Moving!

I never saw any Wakefield Poole movie in a cinema in the '70s, simply because I did not attend "All-Male" theaters. But catching up with them on DVD reissues I am unimpressed.

The director states that he made MOVING! for $4,800 so it's hard to judge by mainstream cinema standards, more like the 1-day wonders of the time. Content is exclusively explicit and (by most yardsticks) extreme homosexual sex acts, shot MOS with no narrative or story content - just like modern gonzo efforts.

I would like to place this work in context: like Poole's claim to fame debut feature BOYS IN THE SAND it appears an extension of the work in mainstream TV and cinema of Ken Russell. Russell's best film, SONG OF SUMMER for BBC, popularized the music of British composer Frederick Delius, which was used for the distinctive BOYS soundtrack by Poole. The late British filmmaker stands alongside Bergman and Warhol (perhaps throw in Godard) among the leading influences on cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, and in particular on pornographic films.

Bergman popularized the dark side (THE VIRGIN SPRING and THE SILENCE notably), Warhol the primitivism of technique and confrontational improvisation that spawned tens of thousands of lesser movies, while Russell's predilection for fantasizing in a masturbatory manner proved irresistible, unless you were an ornery film critic.

MOVING! is simplicity indeed: 3 silent vignettes, each introduced by a montage of signage referring respectively to houses for sale, motel vacancies, and rooms for rent. First and third segment consist of a man fantasizing about the sudden appearance of another man who will sexually dominate him, each coming out of the reverie at sequence's end -back to reality. Each of these two is centered around fisting, last segment in which you might call it "wristing" so extreme is the sexual practice which for a cinema audience literally separates the men from the boys. Both vignettes are silent accompanied by classical music, like BOYS.

Middle segment titled "Rooms for Rent" is filler, with Burt Edouards and Curt Gerald having sex in the shower and then on a bed in their motel room, ending with turning the light out. Despite Poole's rep, it could be a random loop, one of anonymous thousands of no merit whatsoever. Its jazz/funk keyboards score is terrible.

Opener titled "House for Sale" stars Poole's meal-ticket Casey Donovan/Calvin Culver, who is often credited with the success of BOYS IN THE SAND. He wanders through the lavish grounds and greenhouse of a home to let, and imagines a guy (owner?) materializing at the pool, with whom he has sex. The guy fists Culver who stands over the man to cum on his chest and face while still being fisted from below. Though aimed at a mail-order audience safely closeted at home, this footage in 1974 must have had an impact on theatrical audiences when shown.

Finale stars Tom Wright (identified as Terry Weekly by interviewees on the DVD who recall the film and its collaborators) in "Apartment for Rent", a vignette evidently influenced by Bertolucci, whose LAST TANGO IN Paris, lest we forget, was indeed the big cheese in cinema back in 1973 (I saw it in 1972 at the famous New York Film Festival premiere at Alice Tully Hall and was not as impressed as Pauline Kael and others, largely because I was looking forward to quality (and cast) on the level of THE CONFORMIST, stupid me.)

Wandering through an unlocked, bare apartment in Frisco, Wright/Weekly sees a full-length, back lit drawing (attributed to Chuck Arnett) of Poole's lover Peter Fisk. He fantasizes the drawing coming to life as Fisk, who fists our hero about as drastically as one could imagine and they mechanically have sex. Absence of passion or emotion renders this as gonzo junk in my book, but for fetishists it undeniably presents the intended shock value that even Russell might begrudgingly acknowledge, he being Mr. Shock at his end of the cinema continuum. The 16mm film to video transfer and color degradation over the years renders this even harder to watch than intended, as when Fisk removes his fist the reddish tint of the image gives it a false bloody look.

If you had never seen this multiple story gay porn exercise in the edgy world of extreme sex (one of the three stories is out there, big time), then chances are you may never see it due to laws having changed dramatically as to what the standards are for allowing distribution of some materials, i.e., fisting. As far as pure documentation goes, this film stands alone in its exposition of raw nastiness done with a smattering of style and power that no other display of this kind of homosexual outlaw sex even comes close to duplicating. Good luck finding a copy; but it is a gem. Definitely archive stuff, but not for the squeamish or faint-hearted or those not well-versed in the world of sexuality.