours, and that’s when we did Left-Handed. And ours was quite different, of course. We tried to take it from a different gay slant than just porno, give it some kind of a plot and characters and motivations, and so forth, as well as some editing that I did that I think was somewhat experimental.

Bijou: Had you edited any pieces that were that experimental at that point in time, or were you kind of getting to develop some of those techniques in your editing style on Left-Handed?

Alvarez: I actually was influenced by… I never got over being a dancer, and I was interested in dance and choreography, and so forth. When I started editing, I began to feel that there were a lot of similarities in certain aspects of editing to choreographing, and became a real fan of Bob Fosse, among others. So I used a lot of their techniques, but I also used some other techniques that I learned back when I was seeing experimental films, that involved quick cutting and a lot of - especially in Markopoulos - a lot of very extended dissolves, and things, that were quite beautiful. And I used those things, myself, as well as my sense of rhythm and cutting to music, which I loved to do, because that really gave it movement; some emphasis, depending on the music that we used. And we had original music for Left-Handed that came from a friend of ours, a guy that was a sound mixer, who had a small band. He composed some music for us.

Bijou: Yes, those are wonderful pieces.

Alvarez: Anyway, I really enjoyed it, because I was doing it like I wanted to do it, and I was given a free hand to do whatever I did. So that more or less gives you an idea of how I got started, and where.

Bijou: I didn’t realize you came from a dance background, also. I know some other people involved [in making gay porn in '70s NYC] were from that background. Did you get connected to anybody through the realm of dance that wound up working with you?

Alvarez: Well, I had known Wakefield slightly back in Florida, because he was in a ballet company and I was in a different one. We met at some kind of convention. We got to know each other and we were sort of, not buddies, but… We were in two different locations in Florida. But when I came to New York, I saw that he was dancing, and, also, he did some choreography. So I got to know him pretty well.

Bijou: Do some of the people involved in Ballet Down the Highway come from those connections?

Alvarez: They did, but they weren’t friends or anything. They were people that we cast, who were dancers, to be in the ballet scene, as well as the lead in the movie, who was a Dutch young man [Henk Van Dijk] who came with a choreographer that we got to know from the Netherlands ballet, and became rather close friends with after this lover of his appeared in our film. Anyway, we got this young man, who was studying dance, and he was not a great dancer, but through editing and so forth, I made him look better. (laughs) You know?

Bijou: (laughs) It does look good.

Alvarez: He always remarked on that, you know, how I made it look like he could really dance. Other than that, the other people that were supposedly in this company he was dancing for were cast from, I guess, one of our casting calls. We put out casting calls for some of our films, like in Show Business [the newspaper].

Bijou: Is that how you found most of your performers - casting calls? I noticed, with Hand in Hand's films, there’s some crossover between people you have in the crew and the cast, and some people that I don’t see in any other [adult] films. I was curious where the Left-Handed cast came from or if you knew some of them from social circles, as well.

Alvarez: The Left-Handed cast, I’m not sure, because I wasn’t involved in the casting, directly. That was Jack Deveau, who was, of course, my partner, and the guy who was primarily the producer/director - you know, the whole shebang. He used to put out casting calls. And, I think, we knew the guy who played the lead. We knew both of them. And so they agreed to be in it. And then we had an orgy scene at the end that was a lot of other people that we weren’t particularly friends with but somehow got to be in this, our first film. And I’m not sure whether they were cast directly, or they were cast through friends, or something. But that’s more or less how that happened.

Bijou: How did you and Jack meet? I don't think I know that.

Alvarez: Oh… That’s a kind of a story in itself. We met several years before. I met him, actually, at a performance of an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti called The Saint of Bleecker Street. It was written up in the papers as being a really good production, and blah blah blah. I had a friend who wanted to be an opera singer, and I think he told me about it and said, “Do you want to go see it?” And I said, “Yes. I definitely want to go see it.” Because I knew who Gian Carlo Menotti was and I’d heard some of his other work and always liked it. But anyway, I went to that and, during intermission, this young man came up to me, you know? And we started talking, and so on, and so on, and so forth. And I had a feeling that we were… we were evaluating each other. (laughs) Also, it turns out that his mother was part of the orchestra. She played the viola. During that intermission, she came out, and he said, “Tell me your name really quick, because there comes my mother and I want to introduce you.” (laughs) So we met and… She’s a wonderful lady. Just a wonderful, wonderful person. Anyway, I immediately got interested in knowing more about him. He invited me to go out with him after the opera, which I did. And that was the beginning, you know? And, little by little, we became more and more involved until we decided to live together. It was good. We had a sort of an open relationship - not completely open, but rather. And so there were a lot of other sexual experiences that I had that were not with him, but were influenced by him. I’ll put it that way. (laughs) He was very interested in people that he’d meet off the street who were either hustling, trying to make a little money, or sailors, you know. He had a very great gift of gab, so he could charm anybody - and did. (laughs)

Bijou: Yeah. It sounds like everyone loved hanging out with him, from all the people I’ve spoken with about him.

Alvarez: Yeah, he was a lot of fun. He was a funny character.

So anyway, we had this relationship, never really committing to a long-term thing, but it kept going, kept going, kept going, and we ended up being together for twenty-one years. And at that point, he died, and so... It was a long, long relationship. And I loved him very, very much. And vice versa.

But I always thought it would be great if we could work together. Incidentally, another person that was greatly responsible for Jack getting the courage to get into this and actually direct people was [Rebel Without a Cause star] Sal Mineo, who became a friend of ours some years before.

Bijou: Yeah! I was so curious where you knew him from.

Alvarez: We met him in Madrid, and he was getting ready to shoot a film somewhere in Europe. I can’t remember the name of it. Anyway, we got to know each other, and while we were there, we went out together. And he was sort of… not just coming out, I guess, but he was definitely coming out. (laughs) And so he enjoyed being with us, and was always a good friend.

And then a little later, we got into the film business and decided to become our own distributors, because we didn’t trust any of the distributors. Everybody that had dealt with the distributors had been pretty much ripped off by having copies of their films made and sold, and all kinds of stuff that went on. We felt it was better if we could set up a business to distribute our own movies and not sell them, which a lot of other gay filmmakers were doing. Instead of selling them to make a quick buck, we’d keep the movies and then rent them out to the exhibitors and charge them a percentage of the gross. And, of course, they were never exactly honest, either, but we found ways to kind of get around that. When we showed our stuff in New York, we had somebody counting the number of patrons that would go into the theater, so we had an idea of about how much money we should be getting. But anyways, that’s a whole other area of the business. And, incidentally, that’s how we met [Bijou owner] Steve Toushin, because he started renting some of our films, and we liked him. He was always really very nice and very fair.

Bijou: I was wondering about Good Hot Stuff [Hand in Hand's documentary about their studio] showing in Paris. I read that that was the first gay porn film to show in France. I was curious about that trip over there and what that experience was like.

Alvarez: It wasn't the first film. It was the first American explicit gay film ever shown in France. We hooked up with a man named Norbert Terry in France who had apparently shot one or two movies that were in French. I always wanted for us to go there and be shown with subtitles and (laughs), you know, the whole thing. Because there’s a lot of narrative to Good Hot Stuff; Jack and some of our actors talked about being in the films, and so forth. We opened in Paris at two or three theaters. And they made a big deal out of promoting it. And, sure enough, we ended up outgrossing the [Robert Altman] movie Nashville, which was also playing there (laughs) - and Nashville is a classic film.

Bijou: (laughs) Yeah, that's amazing.

Alvarez: Jack and I had been to Paris a couple of times before, and we loved Paris... I still do. It’s a magical city and I love it. So we ended up, eventually after we made some more films, making a deal with a guy who was a producer in Paris, and contracted to make a movie in French and we would share the profits. It turned out to be a disaster, but we released the movie anyway.

Bijou: Was that Le Musée, [also known as Strictly Forbidden]?

Alvarez: Le Musée, yeah. I had to end up using our work print, because they had confiscated our original negatives from the lab, so I had only the work print to work with.

Bijou: Oh wow, they confiscated it?

Alvarez: Yeah. They figured they had a legal right to do it, because we ran out, I guess. We didn’t continue working on the film. We left, and when we went to get our original negatives, found out that they had already been taken by the production company, and they weren't about to give it up.

Bijou: Wow.

Alvarez: Which is too bad, because it was really a beautiful film in many ways.

Bijou: Yeah, the footage is gorgeous from that film.

Alvarez: Yeah, the color footage is really good. And that’s only the work print, so you can imagine the original.

Bijou: Oh wow. I see, so the B&W is the work print?

Alvarez: Yeah, that’s all from the work print.

Bijou: Oh!

Alvarez: And I decided, from my experimental film days (laughs), “Hell, I’ll just mix them all up,” you know, and we’ll have B&W and color.

Bijou: I like that about it. I thought that was intentional. It felt intentional, watching it. (laughs)

Alvarez: That’s what I tried to do - make it look like it was intentional. I wasn’t happy with it, completely, because I knew what we could have had, but we didn’t want it to go to waste, so we released it. And made some money on it, you know.

Bijou: Yeah, I still think it’s a great one, but that would be sad knowing that you lost a good chunk of footage. What was your philosophy on making the Hand in Hand films at the time?

Alvarez: Well, almost all of them were shot in New York, and we dealt with New York situations and stories. I mean, Left-Handed is certainly that. And several others we did were about typical New York scenes. Some of our slighter stories had New York characters in them, and we used New York as a kind of a backdrop for everything. So we decided our films would have that element, as well as kind of a freewheeling style where we made it seem like being gay was a normal thing, long before (laughs), long before [many gay rights advancements]. We were just assuming that our characters all were gay and that’s how they talked, as normal people would talk.

Bijou: That’s true, that is kind of distinctive about your films - now that you said that - versus some other studios. In Hand in Hand's films, most of the people are already out and it’s set within gay life and that’s not, like, a huge ordeal with it.

Alvarez: Yeah. And another film that we did early was… Well, we worked with this guy Peter de Rome on his first feature-length film. ‘Cause he had done some short films on 8mm. We ended up blowing up a lot of them to 16mm, and then adding a couple of his [other] short movies, and making a movie, after that, called Adam & Yves, which took place in Paris.

Alvarez: Another chance to go to Paris; I didn’t go to, but Jack did. We made the film that Peter de Rome directed. Well, Jack actually directed it more than he did, but…

Bijou: Oh really?

Alvarez: But we gave him the credit, because it was his idea, and his concept and the whole thing about shooting some of it in Paris.

After Adam & Yves was released, we started working on a film which was a little more intricate… a lot more intricate, actually (laughs), called Drive. And I did a lot of quick cutting and switching from one scene to another, like in the middle of a sex scene; kind of making a comment about what was coming up, you know, sort of like a prequel to what was going to happen.

Bijou: Yeah, I love the edits in that movie.

Alvarez: And it took place in this decadent disco that was run by the character named Arachne, whose goal in life was to rid all men of their sex drive. But she would do it by castrating them, up to the point where she found out that there was this drug being developed... This was funny, too, because this was long before Viagra or any of that stuff. But there was a drug being developed that would kill the instinct or the desire to have sex. So she wouldn’t have to be mutilating people anymore. (laughs) So her goal was to go out and get this drug and the scientist. She was an evil character. But as far as the movie goes and my involvement in it, I was very taken by this and I loved the idea that some of it took place in a disco. And there was a scene that was kind of a tribute or take off on Marlene Dietrich’s gorilla suit sequence in [Blonde Venus]. But we did our version of that with the character Arachne, who was in drag, of course, and I loved it. I think it really works well. And that’s one of the scenes where I cut to the disco. And we had original music for it. Now, I did my best to cut to the music, and then I intercut with the sex between the detective and his partner. So we go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until the scene at the disco became a climax when the Arachne character takes off the gorilla head and out she comes. And so that was the end [of the scene], and that was in vivid color. And at the same time, the couple was climaxing in their scene, and so the two climaxes kind of coalesced together.

Bijou: It's a great sequence.

Alvarez: That’s what I mean about our films. I mean, there was so much… Not to make art, necessarily, but to make something that would be contemporary, of the day, and also would get us… We always had the goal, really, to get into regular movies - mass market movies - eventually, and this was sort of going to be our training ground. And, for a while, it looked like we could do it. I know Wakefield had the same desire and almost made it. But the whole business changed so quickly, and it became corrupted, and more of a “quick buck” kind of thing, and so forth. There were exceptions. There were a few filmmakers that were rather important at that time, and one of them was a guy by the name of Tom DeSimone, who ended up working with us on a couple of movies.

Bijou: Right, he shot a couple of them, didn't he?

Alvarez: Oh, he shot many films. That’s a whole other story. It’s in the book [Good Hot Stuff: The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau], in the chapter on Tom DeSimone. Anyway, we liked him, because his movies - the movies he made, himself - were more substantial, and often had plots, and so forth. There were a few people like that. Another one was Fred Halsted who, in L.A. Plays Itself, used a rather - not only shocking - sequence, but also some underground film tactics.

Anyway, I was talking about Drive and how that was a departure from everything.

Bijou: Yeah! That’s the first really kind of elaborate effects piece that you did, right?

Alvarez: Yeah, exactly. I took some of the disco stuff to an optical house and had them do several things to make it more unusual. You know? I incorporated a lot of stuff like that in all our films, if possible.

Bijou: Right. Destroying Angel has couple of those great sequences, too.

Alvarez: Right, Destroying Angel, especially.

Bijou: I love that one.

Alvarez: Yeah. And there’s one called Fire Island Fever, which has a sequence where one of the characters accidentally takes a tab of acid and we kind of see what he’s seeing through his eyes as he is high, which is a fantasy sex scene with what turns out to be one of the characters that he meets at the end of the film. Anyway, I tried as much as possible to incorporate some more daring kind of editing. You know, make our films look different. And they did. (laughs) For the most part, they did.

Bijou: Yeah, they did!

Bijou: Oh, I wanted to ask you about Kees Chapman.

Alvarez: He was also, I think, from a Dutch background. But he was an American; I think he was born here in the States. His lover had been one of our actors early on. [His lover] was actually in Drive. He played the scientist. He had long blond hair. For the movies, he was [named] Mark Woodward; to us, he was his real name, Sydney Soons. And he became an employee of ours, and was helping Jack with keeping track of the finances and getting the movies sent out to the exhibitors, and all that.

Alvarez: After a while, he and Kees ended up breaking up, and then Kees kind of took over his job, and became even more of a necessary part of Hand in Hand Films. And he also ended up doing some camerawork for Jack, as well as directing, and so forth.

In fact, he shot the sequence I directed in In Heat, which was shot in a dance studio. It was guys taking a ballet class, and then the teacher takes a break, and during that time, the boys get together and have sex. And eventually, the teacher comes back and he joins the crowd. (laughs) So that was one small segment that I directed, because I’d always wanted to, but I didn’t want to impose on Jack’s ideas, you know, because he had plenty of ideas.

Alvarez: In fact, Kees and I tried to make a full film, with Kees directing, after Jack died, but it turned out that I couldn’t use the footage; it was too dark and just a mess. And I’ve always thought I should take that footage again and look at it again with today’s technology, you know?

Bijou: Oh, you should. I bet it could be enhanced a bit, yeah. That would be interesting. What was the premise?

Alvarez: I’m not too sure, except I know that it had the lead character going to Fire Island and having several encounters there. And finally, at the end, I think he gets back with his lover that he had at the beginning of the movie. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at it.

Bijou: I bet it could be brightened.

Alvarez: Yeah. I think with today’s video technology, especially, a lot of things can be certainly improved. Steven’s done that already. I’m very pleased with the way he has kept our movies up to date.

Bijou: Oh, I'm glad.

Alvarez: Oh, let me finish with Kees. Like I said, he became part of our group that ended up being Jack, Kees, and myself, who were the principal people. We had another partner for a while named Jaap Penraat. But that ended at some point and… Not too happily, but it ended.

And that’s when Kees became interested in working for us and kind of took over Jaap’s position, and started working with Jack directly. He was a terrific guy. And I was very surprised when he died of AIDS because… He must have gotten it from his lover, Sydney, because Sydney also got it and also passed away. And, a year or two later, Kees became ill and he died.

So that left it just up to me, and that’s where I finally decided - after making that little film, which was kind of satisfying for me - that it was time to get out of the business. That’s when I started looking for people that might be interested in buying the business, buying all the material, which turned out to be Steve. And I’m glad it was, because he’s been the most trustful of the ones that I talked to about it. There were other people interested, but I knew what would happen. We wouldn’t be who we are today if it had gone to somebody else and they copied our films badly and, you know. It would have been awful. So I’m glad Steve had some real interest in keeping it as a sort of a record of what was happening in the time when they were made, and so forth, which was one of the things Jack…

Speaking of the philosophy, you know, he said that these films were like literature and that if we kept them - you know, rather than sell them - we would end up eventually having them seen over and over and over again and be a representation of what it was like in the days that we shot them, you know? Because most of them were contemporary stories of people at that time. So that’s kind of what his philosophy was. He would make films and try to incorporate things that were relevant to the time that we were shooting in.

Bijou: Yeah, that was probably a conscious effort from the start, even from Left-Handed?

Alvarez: Yeah. It’s funny. After making Left-Handed, and then making a few others, I kind of became a little bit… It wasn’t embarrassed exactly, but… Left-Handed is, no question about, it a crude film. We didn’t shoot in sync sound, we had to dub in the voices, and so forth, and we did it as best we could. And then, Left-Handed always bothered me, because, to me, it wasn’t professional. And looking back at it now, I find I like it very much, you know? (laughs) I like what we were doing.

Bijou: Yeah, I think it's great.

Alvarez: And the fact that it was different. It was different than any other gay sex film that was ever made.

Bijou: Yeah, it is! It does stand out. Even the non-sync sound does something really interesting in it. Its style feels really different, even from your other work.

Alvarez: Yeah, yeah. To me, now, the dubbing almost becomes like a narration, you know? Like it’s almost purposefully done that way (laughs), you know, after the fact. But anyway, I ended up really liking Left-Handed a lot, because it sort of set the mood, also, of my type of film editing. And a lot of the techniques I used in Left-Handed, I used later on in other films that we made, so it kind of was our benchmark movie, being our first.

Bijou: That’s interesting you mentioned developing some techniques there, because in terms of developing cutting hardcore sequences, since the genre was pretty new in the era, were you sort of figuring that out from scratch or… I mean, you’d seen some other [porn] films, but… What was that like developing how to cut and how to pace those sequences?

Alvarez: Well, for one thing, our films, sometimes they got criticized because they weren’t explicit enough, whereas some films are almost like a medical study.

Bijou: Yes. (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alvarez: Ours were more like – at least I felt and Jack felt – to capture the sensuality of the sex or the dynamics of a sex scene, and whatever shot said that the best is the shot that we used. So we didn’t go in for, like, where you can see every pubic hair, you know? (laughs)

Bijou: (laughs) Yeah. Right. Because that B&W sex scene from Left-Handed is, I think, very beautiful and erotic, but it’s far from being like a medical, durational kind of sex scene.

Alvarez: Yeah. And that B&W sequence in that section, Jack did on purpose B&W, because he said, “We’re going to do like The Wizard of Oz, only backwards.” (laughs) In The Wizard of Oz, it’s in B&W until Dorothy goes through the door, and goes into Oz, and it becomes Technicolor. [And in Left-Handed], when it becomes a dream sequence, it turns into B&W film. And that’s how that came about. And with things like that, you know… I mean, we did that before anybody else [in sex films] did that. Maybe some people followed us, you know, and did the same sort of thing, but… But my cutting, especially, I really loved the idea of creating a piece, a sex scene that had some rhythm to it and some sense of movies, of real movies, you know?

Bijou: Oh yeah, that’s a good distinction, because the sex scenes do feel cinematic in your films.

Alvarez: Yeah. So that’s pretty much the story of Hand in Hand Films. There’s a lot more. If you look at the book, you’ll see that there is a lot more. (laughs)

Bijou: Oh yes, there is. It's a fantastic read. I’m so happy you all put that together.

Alvarez: The book was written by a German guy [Marco Siedelmann] that I met and got to know at a festival where our films were shown, and he said, “I want to do a book on Jack Deveau.” So I said, “Great!” And he said, “And it should have pictures,” and I thought, well, I have some pictures. I mean, Steve has most of them, but I kept a few for myself. You know, things that were duplicates, and so forth. And so, with that, I was able to help him get this book out.

Thank you to Robert Alvarez for taking the time to talk to us and share stories. For much more information about Hand in Hand Films and a more extensive interview with Alvarez, please check out Good Hot Stuff: The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau.

Bijou is very proud to present Hand in Hand's full film catalog! You can watch their movies on DVD and Streaming.

Further Reading, Listening & Viewing for more information on Hand in Hand Films:

Excerpt from the Hand in Hand Films documentary Good Hot Stuff (1975) on Vimeo and more Hand in Hand clips on our Vimeo and YouTube channels
Bijou Blog - Jack Deveau: Vintage Gay Porn Director Profile
Interview with Tom DeSimone (Part 1 and Part 2)
Blog - Hot House: Behind the Scenes
Ask Any Buddy podcast episodes on movies produced and/or distributed by Hand in Hand Films: Good Hot Stuff, Drive, The Night Before, Adam and Yves, The Destroying Angel, Rough Trades, Fire Island Fever, American Cream, Catching Up, The Idol
Blog - Chris Rage, Arch Brown, & Frank Ross: Hand in Hand to Live Video
Blog - The Backstory of Peter de Rome's The Destroying Angel
Hand in Hand Films Wikipedia entry

By Josh Eliot

The movie Big Guns, shot in 1986, is synonymous with the name William Higgins and the Catalina Video brand. I remember renting Big Guns at our local video store on 18th and Castro street in San Francisco when it first came out, months before I started working for Catalina Video. I was very well aware of Mike Henson and John Davenport, so when they showed up at our San Francisco studio to work on some movies I was definitely star-struck, as I wrote in my previous blog, "Bringing In the Big Guns." I worked as videographer with John Davenport in two movies for John Travis: My Best Buddy (1988) and Powerline (1989). Mike Henson worked in My Best Buddy as well and, as fate would have it, eleven years later he performed in the opening scene of Powertool 2, which I directed alongside Chi Chi LaRue. It felt like a full circle moment to have Mike in front of the Catalina cameras again after a decade had passed. Same awesome personality, but the only difference was that he was a bit more manly. Another actor from Big Guns who I worked with in My Best Buddy, Powerline and The Young Cadets (1988) was Mike Ryan. Mike Ryan‘s debut in A Matter of Size (1984) connected him with John Travis, who in turn brought him to Catalina where he also worked in the bisexual films Innocence Lost (1987) and In Hot Pursuit (1987). In addition to the three castmates from Big Guns that I actually worked with there are many more that became “gay-household” names.

Chad Douglas and Kevin Wiles are two of them, and their scene together almost instantly hit iconic status. The set up was that of a young newspaper delivery boy and his customer signing a personal check while wearing only a house robe, where he let it all hang out. Remember that classic scene?! Chad Douglas first appeared in the movie Below The Belt by Philip St. John, followed by Tyger Tales and Too Big For His Britches for Tyger Films. After his astonishing scene in Big Guns, Falcon Studios snatched him up for Giant Splash Shots 2 (1987), Spokes 2 (1988), Spring Break (1988) and Man-Rammer: A Battle of Size (1989), which turned out to be his final movie. Even though he was under contract with Falcon, Matt Sterling was not about to miss out, so Falcon loaned Douglas to Huge Video for a role in Larger Than Life (1988). Chad Douglas was born on Feb 4th, 1957 and it is written that he passed away on October 11th, 1999 at age 42.

Chad’s co-star from Big Guns, Kevin Wiles, actually has the most movies released out of any of the cast members in this film. His first movie, Big and Thick (1984) for H.I.S. Video, undoubtedly set him on the path to be an insatiable bottom. Stiff Sentence (1985), Two Handfuls (Bijou Video, 1986) and Motel California (Catalina, 1986) were shot prior to the performance in Big Guns that really put him on the map. After Big Guns, Kevin Wiles went on to work for most of the studios of the time including Sierra Pacific, Avalon (YMAC), Falcon, First Class Male, Pleasure Productions, Metro, Le Salon, In Hand and others before leaving the industry.

Some of the biggest actors of the film only have a handful of titles to their names, like top-billed stars Jeff Quinn, John Rocklin and Jeff Boote. Jeff Quinn appeared in the December 1985 issue of Playgirl Magazine and did a total of six movies between 1985 and 1987, including a scene with Chad Douglas and Lance in Giants Splash Shots II: More Memories of Summer, where Douglas pounds his hole like there’s no tomorrow! Other credits include Inch By Inch (1985) and Bigger Than Life (1986) for Matt Sterling and Huge Video, followed by Big Guns (1986), Hot Rods: The Young and The Hung 2 (1986) and Paul Norman’s bisexual hit Innocence Lost for Catalina Video. He dropped off the map with no explanation that I could find throughout all of my research. His co-star in the movie, John Rocklin, had a similarly short career, as well, after his debut in Try To Take It (1986) for Falcon. He, like the others, worked in Giants Splash Shots II, then performed in Hard Men: No Strings Attached (1987) and William Higgins' Screentest (1988). Another Big Guns cast member with so much potential who had a short career was Jeff Boote. Appropriately named, because his booty was all that and more and his bottoming scenes in Big Guns and In Hot Pursuit were standouts. His very first performance, again, was for Matt Sterling in Big and Thick and his only other performance was in a J/O for Video 10 in the movie Backstrokes. He and Rocklin for sure could have parlayed their careers for a much longer time, as they were solid in their screen performances.

One star who was super young-looking but worked his career into longevity is a name that “everybody” knows: Kevin Williams. Even though he only made a little over a dozen movies, his name is synonymous with the industry. His early work in Screentest, Big Guns, The Switch is On and Stryker Force (1986) led to roles in Tyger Film’s Bare Tales (1987) and Bad Boys Club for Catalina (1988). He then made the move to Falcon for the movies Out of Bounds (1988) and In Your Wildest Dreams (1988). He retired from his career in the 1980s, only to pop up again with a Falcon Studios contract in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His return to the screen included movies Hot Wired 1, FULLfilled, Deliverance: Code of Conduct 2 and Betrayed.

Rocky Armano, whose sex scene was not in the original VHS cut of Big Guns but has since been restored in the 20th Anniversary Director’s Cut, was in the industry a year at the most. Simultaneous shoots for Big Guns and Hard Men No Strings Attached in 1986 introduced Rocky Armano to the world. Bulge: Mass Appeal, the very first movie I worked on (but not his scene, damn-it!) was held for some time, then released in 1987. There was a release called Hand Tools in 1990 with Rocky Armano, but it was just an old J/O that was shot for Hard Men: No Strings Attached. In Hard Men, the models would dance and strip down to a raging hard on, then the viewer could order their exclusive J/O separately for what was a low price back then of $29.95 + shipping. Those J/Os all made it into Hand Tools many years later.

By comparison, Chris Gray, from the ultra-iconic shooting range scene with John Davenport, had a super quick but impressive two-year stint in the industry. His Bigger Than Life (1986) role for Sterling led to Mansize (1986) for director Michael Zen and Bijou Classics, The Bigger They Come for Catalina, Paul Norman’s Passion Bi Fire (1986) and finally In Hot Pursuit (1987) before leaving the industry. His co-star John Davenport, as I wrote about at the beginning, had a similar career path that lasted three years, 1986-1988, and had roles in some very popular productions including Powertool, Full Grown/Full Blown, Perfect Summer, Sunstroke, Bad Boys Club and Hot Rods.

The movie Big Guns won the 1987 XRCO Award for Best Picture, which was no surprise as everyone knew Big Guns was something special from the moment it was released. Max Southern, a writer for Man Net Magazine, wrote:

Mike Henson, the star of Big Guns, also received an XRCO Award for Best Actor that same year. Born October 4th, 1963, Mike Henson became one of the most popular gay adult performers of the 1980s. He graduated from UCLA in 1994, having studied computer science. His return to the screen for Powertool 2 and Score 10 for Matt Sterling did not cause the sensation industry insiders had hoped for and his comeback was short-lived. On September 6, 2002, Mike Henson passed away from an accidental overdose of heroin at the age of 38. His mark on the industry will certainly live on. The remainder of the cast could all very well be living their best lives getting ready to collect social security, as little is known of their whereabouts. Their performances and contributions to Big Guns are as timeless as the movie itself.

Watch Josh Eliot's 40th Anniversary Trailer for Big Guns!
Plus his trailers for My Best Buddy, Young Cadets and Powertool 2

Bio of Josh Eliot:

At the age of 25 in 1987, Josh Eliot was hired by Catalina Video by John Travis (Brentwood Video) and Scott Masters (Nova Video). Travis trained Eliot on his style of videography and mentored him on the art of directing. Josh directed his first movie, Runaways, in 1987. By 2009 when Josh parted ways with Catalina Video, he'd produced and directed hundreds of features and won numerous awards for Best Screenplay, Videography, Editing, and Directing. He was entered into the GayVN Hall of fame in 2002.

By Will Seagers

Hi folks! Will here.

We're taking a little bit of a break after the two year run of my blog with Bijou.

To celebrate the two years of fun that I've had, here is a gala video for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Will Seagers in L.A. Tool & Die, stylized image

Bio of Will Seagers:

Will Seagers (also credited as Matt Harper), within his multifaceted careers and participation in numerous gay communities across the country in the '70s and '80s and beyond, worked as a print model, film performer, and DJ, just to name a few. He made iconic appearances in releases from Falcon, Hand in Hand, Joe Gage, Target (Bullet), J. Brian, Steve Scott, and more, including in lead roles in major classics like Gage's L.A. Tool & Die (1979) and Scott's Wanted (1980). He brought strong screen presence and exceptional acting to his roles and was scene partners with many fellow legends of classic porn.

Will Seagers, recent photo

By Josh Eliot

A few weeks ago, I happened to come across a VHS copy of the William Higgins classic Big Guns on a re-sale site online. My mini collection of VHS tapes already includes a copy of my very first movie for Catalina Video, Runaways, as well as VHS copies of Valley of the Bi Dolls and Revenge of the Bi Dolls. When I saw that a copy of Big Guns, in pristine condition, was up for sale at only $20, I just had to have it. It seems that among the younger generation, VHS collecting is back in vogue, and I was thrilled to see Bijou World's website offering vintage tapes for sale, as well. What I really want to find is the original printing of Hot Rods: The Young and The Hung 2, which is the official sequel to Big Guns. The VHS box for Hot Rods, in its original printing, had a cranberry-colored, embossed foil coloring to it for the words Hot Rods. Later versions were just a flat box without the protruding title. That foil-embossed box would be the crown jewel in any collection, as there where only 2000 originally printed that way, and all other printings where pale in comparison. The sick thing is that I had a VHS of every single movie Catalina distributed, back in the day, as we could buy a copy for $5 each as employees. I foolishly sold them at a yard sale many years later, not realizing their value, and they jumped off the table at 2 for $1. Okay, I’m an idiot!

What I loved about my purchase of the Big Guns VHS is that, in addition to being in the original aspect ratio, I could tell that it was created from a 1” original master, which kept the quality amazing even while losing a generation of picture quality when transferring it to VHS. Back when we were making movies, it was always a bummer that you would have generation loss from when you shot the movie on ¾” to when it came out in stores on ½” VHS or BETA. Once digital video came along, there was no longer “generational loss,” so what was shot on the set looked exactly the same once it was released on DVD. Because of the generational loss with movies from the 1980s and early 1990s, there is a major variation from movie to movie as far as the quality. For many years, we would duplicate the movies from a 1” master to VHS, and the quality held its own, pretty much. But in later years, to save money, an S-VHS master or ¾ master was used to duplicate, and a lot of the time the picture looked muddy. This was not the case with the Big Guns VHS I purchased, and I was just thrilled to be able to use it to create a tribute for its upcoming anniversary on social media. The movie was shot in 1986 but released on video in early 1987.

I mentioned that Hot Rods was the official sequel to Big Guns, which came about in a not so ordinary way. William Higgins' original vision for Big Guns was to have it end with the Rocky Armano, Mike Henson and Jeff Quinn scene. In that scene, the three guys, in military garb, have a paintball battle in the countryside where the loser (Rocky Armano) gets tied to a rope and stripped to his undies. Higgins' intent was to continue the scene into their tent, where a highly charged threeway ensues. The problem that came about was the fact that either the VHS tapes' running time was limited or theater owners wanted to have as many showings per day as possible, and that final scene would have put the running time over what they considered suitable. I’ve heard both stories, so I’m not sure which one was the real reason, but in any case a decision was made to end the movie with a cliffhanger. The final scene of Big Guns plays to the point where Rocky Armano is tied up and hanging from a tree in his undies. The shot freezes and a title card comes across the screen stating that this scene would be continued in Hot Rods: The Young and The Hung 2. Because Big Guns was such a massive hit for Higgins, it left audiences salivating for the release of Hot Rods to see Rocky Armano, Henson and Quinn finish what they started. Hot Rods, in turn, became an even bigger hit, not only for the fact that it included the threeway, but also thanks to the Kevin Williams scene on the horizontal rotisserie, where his hot ass is spun in a circle for an array of leather dudes to penetrate.

Twenty years ago, I worked on remastering William Higgins' Big Guns for its 20th anniversary on DVD. Now, mind you, twenty years ago we did not have the technology that companies like Bijou have today to properly remaster the movies with enhanced picture, white balancing, sharpening, etc., but we did have an ace up our sleeves to promote the sales of it. It was decided to restore the movie to its original running time and to include the full threeway sex scene that was originally cut out of the movie to please theater owners. We removed the cliffhanger and let the scene continue naturally to where the movie ended as intended, extending the running time by about seventeen minutes. If you are in the market to own this little treasure of a film, I would suggest looking for the 20th anniversary edition, as it contains more bang for your buck! Oh, how I wish that the current owners of the Catalina Video library of movies would release a 40th anniversary edition of this classic, with all the bells and whistles of enhancement, but DVD versions of these movies are harder and harder to find, as more companies opt to only stream them instead of offering physical copies. Melusine.com (check them out) is doing amazing work on restoring and repackaging “straight” adult classics in limited edition pimped out packaging for movies like Behind The Green Door! They include many “on set” photographs, in book form, and bonus footage. Most sell out, and these limited editions will one day be collectors’ items, like my fabulous copy of Big Guns!

Here I am chatting away, and I haven’t even gotten into the “meat and potatoes” of the movie Big Guns, itself, or it’s incredible cast, which includes Mike Henson, Jeff Quinn, John Davenport, Chris Gray, John Rocklin, Jeff Boote, Kevin Wiles, Chad Douglas, Mike Ryan, Rocky Armano and a super young Kevin Williams! Well, I guess you know what that means! Yes, in Part 2 of the Big Guns 40th anniversary celebratory blog I will talk about the boys, and that very, very famous Chad Douglas/Kevin Wiles scene that was burned into my brain as a young 24-year-old when I first saw it. Not to mention the John Davenport/Chris Gray scene on the firing range, which I will go out on a limb to say was one of the sexiest seduction scenes ever in a gay adult film, past or present! It really is a “dream cast” who worked in this movie, and I’m looking forward to highlighting and honoring all of them! Like the original version of the movie, Big Guns, I am ending this blog with a “cliffhanger,” as the real payoff will be in the sequel!

Watch Josh Eliot's trailers for the following classics:

Big Guns, Runaways, Valley of the Bi Dolls, Revenge of the Bi Dolls

Bio of Josh Eliot:

At the age of 25 in 1987, Josh Eliot was hired by Catalina Video by John Travis (Brentwood Video) and Scott Masters (Nova Video). Travis trained Eliot on his style of videography and mentored him on the art of directing. Josh directed his first movie, Runaways, in 1987. By 2009 when Josh parted ways with Catalina Video, he'd produced and directed hundreds of features and won numerous awards for Best Screenplay, Videography, Editing, and Directing. He was entered into the GayVN Hall of fame in 2002.