Hardhat!

Leading purveyors of high-quality gay smut throughout the dawn of theatrical hardcore, by the latter half of the '70s, Jaguar Productions' output had slowed to a crawl, managing only a handful of nevertheless popular and well-regarded films like THE GREASE MONKEYS and THE RIVERMEN (squeaking in at 1981). Seemingly less well known, HARDHAT! Is up to the company's usually high production standards, but evinces the lack of cohesive narrative that would define many of its latter-day efforts.

Less a story than a set-up, the film follows Adonis construction worker Adam (Adam Mitchell), who loves to fantasize about getting it on with his fellow builders. Divorced from his wife (they even have a kid together!), he's currently bedding down with Jeff (genre mainstay Derrick Stanton, in his debut), who does a more than enviable job keeping the home fires burning. Meanwhile, at the construction site, the guys are constantly getting it on, unaware they're under the watch of the neighborhood peeping tom, who loves spying on the action through his telescope.

There's little to all of this for most of the film, with various characters ping-ponging off each other but most of the action centering on Mitchell, who certainly merits it. The film starts with him imagining a truly sensual number between himself and new employee Kip Nelson, a gorgeous blond SoCal surfer type who's more than his match in appearance. Their scene together is perfectly representative of the deft sensuality Jaguar brings to its productions, with both men passionate, invested, and looking like they're experiencing genuine pleasure making love together. The mood is electric - and contagious.

Ditto the following number at Mitchell's house, showing him together with Stanton. A subsequent four-way, illustrating what Derrick gets up to while hubby's away, is equally torrid, and threatens to exhaust the viewer through sheer abundance of riches. All this sex would grow wearisome if it weren't so hot!

The only real throw-away is the scene after, which features two heretofore-unseen construction workers getting it on at the jobsite. It's fine, but nothing to write home about, and given its total lack of connection to the story, feels like unnecessary filler given the film is 85 minutes - a bit too long for an essentially a plotless film. The final 15 minutes vainly attempt to graft a plot onto the preceding 70, with Mitchell's ex-wife asking him to choose between her and his new beau (some choice, given she's never even appeared onscreen!), while studly Nelson answers a personals ad and ends up at the apartment of - you guessed it! - the peeper. No prize for guessing his identity given the paucity of the cast, though I've purposely omitted the character here to preserve some suspense.

All this would be ho-hum sex fair if it weren't delivered with such aplomb. The cast is almost uniformly gorgeous and, as already discussed, thoroughly invested in their performances - as a result, despite its gratuitousness, the film generally succeeds by managing to articulate an incredible amount of onscreen sensuality. In contrast to so much modern porn, it's refreshing to see sexy, clean-cut guys like these really make passionate love onscreen instead of simply going through the motions while playing to the camera. HARDHAT! May not offer much in the way of story, but that's easy to forgive when the sex is this hot. It would make a great second feature to the even more ambitious JOBSITE - nearly three straight hours of hard hats and hard- well...