Sabado à Noite no Baths

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.

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.

I was in my teens when this film came out, but I remember the times (I first saw it at an art house in LA). The plot of Saturday Night at the Baths has less to do with bath house culture and more to do with the exploration that was going on at the time. The leads do a good job of showing the freeness and openness of the sexual revolution (google it), so much so that when one takes a walk to the other side, aka a gay rendezvous, there is a thought that their straight relationship just may last. The film took my breath as I recalled the often silliness of pre-AIDs existence. All that passed with the millions of gay men who died in the years following this film. Since then, our culture has hardened, but it was nice to once again see how innocent we were despite the oppression of the time. When viewing the film, consider the boldness of the filmmaker and actors. This film was created before being gay was accepted and should be viewed through that lens. That alone makes this a groundbreaking film.

This film is of historic importance in gay culture. First, it was filmed at the Continental Baths. Second, it was one of the first films exploring this aspect of gay life in the 1970's. This film depicts much of what I was familiar with as the struggle of coming out gay back before it was acceptable. It's important for younger gay men to understand what it was like in the days before broader acceptance existed.

Yes, many of the production values aren't the best but for what this film represents that can be overlooked. The acting isn't the greatest but they feel like sincere honest performances.

Once I got into it, I was captivated. I should note there is male and female nudity for those that might be offended.

The performance of "Pretty Girl" by Jane Olivor is outstanding.

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).