BijouBlog

Once in a Blue Moon, directed by Toby Ross, is truly a gem in our collection of vintage gay porn. Each vignette is essentially a “short story” that probes different dynamics in gay relationships, feeding off archetypal images that can be found in so much “mainstream” art, movies, and literature: a scene in hell, a soldier tortured by an enemy interrogator, and a prison inmate finally meeting his pen-pal. 
 

The second vignette in this movie is called “Better Sooner Than Later,” and stars Marcus Braun as a soon-to-be-departing executive headed for a new assignment in Paris, and Johnny Rahm as the coworker he is leaving behind. Their intimate, realistic and passionate dialogue reveals that not only are both gay, but that they have longed for one another for some time. They lovingly share cocksucking and fucking, switching off throughout the segment. The scene concludes with the title comment, “Jerry and Bob eventually both settled in Boston and lived happily ever after.” 
 

What makes this vignette particularly poignant is the life story of Johnny Rahm. (In my opinion, he has some of the most intense eyes not just in porn movies, but in all movies. Maybe it is the way his cheekbones set them off. According to an interview in Manshots in 1991, he is 30 to 40 percent Cherokee Native-American. Whatever the case, he is gorgeous!) 
 

Johnny Rahm's real name was Barry “J.T.” Rogers, and like so many guys born in the 1960s who became porn stars, he ended up fleeing a straight white Christian upbringing, but in this case, a particularly strict one. 

According to his obituary in SouthernVoice.com, he actually attended Bob Jones University, the place to go for particularly fundamentalist Baptists like Rogers aka Rahm's parents, who, Rahm reveals in the interview, hated him for being gay. 

The California gay scene called him the in the late 1980s, and he worked for ten years in the gay porn industry, kind of falling into spontaneously after an interview with J.J. Casting. 

He chose the name Rahm, but really wanted it to be Ra-m, but that didn't fly, and in the interview he relishes the irony of the name, as most viewers assume he would be a top, that is someone who does the ramming! 

In fact, Johnny was a hot bottom who admittedly liked dominant tops (especially those with mustaches) in his films and in real life, perhaps someone like his co-star in Once in a Blue Moon, Marcus Braun (Johnny and Marcus pictured below). 
 

 

The interview with Manshots reveals a high-spirited, honest, and intelligent artist who is really trying to work on his craft. 

Some particularly cogent quotes from the piece: 

Manshots: When did you come out? 

Rahm: I think I realized something was different about me when I was thirteen or fourteen. I didn't have the really serious sexual fantasies about guys until I was about seventeen. I remember wanting so bad to be on the baseball team in high school, because there were three or four guys on the team I really wanted to see in the shower. My first experience though was when I was twenty. It was with an amateur bodybuilder who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. It was phenomenal. 

Manshots: In your relatively short career in video so far, you've already made a reputation for yourself as an actor. My favorite was in Bedtime Stories for Catalina, where you played a black cat. You stayed in character as the cat through much of the actual sex. How much acting training have you had? 
 

Rahm: I'd say I started “studying” – and that's in quotes – when I was six years old. I used to have an old cassette recorder, and I'd record TV shows off the air and lock myself in my bedroom and turn the player on and act out the shows – playing all the parts....I was a big Monty Python fan... I was only kid in my junior high school who was weaned on public television. 

Manshots: Having something of a background in Monty Python style humor, do you ever get this moment on a set in the process of making pornography, where you get an overwhelming sense of absurdity? 

Rahm: Extremely, yeah, I get the idea that sometimes people who rent these videos think the work is so glamorous. But it's hard work – getting a hard on in a scene where it feels like it's twenty degrees below zero in the room. 

Manshots: What was working with Toby Ross on Once in a Blue Moon like? 

Rahm: It was a very good experience. His group was very laid back... He (Ross) asked us a lot of questions like “What would you like to do?” and “How can we make you more comfortable?” – and I liked that, and I've seen the movie and I liked it, but as usual, I'm never happy with the scenes I'm in. 

Manshots: Oh? 

Rahm: I'm never happy with my hair. Boy, is that the queeny phrase of all time or what? 

Some of his notable videos, in addition to Once in a Blue Moon, include The Devil and Danny Walker, Straight to the Zone, Badlands, and Hey Tony,What's the Story?. 

What happened to him is really sad, especially as the interview reveals his ambitions to work behind the scenes and put his background in film and acting to use as a directory. 

Johnny committed suicide in Atlanta in November 7, 2004, at the age of 39, by hanging himself with a wire on the fence line of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. At that time, according to his roommate, Adam Kahn, he was struggling financially. He was HIV positive, but in good physical health. 

Johnny, who lived happily ever after with his ideal man on screen, never found that happiness in his real life. 

But in all his life work, he really wanted to make his audience happy (and turned on, of course). In a talk with his cousin, he reflected, “It's good to know that I made a difference to some gay guys out there … even it was inadvertent. I feel honored to have that kind of devotion.” 
 

 

By Madam Bubby
 

Malo is pretty much an icon in the Bijou Video filmography, despite his brief adult film career. A strong actor with a handsome face, commanding screen presence, and a chiseled physique, he highly memorably appeared in Jack Deveau's Hand in Hand Films classics A Night at the Adonis (DVD | VOD), Dune Buddies (DVD | VOD), and The Boys From Riverside Drive (DVD | VOD); in the first two, in leading roles, and paired in a sex scene with superstar Jack Wrangler in the third.

Malo on the set of Dune Buddies
  Malo with co-stars Larry Paige and Garry Hunt in Dune Buddies
  Malo and Jack Wrangler being filmed by Jack Deveau for The Boys From Riverside Drive

Malo and Jack Wrangler, whose sex scene kicks off The Boys From Riverside Drive

Along with the compelling line delivery and character work he gets to do in both Adonis and Dune Buddies, his sex scenes sizzle with electric sexual tension. In A Night at the Adonis, his sequences in barber chair with Jayson MacBride and in the orgy, paired with Geraldo, are highlights. And in all three films, he wields a stunningly beautiful uncut cock.

Malo, Jayson MacBride, and Geraldo in A Night at the Adonis

Not only is his cock stunningly beautiful. His overall physical beauty made quite an impression on many viewers when he appeared in the movie Cruising under his real (and mainstream performing) name, Arnaldo Santana. Yes, Cruising, the controversial Al Pacino movie.

There, he plays Loren Lukas, the first victim of the psycho killer. Young macho beauty (especially his perfect bubble butt which could have been lifted from a Greek statue of Apollo) violently mutilated. The whip the psycho runs across him seems almost ancillary in this scene which seems to find its orgasm in the knife penetrating the flesh, not a hole in the body. Check out the scene on YouTube; go to about 11:30 to see Malo in his beautiful agony (if you're not squeamish).

Malo/Arnaldo Santana in Cruising

And, believe it or not, Arnaldo was a friend of Pacino's, and Al got him a part in the movie Scarface - as his bodyguard, Ernie. According to imdb, “his acting career took a nose-dive when the handsome, muscular Santana gained over 100 pounds and became a heavy-set character actor," though Scarface was his most prominent film. You can see him as Ernie in this YouTube clip.

Malo/Arnaldo Santana and Al Pacino in Scarface

In the year following Scarface, 1984, Santana appeared as recurring character Hector Del Gato in all six episodes of comedian Paul Rodriguez's Norman Lear-produced sitcom (with a one-season run), a.k.a. Pablo, about a Mexican-American family in California. Malo/Santana can be seen throughout the opening credits sequence for the show here on YouTube.

Malo/Arnaldo Santana and Paul Rodriguez in a.k.a. Pablo

Other than a handful of additional details on imdb - references to his roles in films and television (also including Rage of Angels), this interesting list of his theater work (which explains his acting talent), mention of his birth (9/1/50, El Paso) and death (10/9/87, NYC) dates and locations, and a few other facts - I have found no biographical information about Arnaldo Santana.

But as Malo, he is an iconic figure from that first period of gay liberation in the 1970s, when sex was popping out of every nook and cranny. What was hiding in the shadows became passionately, violently free.

Malo in A Night at the Adonis

Love bites, literally! 

To clarify, in this blog, when I use the term “bites,” I don’t necessarily mean it in the sense of “bite me,” like someone saying something or someone “sucks.” 

I repeat: Love bites, literally! 

My cat who is probably the most spoiled creature on the planet lately has been getting into the habit of nipping at me, mostly to get me up in the morning. But cats will often give their owners love nibbles. And I get plenty of them, especially when I wear shorts (she likes legs). In fact, one time after I finished doing my usual “get rid of the morning woody” activity, she nipped me in the thigh. Perhaps she was stimulated by my action. I’ll see if she does it again some time. Still, nipping in cats (as opposed to more aggressive biting), can be a characteristic of nonsexual play among kittens, or as I mentioned above, a sign of affection for a cat’s owner. 

Now, I remember as a child, if a child bit another child, someone was in big trouble. This action seems to produce great consternation, especially if said behavior keeps occurring at day care centers when the parents aren’t around. In this case, biting is aggressive and nonsexual. The biting behavior implies somehow that the child lacks certain “civilizing influences.” Dogs and cats bite, but not people, that is. 

People do bite, however. What is taboo in public becomes almost a norm in sexual play, where boundaries blur or even break, and the participants enjoy the danger and excitement of transgressing said boundaries. The skin is a boundary, perhaps the most tangible one; to bite, to fuck, to suck, to rim, to jack off, is to stretch that boundary to the limits in an aggressive way, and when any sex act ultimately produces the discharge of cum, that fluid represents in its viscosity and liquidity a dissolution of boundaries. 

Blatant biting occurs in both straight and gay porn. For example, in the scene We Haul from the Bijou classic Erection Set, a duo in jeans and jockstraps enter a warehouse and fuck hard and fast, on a ladder and in a wheel barrel! Spanking, finger-fucking and mutual j/o, too, are had before the older of the two men humps his youthful partner hard. The overall emphasis in this last scene is on fucking butt, tit-licking and biting, and large cum shots which are filmed in slow-motion and repeated in several angles.
 

Even the ostensibly lesbian Ida (continually lamenting her spinsterhood) in the movie Mildred Pierce uses biting imagery sarcastically (a masterful peformance by Eve Arden) in an interaction with the dumpy (and probably gay) accountant, Mr. Jones, saying in response to his petulantly laments about her constant interruptions, “It's only because I want to be alone with you. Come 'ere and let me bite you, you darling man! Ruff!” Ida’s overall caustic manner perhaps lessens the impact of the violent imagery here, but her language takes on a deeper dimension when one remember a previous scene when the mercenary Wally comes on to Mildred. His kisses resemble bites, and Mildred ends up telling him to stop “howling,” that is, cut his wolf-like sexually aggressive behavior. 

Perhaps the most familiar bites are the ones Dracula administers. Dracula, straddling the boundaries between life and death, bites his victims and drinks their blood (in the Bible and in many other cultures, physical blood equals physical life). How does he lure his victims? Through sexual aggression. In all the diverse stories about Dracula, sex and death intermingle literally in blood, the discharge of a bite. 

To experience more love bites (including some in a scene from the classic porn Gayracula featured in the Bijou original compilation Scared Stiff) watch movies instantly on our streaming site, bijougayporn.com, and use the coupon code for 35% off DVDs at bijouworld.com!

Now, as many readers by now have figured out, often times (more so in more recent porn, and I am showing my bias for Bijou Classics), there is a splice between the sucking and the fucking and the cumshot or cumshots. The viewer wants to get his money’s worth, even if, and readers probably know this fact, in the actual filming the actor’s cum isn't always caused directly by the action.

’ve heard some porn directors hired guys to suck the actor’s off to keep them hard, or to hurry the climax because time is money. 
 

I think the word actor is important here. Now some porn stars of the past (I think of the prolific David Ashfield and also, see below the legendary Al Parker) enjoyed the sex, and the acting wasn’t so much acting as more like someone filming a live sexual interaction, not filming something that was necessarily planned in advance. 
 

And also, many of our titles put the sex in the context of a story and in many cases, a fantasy. Yes, the story needs actors, but the sex doesn’t seem as staged, or, I might say, as clinical. 

For example, the scene in Turned On!, where Al Parker is worshipping the cocks of endless hunky men, is a fantasy. But it’s also a fantasy that Al probably enjoyed in his own sexual experience, and he was being daring, because Al usually topped, and he we see him submitting, and because the hunky men seem to merge into one man, they become something more like Man with a capital M. Man as the air we breathe and the blood coursing through our veins. It’s obviously not real, but it’s also somehow more authentic. Why? Because in order to get to that orgasm, the mind needs to be working as well as the cock and your sexual partner or partners. 

It’s just got to happen. In the moment. 

And when the context gets more kinky, in my experience I’ve noticed guys in elaborate bondage (a fantasy made reality) get hard, but the climax has got to happen. I’ve seen responsive tops, who in many cases are fulfilling the bottom’s own fantasy, often do actions not exactly bondage-related to make that money shot happen. In one case, I saw the top put his gloved hand over the bottom’s face, as a final dominant act. In another case, another guy sucked the bottom’s cock. Or, and most wondrously, do nothing to the bottom’s cock, and it just happens. 
 

Blonds have more fun, as the saying goes, and when retro blond god Chris Allen was in his prime, he seemed to be everywhere! Just taking a look at his output on sources like Gay Erotic Video Index is mind-blowing. 

Yet we actually know very little about him outside of his movie and magazine appearances. A couple of sources say he was active (and boy was he active, especially in the eighties) from 1983-2008. So I would assume he is still alive, not a victim of the AIDS crisis that took so many legendary porn stars away from us.

His blond uncut (always a plus, in my humble opinion, and it is 8.5 inches) godhood graces so many Bijou Video classics. Here's a run-down of some his more memorable moments, even in more peripheral roles: 

In Hot Splash, a Toby Ross film from 1985, shows him in full splendor enjoying a sucking the nice-sized cock of David Ashfield, another seemingly omnipresent gay porn star of that period. 

In Getting It, he's part of the “Grand Hotel” cast that pulsates orgiastically around the main relationship in this film, between Jim Bentley and Shawn Michaels. Michaels memorably “attacks” Allen in the toilet, according to the review in Manshots. 

In the Nova film Hunk, Chris has a sex scene with Jesse Koehler (who also appears in a couple of Surge productions including Rangers). 

In The U.N.C.U.T. Club of L.A., he's one of the uncut coterie of guys who live to show off their foreskin. He's here mostly as exemplar of the fetish, but as I said above, his foreskin is a plus, and many guys during the period of his prime, especially Caucasian males, were routinely circumcised. 

According to Gay Erotic Video Index, in this film, Scott Roberts is picked up by Chris Allen and John Andrews on their way to a picnic in the mountains. Scott eats Allen's butt and lunches on Allen's and Johns sausage. Allen rims Scott and then two boys fuck Scott until they cum for desert. 

Lee Landis visits Allen's home and they get out porn magazines and beer for use in front of the fireplace. Lee chooses straight porn and won't let Allen touch him as the two jack off together. 

Allen and Lee set off into the mountains and Allen brings out the porn rags again. They both start to jerk themselves off but then Allen offers to substitute his mouth for Lee's hand. Lee accepts this arrangement. After some oral sex, Allen suggests his ass hole would be better yet so Lee fucks him is several positions. 

Chris Allen is also in the upcoming Bijou Video release, Nothing But the Best (1984), which co-stars Lee Stern, Scott Roberts (again), Sean Williams, Justin Tyler, Steve Knight, and Steve Roberts. 

I discovered, as well, that he appeared in an Old Reliable video called The Professionals, where he,

among other hung studs, jacks off solo. 

Chris also appeared in many magazines of the period, and I found in our files some a photospread from a 1980s Inches magazine.

That spread gives us some personal information about him, that he drove around L.A. In a yellow pick-up, he likes guys younger than himself (he was 22 at the time!), and that while making his movies, he gets so turned on and pulls his pud all the time off camera.

Watch Chris Allen videos on our streaming site!