Subway

Watching as objectively as possible from a hetero p-o-v I found the XXX sex scenes in SUBWAY to be routine and boring, but the film generated a palpable NYC atmosphere that was very impressive. Too bad filmmaker Ian McGraw couldn't have been making a non-sex movie instead.

What we have is a guy (knowns as Leather Vest Man), who vaguely looks like Jake Gyllenhaal, latter's BROKEBACK assignment 2 decades later a pure coincidence) haunting the IRT stations in search of brothers to love. Midway through the film he answers a phone ringing in a phone booth near Penn Station (there's a plot ploy hardly used again until the current "Person of Interest" TV series) and a guy named Rolf tells him to meet him one stop south (28th Street) to be introduced to a literally underground club of anonymous sex-seekers.

The orgy that ensues is guys mechanically doing the f&s routine, with even the novelty of a cock poking through a hole in the wall being familiar from many other adult movies. McGraw delivers the requisite quantity of sex for an adult movie house denizen to watch, but it's dull.

Where SUBWAY excels is its practical locations on Manhattan's West Side. The density of graffiti drawn on all the walls and especially on the subway cars is a tangible reminder of what was, and a good corrective to the cult of nostalgia that has cropped up in recent years for "pre-Disney" NYC.

The musical accompaniment is jazz, beginning naturally enough with "Take the 'A' Train" but mostly Chick Corea in his electric band days. Finale packed a wallop for me, as the movie ends with a mournful shot of a train departing the 23rd Street station - right near where I live so I've been in there 10,000 times, though never standing around late at night.