The Boys of Venice

William Higgins' first important film, it fundamentally changed many people's minds about what gay adult film could be like. Although, like the typical Higgins film, a series of loosely related episodes, it provides insight into California gay hedonism in the years just before the AIDS epidemic was identified.

The film also chronicles the wacky characters attracted to Venice's youth-oriented public spaces adjacent to the beach. The film's closing shots include the sobering images of elderly folks rummaging through trash cans for discarded food remnants, which was a grim reality throughout West L. A. in that era.

The film's principal fame is the remarkable 19 and a half minute episode that begins with Emanuelle Bravos (in his only film) in a conversation with his photographer friend Anthony Scott (whose erotic solo sex scene precedes the encounter with Bravos.) Bravos tells Scott about an experience in a disco the night before.

Bravos and his girlfriend were disco dancing on a small dance floor with other straight and gay couples. Soon Kip Noll and his girl friend dance into the camera's view.

After a few moments, Bravos and Noll accidentally back into each other, and when Bravos looks at Noll, he suddenly is overwhelmed by a fantasy in which Noll and Bravos are naked and then begin a period of ardent sex, culminating in a flip-flop of sexual positions on a pool table.

Then, suddenly, the scene returns to the Noll and Bravos fully clothed and attentive to dancing with the women they brought.

All of the scenes are interesting, but the sex scenes at the beginning and end of the film, both starring Eric Ryan, are particularly noteworthy.

The first is a roller-blading sex encounter between Ryan and Derrick Stanton, that takes place after they have collided accidentally. Succoring Stanton's bruises, Ryan accompanies Stanton back to the latter's apartment. In Stanton's bathroom, examining the bruises on Stanton's leg, the sexual attraction of Ryan and Stanton to each other is quickly and erotically requited. (In more original sex talk than is associated with the genre Stanton exclaims that he has a wild man inside him.)

The last sex scene, that pairs Ryan with Guy DeSilva, as married men returning to DeSilva's home (adjacent to the Venice Merry-Go-Round), begins with an amusing exchange with DeSilva's wife, who expresses disgust with her husband and her conclusion that her suspicions that her husband is gay are well-founded.

As she storms out, Ryan and DeSilva decide that if they if DeSilva is going to get the rap for gay adultery anyway, they should make the most of it. What follows is one of the most passionate episodes in a great film, with the sultry Ryan showing how great and how underrated a performer (and actor) he was in this genre.