The Fruit Machine

The Fruit Machine is a tender and loving film about a pair of gay male teens from Liverpool. But if the pejorative of fruit is to describe them, than they are as different as apples and oranges.

Emile Charles is an effete biracial sixteen year old who likes nothing more than watching old flickswith his mom at home. Tony Forsyth is a street wise rent bpy and that's redundancy because if you aren't street wise you won't last long as a rent boy. Forsyth has to do a lot looking out for Charles.

Never more so when they witness a murder at a gay club of its drag queen owner with a machete. They flee to Brighton and have some further adventures there.

The boys are a pair of finely scripted characters fleshed out nicely with good performances and direction. In the supporting cast noe Robbie Coltrane as the lckless club owner.

One good gay themed film that has held up well since the 80s,

A beautiful, powerful and very much underrated British gritty gay thriller from the late 80's, released in the UK as The Fruit Machine and in the US as Wonderland. It is passionate, resolute, beautifully directed, filmed and played that I would have thought it would have been higher in the book Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time than the ranking it was given.

The Fruit Machine is a wonderful and poignant tale of growing up, it combines the rite of passage, buddy flick with a road movie genres in perfect symmetry and also shoves in a bit of a thriller just for the sake of it. BAFTA winner Philip Saville directs Emile Charles and Tony Forsyth as Eddie and Michael, two gay mates on the very brink of adulthood as they head into the adventure of their lives. These two friends may both be gay but their sexuality is the only thing they seem to have in common. In all other respects, they are as different as the proverbial chalk and cheese, Eddie is soft, gentle, sensitive and fragile. He adores nothing more than watching old classic black and white movies with his mum. Michael is much more streetwise, tough, manly and loves video games.

The story then follows them as they head away from the mean inner city streets and enjoy the wonderful seaside exuberant Brighton! Its so lovely, wonderfully made, easy to view, moving whilst also being funny.

Read more and find out where this film made it in the Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time book, search on Amazon for Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time, or visit - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007FU7HPO

No plot spoilers. I saw this on tv when it was made,1988? Younger viewers might be surprised that Channel 4 used to make some great dramas as well as some awful ones. Now it shows reality crap and horse racing.

I recall liking and being a bit shocked when I saw this. There is not a lot to the story but it is a trip back to the 1980s I suppose. I had looked for a long time for the dvd and am a bit disappointed that I did not enjoy watching the film more than I did

This odd movie tells the tale of two gay boys in the UK who witness a murder and are then pursued by the killer who wants to leave no witnesses.

Eddie is somewhat effeminate and likes to spend his time with his mother watching old romantic movies on the telly and retouching her roots while she tells him tales of how she was almost a star. Eddie is a dreamer and sometimes even has visions. He also has an abusive Dad who doesn't want a `poofter' for a son.

Michael is a beautiful rent boy living on the streets after escaping from a youth detention center. Everyone wants him but it's for only one thing.

Somehow the two boys have met up and become best mates. When Eddie decides to run away from home and the abusive father, Michael swears to take care of him. And so the boys begin their adventures, first in gay nightclub called the Fruit Machine and then later in Brighton accompanied by a retiring opera tenor. In Brighton, Eddie visits Wonderland a seaside aquarium with a trained dolphin show. There he meets a girl animal rights advocate and Eddie becomes obsessed with setting the dolphins free. Meanwhile Michael is `paying the rent' with the tenor using the only currency that he has. Unfortunately the killer has followed them to Brighton.

There is a very touching love story here between the two boys and I wanted to know more. How did they meet and become friends? What have they said to each other about their mutual attraction? One can intuit a lot from what is shown but there could have been so much more. Is Eddie still a virgin? How much does he know about how Michael supports himself? Has he never made an attempt to get physical with Michael because he knows?

This movie seemed to me to be two movies uncomfortably joined into one. The whole `pursued by a killer' plotline seemed to have been grafted onto the main story, perhaps to make it more palatable to the general public and hence more commercial. As far as I'm concerned they needn't have bothered. The story of the relationship between the two boys was more than enough and the sporadic appearance of the killer was a jolting distraction to the story I was really interested in.

After viewing "Silence Like Glass", I was fascinated by the strength of Mr. Payne's performance and wanted to discover his "film roots". The closest I could get to, (until I saw "Privates on Parade"), was "The Fruit Machine", or as its known by me, "Wonderland". Mr. Payne's "Echo" leaves ripples in his wake...