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,

Two gays teens on the run after seeing a brutal murder. It deals with homosexuality, racism, friendship & love.... and handles them all well, what more could ask from a movie! The acting is sincere, the directing well paced. Overall this is a very entertaining movie

Do you remember the line "I depend on the kindness of strangers"? Well, of course it is from Tennessee Williams‚ "A Streetcar Named Desire‘, and sums up the meaning of the whole play. As it does sum up the meaning of this film. It's about the fight of imagination and reality – and again reality wins. Or so it seems.

If this film has any flaw it's the crime story woven around its center. The gay-hating killer seems an overused cliché nowadays but at the time of the film's production it was probably more than a symbol.

Nevertheless, the film moves – at least me – even a decade after it was made. If not a masterpiece, at least a very, very good film.

The film "Wonderland" (aka "The FruitMachine") is a surprisingly dippy, imaginative romp involving two gay teenaged boys who happen to witness a gangland murder and are forced to flee Liverpool for Brighton. The film takes many inventive turns, several of which involve Eddie's dream lover, a man-dolphin hybrid who actually appears at crucial moments in the film to save Eddie and his partner, Michael. There are many subplots and colorful supporting characters, and the ending, albeit sad, is inevitable. It's worth it if only for the dance sequence at the Fruit Machine, a gay showbar in Liverpool, in which Michael competes for thirty quid. His dance is both erotic and touchingly naive. Both boys, Emile Charles and Tony Forsyth, should have had big careers in film. Apart from one distracting editing lapse that blunts the finale, this is a superior film, in that it refuses to indulge in stereotyping and doesn't condescend to its lead characters.

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