Saturday Night at the Baths

I would LOVE to see this movie again. I saw it as a double bill with "Something for Everyone" with Michael York in 1975. It was incredible. I went home and shaved off my beard. The movie was entertaining and, beyond that, sincere and optimistic - like the spirit of the late 60's and early 70's. If I ever had the chance to see this film again, within about a 300 mile radius, I'd be there. It was transformative. It lives as a legend in my memory.

There are two versions of this movie on DVD, both released by Water Bearer Films, but they are very different. Get the SECOND version! The first was a chopped-up version released without the director's participation in 2006. Later an uncut version of the movie was found in the director's files and released as "director's cut" on a new DVD in 2008. The second DVD not only is a cleaner copy with better video and audio, but it includes several minutes of footage missing from the first DVD.

Most important **BY FAR** is a five-minute love scene between Scotti and Michael that not only balances the earlier scene between Michael and Tracey but blows it clean out of the water. The scene with Tracey is a sex scene; the scene with Scotti is a love scene, infinitely more sensual, passionate, romantic and erotic than the mechanical humping with Tracey. The gay love scene alone kills forever the criticism that this movie is worth watching only for its documenting of a life and a world long gone. It qualifies this as a very good movie in its own right and one of the sexiest gay moves of that or any era.

The new DVD has a guy's torso in a white towel on the cover, with the title like a blue bumper sticker over his crotch, instead of the first DVD's dark, murky pink and black cover with the title in the center. It also includes an extensive, fantastic making-of interview with the director David Buckley and a wide-ranging interview with Steve Ostrow, owner of the Baths - both filmed recently - which were not on the first DVD; and a few extra seconds of the magical Jane Olivor performance of "Pretty Girl" and of the fabulous Judy impersonator lost from the first DVD.

Don't bother renting and certainly don't buy the butchered 2006 DVD with two pink profiles on a black cover; BUY the 2008 director's cut DVD with the guy in the towel. You won't regret it.

This film does represent a historical piece of gay film. It's funny, dreadful, sweet and tender in bits! Don't watch this if you take things too seriously.

While watching this I was faced with conflicting thoughts. I was a young man in NYC in the 70's, and had discovered the fabled Continental Baths a year previous to when this was released. The Continental was a ground-breaking establishment - up until then the majority of the bathhouses were Mafia-run, filthy, run-down and unsafe, and then Steve Ostrow took over the decayed health club in the basement of the Hotel Ansonia and turned it into a true pleasure palace - with original art (I remember a series of wicked Tomi Ungerer drawings and some early Plexiglass sculptures), great lighting, music, a juice bar - and a private elevator up to the roof sun deck. For me, just coming out, it was an exhilarating and liberating space to be in, where I could freely express my sexuality and begin to meet the rest of the community (that I'd barely knew existed).

So to see the few interior shots, and the shots of Greenwich Village as it looked in the 1970's was a treat - as was seeing a bunch of skinny men with so-so bodies and remembering that we didn't have to face the Gym Facists back then - it was enough of a wonder to just be young and queer.

On the other hand, the film is a shapeless mess, with a thin plot and an abrupt ending that I found infuriatingly simplistic and weak. Some of the acting's decent, (there's also an eerie Judy Garland turn by Caleb Stone and an all too brief glimpse of Jane Olivor performing), but the film feels partly like a pitch for the Continental (no surprise, as Steve Ostrow is listed as a producer and appears in a few scenes as well).

I agree with the previous writers on all complaints about this movie. Apparently the owner of Continental Baths decides to make a movie about his just opened establishment in 1975. The script is very thin, the acting is pretty bad at times and the shots even worse. However, given that the movie was made in 1975 at a venue where very little film material is probably available I do think it is worth watching. Don't watch it because of the script, acting or quality of the movie itself. If you watch as a document of a phenomenon of that time in a dramatized way I think it makes much more sense. The movie can be found on YouTube now.