BijouBlog

‘Porn is not destroying the environment.” – recent tweet by Steven Toushin, owner BijouWorld.com


I’ve noticed on Twitter, that is, on my own account especially, a stigma, and this stigma is connected to a larger stigma.

The stigma isn’t homophobia specifically, nor is it what I term a type of classism or elitism, or that somehow only certain persons with certain academic credentials are worthy of a voice in discussing serious issues.

The stigma is what I call pornophobia. It manifests itself in this case, specifically, that because our blog is part of a website that sells gay porn, it is somehow cheapened, deemed unworthy of respect (not that anyone has directly criticized it), and perhaps for diplomatic reasons, persons ignore it as not worthy of artistic or intellectual study. If the blog was located on a not for profit site like an archives or a museum or a library, I think, the stigma would not be as prevalent.

Porn is an integral party of LGBTQ history, in fact, human history, and to just assume that it is a manifestation of “baser” instincts is wrongheaded and bigoted. Some of the earliest gay pornographic films were products of an artistic motivation to incorporate sexual experiences into narratives with story arcs, developing characters, and profound symbols.
 

They were liberators for the newly liberated. Watch The Idol and The Blue Angel, among other films we make it our mission to preserve and disseminate. They may be somewhat anomalous in their depth and scope, but there’s a range here, and even some of the early J. Brian titles, which feature unabashed sex and not much else, convey their own unique ambience of carpe diem, imply that the cultural composed connection between gay sex, in fact, any type of sex, and shame is as breakable as a bruised reed.
 

Too much literature and art has been created, I think, and this dynamic includes even LGBTQ persons themselves, that focuses on the relationship between many forms of harm and porn, ranging from the stereotypes of the gay porn movie as inextricably linked to an oppressed audience suffering from frustrated sexuality and exploitation, to even condemning all porn as fundamentally misogynistic.

I am not claiming that all porn is of artistic merit, nor am I making any claim that the porn industry (distinguishing between the industry and the product) has not been part of exploitative and oppressive structures.

But any action that involves bending or breaking taboos is indeed a risk. Taking that risk in expressing one’s sexuality means confronting and continually reimagining the primal center of human life, in fact, all life.

“Hi, Professor. I am for extra help with the assignment, said the young blond jock with the tight buns accentuated by the tight Levis.

I think you need more help than that, said the hot daddy bearded muscle hunk professor dressed in a sharp business suit.

The professor puts his hand on the student's thigh.”

Yes, the above is a pretty lame attempt at the genre of classroom porn. But it's easily recognizable, not just the inevitable sex that usually occurs in a public or semi-public institutional space, but the power dynamic.

Where I teach (a college) and pretty much everywhere, one can assume that students are not part of the dating pool. Of course not all teachers have abided by this rule, some fairly egregiously, especially those in positions of great power in the academic field.

In one interesting case, a famous woman professor, Arvita Ronell, was accused of sexually harassing a gay male student. It’s a case definitely out of the norm, where a powerful cis heterosexual male teacher sexually harasses a younger cis heterosexual female student.

Yet it reveals nonetheless that a spectrum of predatory sexual behavior can and does exist, and that no matter what the specifics of the case, institutional structures that are based on hierarchy often encourage such boundary violations. One taboo generates another taboo.

Toby Ross, whose pioneering films glorified youthfulness, seems to in many of these films to flaunt sexual and social taboos. When a teacher does gets involved in their sexual activities, the power dynamic is already levelled. For example, in Reflections of Youth, Big Bill Eld, the gym teacher, is primarily there as a Priapus figure who towers above the hot young studs literally; he likes to get on the desk and masturbate his gigantic cock.
 

In Toby Ross' flick Classmates, the institutional space becomes the home of the teacher. When a sexy college student crashes at his art teacher's house, the sexual attraction is palpable but unspoken. The student feigns sleep while the teacher's mind races with images of the student fucking his ass with long, smooth, deep strokes. When the student's hard-on edges out of his boxer shorts, the teacher (nerdy but sexy) tentatively takes it in his hand and proceeds to jack him off. Still fantasizing, the teacher then jacks himself off. Tension -- release -- sleep. This realistic scene is played and edited beautifully.
 

In the Nova classic Kept After School, one sees the classroom porn genre treated with a humorous edge. Handsome teacher keeps students after school, and they aren't getting punished. He falls asleep, and an orgy ensues. He loses his power to the student's overwhelming sexual power.
 

In The Academy, by Hawk Productions, a military school teacher is seduced by his two students. A student fantasizes about the porn icon Roger. And much, much more.
 

And often teacher-student relationship becomes subsumed into the spanking fetish. In the Man's Hand video A Lesson Well Learned, the title pretty much self-explanatory. Naughty “boys” get spanked by coaches (and each other).
 

Overall, here’s the rub: reality and fantasy of course aren’t the same, and the teacher/student sexual fantasy has always been a major trope in erotic art, literature, and films, primarily heterosexual, and in many cases, the woman, strict headmistress or even nun, takes on the role of a dominatrix, punishing the “naughty boy.”

Thus, the teacher/student fantasy ends up involving often BDSM activity, accentuating the tension between what on one level many approve of as an affective/intimate relationship but one that is restrained by a public social order that pretty much proclaims, beyond this point you may not cross.

But crossing boundaries, breaking taboos one could say is precisely reason for the tension-release dynamic of porn in all its manifestations.

Yes, it's coming up, the unofficial LGBTQ holiday, Halloween! I was looking online for more information about Halloween events going on next week, and I noticed that the famous Greenwich Village, New York City Halloween parade is now in its 46th year.

Pretty amazing, if one thinks what year it was 46 years ago: 1973. Thus, celebrating Halloween was part and parcel of the then young and militant gay liberation movement.

I remember seeing from a distance many years ago Chicago's own LGBTQ Halloween parade on Halsted Steet, and now the event has become “Haunted Halsted Halloweek and Parade,” running from Saturday, October 26 to the great day itself this year, and the day of the parade, Thursday, October 31.

Why am I essentially advertising the above events? Because I think, in tandem, Bijou Video provides its own parade of Halloween porn movies you can enjoy anywhere and throughout the entire year. In fact, I would even say Bijou is carrying on the legacy of directors and producers and actors who originated the genre of Halloween porn or horror porn.

Here are some of our films of that genre:

The anthology Scared Stiff features scenes from some of the titles described below, plus others like Gayracula and Four in Hand.
 

Night of the Occultist, a Jaguar film from 1973 (year of the first Village Hallloween parade!) directed by Kenneth Andrews, is certainly overall quite “trippy,” but the major Halloweeneseque scene in this campy yet also complex film is an ancient Egyptian ritual, a sacrifice to Osiris, the judge of the dead (he serves as the gatekeeper between life, death, and the afterlife), which involves gay sex in an temple.
 

A Ghost of a Chance, also from 1973, features some ghostly sex with a deceased boyfriend, but the overall story is not just about the crossing of the seemingly insurmountable boundary between death and life, but about how sex with multiple partners itself is a way of liberation from imposed boundaries.
 

Strictly Forbidden, a Hand in Hand film from 1974 directed by Jack Deveau, reimagines the ancient trope of a statues coming to life as the main character enjoys sexual contact with many in a Parisian museum.
 

Falconhead, a complex, profound film from 1977 directed by Michael Zen, plays with some archetypal images such as mirrors and falcons as several men undergo rituals of initiation that involve mysterious, ambiguously violent interactions.
 

And, perhaps the true depths of the genre occurs in Peter de Rome's The Destroying Angel, which combines religion, psychedelic drugs, sex, and violence in one amazing conflagration as a young priest abandons his vocation and plunges into what is really the depths of himself he had previously repressed.
 

What's interesting and significant about these films is that, yes, they are related to Halloween, but not in the conventionally “spooky,” explicit way.

By wrestling with the endlessly mysterious and fascinating conjunctions between sex, death, religion, and violence, they really end up targeting the deep, primal roots of the holiday, something LGBTQ persons, themselves cultural boundary-crossers, can connect with intimately.

It's a day when boundaries dissipate, masks and costumes make us aware that persons are not all what they seem, and somehow we end up experiencing on various levels death and life becoming one.

Mainstream film/television and porn director Tom DeSimone (also credited as Lancer Brooks) was one of the major figures who helped to form the adult industry in the 1970s, during the birth of hardcore pornography as a film genre. Initially shooting films for Shan Sayles of the Park Theatre in the L.A. area, DeSimone made some of the earliest gay porn films within the burgeoning industry, including the very first plotted, feature-length gay porn film, The Collection (1969). DeSimone's porn films typically centered around stories and he made technically high-quality productions - well-made narrative movies with developed characters and performers cast to suit their roles - that showed care for the craft.

Over the span of his porn filmmaking career, which also included sexploitation and bisexual films, DeSimone worked with many important contributors to the industry, including performers Gordon Grant, Al Parker, Jack Wrangler, Roger, Michael Christopher, David Ashfield, J.W King, and Fred Halsted, and filmmakers Nick Elliot, Jason Sato, William Higgins, and Jack Deveau. Deveau's New York-based studio, Hand in Hand Films, distributed several of DeSimone's films (Catching Up [1975], The Idol [1979], and others) and DeSimone also worked behind the scenes with Hand in Hand as the cameraman for three of their releases directed by Deveau (Ballet Down the Highway, Wanted: Billy the Kid, and Good Hot Stuff, all from 1975). (DeSimone extensively discusses his career in the newly released book, Good Hot Stuff, about Hand in Hand and Deveau.) DeSimone also made the historically notable film, Erotikus: History of the Gay Movie (1974), which is part documentary and part porn and which was released as a porn film and played in porn theaters.

DeSimone was one of a small number of individuals from the porn industry who successfully moved into working in mainstream film and television. (See the correction in our previous Casey Donovan blog, which left out mentions of those who did cross over into mainstream work.) This included Hell Night (1981) starring Linda Blair, Reform School Girls (1986) starring punk musician Wendy O. Williams, and extensive television work. (See the bottom of this blog for Tom DeSimone's filmography and links to his movies.)

DeSimone recently answered some questions about his career, which we are excited to share in this week's blog, the first of two installments, this one focusing on his introduction to filmmaking and directing porn films.

Bijou: What are some of your favorite films?

DeSimone: I can't really pick one favorite film out of the thousands I've seen and hundreds I love. On the list are Duel in the Sun, The Letter, 8 ½, The Little Foxes, The Rose Tattoo, Atonement, Pennies from Heaven, Incochine... so you see, I have a lot of favorites. A “favorite” is any film I can watch over and over and never tire of and also one in which I continue to find more and more elements of pleasure each time I view it. Among this list, The Letter is probably my most watched film and it never gets boring and I never cease to discover something new each time.

Bijou: Did you make short films while in school for film? What were those like?

DeSimone: At UCLA, where I got my master's degree, I made three short films. One of them, Wooden Lullaby, won best director at the Cine Film Festival in Washington D.C. Another, The Game, won me a scholarship to complete my studies in graduate school. Both films were screened for the public in the Annual Student Film Programs at UCLA. My film, The Game, got me an interview with Columbia Pictures at the time... but nothing came of that beyond the meeting.

Bijou: What were your goals and philosophy towards making your porn films (especially as one of the people who helped to form hardcore as a genre)? Did those persist or did they change over time as you continued to work in film?

DeSimone: Going into it, I didn't really have a philosophy. That came later. I got started because after film school there just wasn't an easy way to break into the Hollywood firmament. Film students back then weren't being sought after as they are now. I was tired of waiting tables and taking actors' portraits for their resumes.

At that time, adult film theaters were just starting to come out in the open. But they were all straight porn. No one was openly screening gay stuff. Then came the Park Theater near downtown L.A. They were showing “gay loops.” A loop, in the business then, was a short film, no plot or acting but just quickies featuring nudity and not much else... there was NO sexual activity, just implied, like holding hands, walking on the beach, or hugging at sunset... or looking longingly into each other's eyes while reclining – all sorts of innocent attempts to convey gay relationships or gay attraction. And NEVER erect!

Someone suggested to me that I might make a few bucks if I tried something. I contacted the Park Theater, got the name of the owner, and got myself an interview. Long story short, he told me to go shoot something and come back and see him and he'd decide if he was interested in me as a filmmaker. I did a short “loop” and loaded it with sexual activity... nothing hard core but definitely sexual love making... all shot discreetly, of course. I screened it for him and he hired me on the spot, built me a studio with cutting rooms, a sound stage, and anything I needed to turn out features for his theaters. That was the start of feature films for the gay market. That film was The Collection... followed by many more small, insignificant ones to fill the screen across the country at his theaters.

It wasn't until I started out on my own that I started to think about what I wanted to say or do with my films since, by now, I had created a career out of it all and was becoming known. (Or, at least, Lancer Brooks was.)

I soon discovered that films about “relationships” were most successful. So The Idol, Skin Deep, Catching Up, and also The Harder They Fall were huge successes. (The Harder They Fall was also released under a different title, The Frenchman and the Lovers.) I was interested in exploring gays in love or at least relationships. My stories pretty much gravitated to those situations. I was tired of all the films that started with the pizza boy delivering and ending up on the couch. That's not to say I didn't make a few of those, too. But when I really wanted to do something creative and when I got juiced up to do something, it always seemed to go to the relationship stories.

Bijou: Who was your producer (also credited as a performer in The Collection), Max Blue, from early in your career?

DeSimone: Max Blue was a pseudonym for my partner at the time, Nick Grippo. We often just used silly names on our films because in those days no one was using their real names for legal protection since it was still against the law to make these films. We were always hiding underground. He just pulled that one out of the air since there was a popular film playing then called The Blue Max and he liked it. I chose an even sillier name, Lancer Brooks (just totally made up), but fate took over. When we were meeting with the distributor who peddled our films to theaters, he said to be sure to use the same names we did on our previous one, because they liked our work and he could barter for more money if he told them it was from the same team... so we checked what we had used on our last feature and it turned out to be those two names.

Bijou: Did you shoot other films of Jack Deveau's besides the grouping from 1975: Ballet Down the Highway, Wanted: Billy the Kid, and Good Hot Stuff? Did you do much other film work in New York around that time or were you mostly working in L.A.?

DeSimone: After I did Erotikus and was shopping for a theater in New York, I met Jack. He was operating the 55th St. Playhouse at the time and was running the very successful Boys in the Sand, so he was looking for something to follow it up since he knew it couldn't run forever and he needed product to keep the theater operating. We met, he looked at the film, and was interested in us working together on several projects. Jack was pretty inexperienced in filmmaking but wanted to get into the production side. He figured I could bring something to Hand in Hand. I spent a summer in New York working with him on several projects, then returned to L.A. and did The Idol for his company to release. We remained very good friends up until he passed way due to cancer. He was a great party guy – loved to party hard and long, into the New York underground scene, a lot of drugs and sex and a terrific guy to know... if you had the stamina!

Bijou: Did you know Penelope Spheeris (director of The Decline of Western Civilization and Wayne's World) around the time of Confessions of a Male Groupie (1971)? A couple who are the focus of two of her early short films (I Don't Know and Hats Off to Hollywood) appear in the party scene in Groupie. I was curious about the community of people who make up the cast of that film – I read somewhere that they were a community or group of friends you were affiliated with.

DeSimone: I met Penelope only once at a film festival in L.A. We spoke briefly about the emergence of underground films but we never were involved beyond that meeting. The two people you mention just happened to be in the party. I didn't know them personally.

That big party scene was the reason I made that film. I ran with a pretty eclectic crowd back then and many of the actors who appeared in my films were drawn from that crowd. Many others, who didn't really want to appear having sex in a movie, also wanted to be “in one of my films,” so I decided to make a film featuring all of the crazies I knew and loved. So The Groupie came about – and when I announced I wanted them to all appear in that scene, all hell broke loose and you can see in the film what we were all about. I should mention that, unfortunately - or not, I was on acid while we were filming that scene (most of us were), so I didn't cover as much as I wanted, but what I got was enough to throw together what's up on the screen.
 

Bijou: It's interesting to learn how many friends you worked with in your movies.

DeSimone: I rarely socialized with the models in my films if they weren't already part of my group. For a number of reasons I preferred not to get too involved in their lives and vice versa. If I used friends, they were already friends and in my social group. In Hot Truckin', the redheaded boy at the end – the one in the threeway – was my partner at the time. He was SO hot for Gordon [Grant], I agreed to let him be the trick they lured into the truck. Everyone was happy, particularly my friend, Bob.

My reasons for being separate, if I could, with the models was only because I didn't care to have them know too much about my life or where I lived, etc. I was strictly interested in them as models/actors. For me it was strictly a business situation. Very few outside my inner group even knew what I did or who Lancer Brooks was.
 

Bijou: I guess Groupie was a rare exception, as your film utilizing members of your friend group, in that case.

DeSimone: Yes, Groupie was an exception... but as I mentioned, I made it specifically to make a film and use many of my friends. Sweet Lady Mary was a dear friend, Elaine. The rock group, The Electric Banana, was another trio of buddies who fantasized about being a rock group, so I made them into one for the film. All the players were close friends who had wanted to be in a picture, so I concocted one so that I could use them. The party scene was the culmination of all the gang we ran with in West Hollywood at that time. Of course, there were several in the party scene who just showed up to be in the film. Sadly, 90% of them are gone now. The plague taking most, unfortunately. We had no idea then that what we were experiencing would have such consequences... who did? The cute redhead, Bob, was also a victim years later.
 

Bijou: How did you get such strong performances out of your porn actors who had no acting experiences?

DeSimone: Getting performances was always a challenge. I always blocked out all the action in my films in advance and also broke down the script, scene by scene, even indicating where the dialogue would be in close up, two shots, or masters. That way I could get what I needed to edit the film and the performances in a cohesive work. I knew these guys would never be able to carry an entire scene in a master shot (a mistake many filmmakers made back then). So I would film short sections, working with them on just those few lines at a time, then cover the scene with the other actor or actors in the scene, and it would all play together nicely. If one of them screwed up or was lousy, it was simple to shoot several takes of a close up until it was good, rather than shoot the entire sequence over and over. I was a master at editing and it was fun cutting together a performance from very little. Many times the actors would be amazed (and impressed) when they came to the screening to see the film.
 

Bijou: Which is your favorite of your porn films?

DeSimone: I guess I could say Catching Up, Skin Deep, and The Idol. These, to me, have good plots, good acting, and really decent production values for porn.

Read part two of this interview, focusing on on Tom DeSimone's mainstream film/television career!
 

Tom DeSimone's Partial Directorial Filmography:
(From IMDb and Gay Erotic Video Index)
Links to movies available through Bijou Video

The Collection (as Lancer Brooks) – 1969
One - 1970
Dust Unto Dust (as Lancer Brooks) – 1970
Peter the Peeker – 1971
Lust in the Afternoon - 1971
Gay Tarzan – 1971
Confessions of a Male Groupie – 1971
Black and Blue - 1971
The Gypsy's Ball - 1972
Prison Girls – 1972
Chained (as Lancer Brooks) – 1973
Swap Meat (as Lancer Brooks) – 1973
Sons of Satan (as Lancer Brooks) – 1973
Black Heat (as Lancer Brooks) – 1973
Games Without Rules (as L. Brooks) – 1974
Erotikus: A History of the Gay Movie (as L. Brooks) – 1974
Station to Station (as L. Brooks) – 1974
Everything Goes (aka Anything Goes) (as L. Brooks) – 1974
Duffy's Tavern (as Lancer Brooks) – 1974
Blue Movie Auditions (aka How to Make a Homo Movie) - 1974
Assault (as Lancer Brooks) – 1975
Sur - 1975
Good Hot Stuff – 1975
Aphrodisiacs in the Male Animal (1975)
Catching Up – 1975
Chatterbox! - 1977
Hot Truckin' (as Lancer Brooks) – 1978
The Harder They Fall (aka The Frenchman and the Lovers) – 1977
Gettin' Down (as Lancer Brooks) – 1978
The Idol – 1979
Bad, Bad Boys (aka Bad Boys) (as Lancer Brooks) – 1979
Hawaiian Eyes (aka Gay Guide to Hawaii) – 1979
Private Collection – 1980
Heavy Equipment (as Lancer Brooks) – 1980
Wet Shorts – 1980
The Dirty Picture Show (as De Simone) – 1980
Flesh and Fantasy 1 – 1980
Dirty Books - 1981
Hell Night – 1981
The Concrete Jungle – 1982
Skin Deep (as Lancer Brooks) – 1982
Bi-Coastal (as Lancer Brooks) – 1985
Bi-bi Love (as Lancer Brooks) – 11986
Nightcrawler: A Leathersex Fantasy - 1986
Reform School Girls – 1986
Angel III: The Final Chapter – 1988
Freddy's Nightmares (TV Series, 4 episodes) – 1988/1989
Super Force (TV Series, 6 episodes) – 1991/1992
Dark Justice (TV Series, 18 episodes) – 1991 - 1993
Swamp Thing (TV Series, 3 episodes) – 1992/1993
Acapulco Bay (TV series) – 1995
The Big Easy (TV Series, 4 episodes) – 1996/1997
Coming Distractions (as Lancer Brooks) – 1997
Pensacola: Wings of Gold (TV Series, 1 episode) – 1998
She Spies (TV Series, 1 episode) – 2002

The history of the popular 1970s/1980s gay porn theater, the Adonis Theater - the setting and subject of the classic Hand in Hand Films release A Night at the Adonis (Jack Deveau, 1978) - is discussed in an article we recently came across at back2stonewall. The article states that the Adonis Theater was originally built as the Tivoli Theater in 1921. Initially a vaudeville house, it then became a movie theater before its final incarnation as a porn theater/cruising palace. The Adonis was such a hot venue in the 1970s that, the article states, “it was hard to find a seat... but that was all that was hard to find. Patrons would literally avoid the seats under the balcony's edge at busy times for fear of being showered with semen from high above.”
 

Deveau's film (which Bijou is excited to announce that we are currently finishing re-restoring for a new and improved re-release next week) is an incredibly well-made, hot, entertaining, and historically intriguing look at this venue. The film does an excellent job capturing - in attractive photography that roams the building as it follows its ensemble cast - the physical layout of the space and the atmosphere created there, as well as featuring the theater's actual staff (their real ticket taker appears in the film in a memorable cameo) and detailing its cruising and sex rituals.
 

An insightful IMDb review points to some other notable ways the film illustrates some of the nuances of New York City gay culture in the 1970s. Characters bump into each other and have roundabout connections at this particular night at the Adonis, and, through this, the film deals with “both the very local, small-town 'everyone knows everyone else' nature of the then queer community and the odd coincidences and synchronicities that can happen when cruising takes place.”

One of the lead characters (played by hunky Malo, of porn and mainstream film), passes up a pick up attempt by his boss (porn superstar Jack Wrangler) with the intention of staying home to read a hefty volume, Gay American History, but, as this review says, the book only “tells him tales of sodomites of fallen times who were persecuted, tortured, and murdered by the state; Malo's subsequent visit to the Adonis makes a new kind of American gay history, which is... itself a vanished, historical past now."
 

The review points out that Deveau's film manages to “communicate the ways in which human beings locate themselves in history and space, therein creating themselves through a shared culture” and how an ambitious new employee character embodies “a bit of a prophesy of the future, wherein gay normative self-images in the West will be shaped by business-studies kids out to make bucks from the new gay communities.”

A Night at the Adonis played at the Adonis Theater, itself, and the back2stonewall article quotes an internet posting about the unusual experience of watching it on that very screen: “it was rather odd to be in the exact theater that was being depicted... sort of a movie coming to life all around you. What was happening on the screen was also happening in real life as you were watching the film.”
 

A Night at the Adonis is one of NYC-based studio Hand in Hand Films' productions set in and about a specific gay New York City sex space/landmark. Another is Times Square Strip (1983), set at the Gaiety Theatre, which focuses on the on and off stage antics of the dancers at the Gaiety Male Burlesk.
 

Times, like Adonis, is an ensemble piece set over the course of one night, full of breezy, quippy dialogue, and - though it isn't as full a portrait of its location as is Adonis (it occasionally ventures outside the building for sexual escapades) – it spends considerable time depicting the performances taking place on stage.
 

Wikipedia notes that The Gaiety Theatre was open for nearly 30 years, from 1976 until 2005, and, according to a 2005 New York Times article, attracted mainstream attention “after photos of Madonna and some of the club's dancers were included in her book Sex (1992).” These visitors included John Waters, Divine, Andy Warhol, RuPaul, Diane Keaton, and Shirley MacLaine. The club had an “unrivaled ability to survive, despite the strict zoning laws instituted during the Giuliani administration, thanks to a location just outside a restricted area.” Wikipedia also mentions a few well-known dancers who performed at the theater, including porn stars Joey Stefano, Johnny Harden, Kip Noll, and Leo Ford.

The Adonis Theater, however, did not survive New York City's changes to Times Square, with Mayor Ed Koch “using the AIDS epidemic to clean up Times Square” and “trying to get the theater closed down to tidy it up for the building of the monolith Worldwide Plaza, soon to be built on the next block.” The Adonis attempted to relocate to another theater building at this time, but did not last long there and this second Adonis was closed “in 1994 by the City's Health Department after a raid revealed high-risk sexual activities taking place among patrons.” The original Adonis was demolished in 1995, though a vivid portrait of what it once was remains in Deveau's classic film. In watching it, you almost feel as if you are there.