Aug 30, 2025

"Hell of a Summer": Six gay, bi, and "not into labels" guys work together to prove that gay people don't exist. And there's a psycho-slasher.


Link to the n*de dudes

I haven't reviewed many movies lately because I've been burned several times.  

There are promos of two men gazing longingly at each other, but it turns out that they are about to fight, not kiss.  

There are trailers with guys buddy-bonding and no girls, but when you click "play," you get five minutes of a man and woman in the bedroom.  

There are movies starring 35 gay male actors, and every single one of them is playing a straight guy.  



For example, the summer camp psych-slasher movie Hell of a Summer (2023) just dropped on Hulu with an icon featuring three obviously gay guys staring at a bloody axe.  

When I checked the cast list, I discovered that five of the top seven male cast members are gay or bi in real life.  

Obviously this will be a movie about a group of gay guys fighting a psycho-slasher.

Time to check the trailer.

Scene 1: Jason loves Camp Pineaway so much that he returns year after year.  Now age 24, he gives a "welcome" speech to the new counselors, with the rules: no smoking, no drinking, no cell phones.

Jason is played by Fred Hechinger (top photo and icon left), who is heterosexual but played the "I'm gay but the skittish producers won't let me say so" Emperor Caracalla in Gladiator II.

Scene 2:  The campers haven't arrived yet, so the counselors party.  I don't notice any boy-girl coupling. The extremely femme Chris arrives with his boyfriend Bobby, and yells "Hey, Girl!" at a girl named Shannon.

Chris is played by Finn Wolfhard (icon right), who is "bisexual." Usually this means attracted to men and women, but apparently Finn means attracted exclusively to men but not wanting to say "gay," just in case he may be attracted to a woman in the distant future.

Boyfriend Bobby is played by Finn's real-life boyfriend Billy Bryk (left and icon center).  He is "not into labels," meaning "gay, but afraid to admit it because then people might think he was gay or something."

Finn and Billy are also the writers and directors.  This is their project.



Scene 3
: Later, femme Chris kisses Shannon?  WTF?

And brags to boyfriend Bobby that he did stuff with her   Why isn't the boyfriend upset?  Are you a feminine-presenting heterosexual with a gay bestie, Girlfriend?  That's a big gay tease.

I have Hechinger's backside and two n*de dudes to tide you over on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.  This is going to get rocky.

More after the break

Aug 29, 2025

"Dad Can't Know That I'm Gay": An Abraham Gemstone Adventure, with Ash, some twink d*cks, and a special appearance by Pontius and Stacy

 

 
Previous: Pontius Gemstone and the boy named Stacy. 


Link to the n*de dudes

In this story, Abraham is 16 years old, and Ash is 17.  All models in the illustrations are over 18.

August 23: The first night of The Play that Goes Wrong, and everything did go wrong!  It was supposed to be about mishaps during a performance, with forgotten lines, broken props, and so on, but Ash really did forget his lines, miss his mark, and open his eyes while dead!  It was unusual for juniors to get starring roles, even during the Lowland Summer Stock -- usually they went to seniors preparing to study drama at prestigious universities.  So this was a big opportunity -- that he flubbed.  




After the requisite standing ovation, he wanted to slink out quietly, skip the cast party, and go home, but Pontius Gemstone and Stacy, two guys from his skateboarding group, were waiting in the wings, along with the cutest boy Ash had ever seen: a round face, blue-grey eyes, a shock of unruly brown hair.  He looked familiar, but Ash couldn't place him.

"My man!" Pontius exclaimed, pulling him into a hug.  "We had to come out and support our skating bro!"

"So...er...how did you like the show?" he asked the cute boy.  

He  said "Nice" in a near whisper, and looked up at Pontius.

"You know my little brother Abraham, right?"  

Now he remembered.  "Oh, sure -- I've seen you around the skate park, and in French class last year?"  He turned to Pontius.  "This guy spends three-fourths of the class not saying a word, and then suddenly he gives a five-minute spiel on Cocteau."

"Cock Two?" Pontius repeated.  "Sounds like my kind of writer."  

Stacy laughed and grabbed his arm.  "Be good!"

"Oh, I'm always good, Stace."

Wait -- were Pontius and Stacy dating?  He knew that Stacy was gay-- but didn't Pontius like girls?  

"We're...um...going out for pizza," Abraham said, looking down.  "Do you want to come with us?"

"En Francais, s'il vous plait."

He grinned -- a smile that made Ash melt!  "Veux-tu manger une pizza avec nous ? Et baise-moi "

And kiss me?  Whoa....  


They stopped at Famulari's for a bacon-cheeseburger pizza.  Yep, Pontius and Stacy started dating while he was in the hospital after the Gator Farm Massacre.  Stacy didn't want to tell their parents or anyone in the skating group yet.  He didn't explain why, but Ash suspected that it was because Pontius didn't seem like the monogamous type, and why get everyone all excited for them if they were going to break up in a few weeks?  

Once he had about a quart of soda in him, Abraham opened up.  His parents took him to Paris for his tenth birthday, and he was hooked.  He wanted to major in French in college, and become a translator.  He liked Heartstopper on Nickelodeon, country-Western music, mountain bikes, water-skiing, and scary movies.

Ash saw his chance: "Have you seen Sinners?  It's about twin brothers fighting vampires during the Great Depression."

"Sounds cool," Abraham said, flashing that incredible smile.  "Where's it playing?"

Ash checked his cell phone.  "At the Terrace.  I'm performing tomorrow and Sunday, but we could go on Tuesday night, if you're free."

Pontius began "Sure, we'd...", but Stacy shushed him.  "I mean, sorry, we have plans.  Why don't you and Abraham go together?"

Abraham looked down at his plate. "That'd be ok."

"Great.  I'll pick you up..."

"No!" he said forcefully, almost angrily.  "I'll pick you up..."

They all stared.  


"See, Grandad gave me a car for my sixteenth birthday, so I like to do the driving."

Ash's performance was better on Saturday night, and nearly perfect for the Sunday matinee, but still, the hours dragged.  He couldn't stop thinking of Abraham's smile, and resisted the urge to text him every five minutes.  He still texted a lot, just not every five minutes.

August 26: The movie was one of the best he'd ever seen, and the date was the best he'd ever had, cuddling against the amazingly cute Abraham Gemstone, arranging to reach for the popcorn when he did so their hands could touch.  But things came crashing down when Abraham dropped Ash off at his house, and he leaned in for a kiss.

Abraham moved his head.  "Hey, watch it!"

Ash's stomach churned.  Wasn't this a date?  Wasn't Abraham gay? "Sorry.  I thought..."

He was staring straight ahead.  "It's ok."

"If you don't like me in that way, we can always be friends, right?"

"Sure."

"Shake hands?"  He held out his hand.  Abraham took it, pressed the open palm to his face, and closed his eyes.  Was he trembling?

"Are you ok?" 

"No.  I mean, yeah, sure, of course."  He dropped Ash's hand.  "Good night."

When Ash texted a "thanks for a nice evening" later, he didn't respond.  And in the morning, when he texted "Are we still friends?", no response.  



The full story, with n*de photos, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Aug 28, 2025

Ethan Wacker: The former teen spy, Bizaardvark manager, and Vanderbilt fratboy looks good in a suit

 


Link to the n*de photos


I only knew three things about Ethan Wacker before beginning the research: 


1. At 5'7", he's a member of the Short Guy Brigade

2. He has an amazing physique.

3. He has a lot of male friends.  



A lot of male friends.






















Actually, I'm getting tired of posting photos of Ethan and his male friends.  Let's check his biography.

Born in Connecticut in 2002, moved to South Korea and then to Hawaii.













His acting credits begin in 2006 (at the age of four!) with a video game called Papa Louie: When Pizza Attacks


More video games and animation followed, plus two episodes of the teencom KC Undercover (2015-18), a Disney Channel teencom about "an outspoken and confident technology whiz and skilled black belt" who becomes a spy.   

Ethan played the son of the Vice President of the U.S. 

Then he appeared in Hawaii Five-0, See Plum Run, Tour of Mythicality, and 63 episodes of Bizaardvark (2016-2019).  




More after the break

Nick Vardakas: Adult toy guy, lucky f*king dude, Atari spirit, Dillon's boyfriend, IT major. A lot of n*de pics, but is he gay?

 


Link to the n*de dudes

I thought I was finished with Gemstone alumni, but there are several more, and Nick Vardakas is of special interest.

 In Episode 3.1, Kelvin and Keefe start a Smut Buster project with the teens, buying up adult toys (so adults can't get them?).  Nick is shown examining a toy that gay men are particularly fond of.

In Episode 3.3, Nick is one of the teens making anti-smut signs as Kelvin invites Keefe to Cousin's Night, and in Episode 3.4, he appears at the Parents-Teens United Party where Keefe is outed.

His father is Nick Arapoglou, who later confronts Kelvin about the "rumors swirling around" (after confiscating the toy from his son's room?).



Our Nick grew up in Charleston and attended Wando High School in Mount Pleasant, where the Gemstone Salvation Center is located (in fiction).  He appeared in Way Off Broadway and Dracula: A Radio Play, and participated in Army Junior ROTC and the swim team.  











He also posted a video of a school film project where he tries to get the courage to talk to a cute boy.

Wait -- talk to a cute boy?

Nick's social media up to that point consists entirely of buddies -- no girls except his mother.  No mention of a senior prom.


No girls at his graduation party in June 2021.  

Those are some interesting femme rings, buddy, and did you get your hair frosted?

But he's interested in mechanics and ROTC.  He and his buds visit a Porsche Museum.  These aren't the typical gay guy's interest.








Nick's first professional acting job, on The Righteous Gemstones, came while he was a student at Triton Technical College in North Charleston.  He also started a career in modeling (in case you are wondering, 6'0", waist 32", shoe size 12"). 

He received a certificate in cyber security in 2023, and transferred to the College of Charleston, where as of this writing he is majoring in IT.  His "About Me" page says that he has experience in acting, mechanics, cooking, IT, and customer service, and speaks English, Spanish, and Italian. Not Greek? Vardakas is a Greek name.





And three more acting credits:

In Lucky F*king Kid (2024), an ad for Lucky Energy Drink shown "on all social media," Nick plays a 23-year old "no money loser" who is paid to deliver a "totally unpaid testimonial."

The Hitchhiker (2024) was written and directed by Ben Beauchamp and Timons Flower (who directed  Spider-Man: The Dark Age with Jak Kristowski) and stars Gemstone alum Dillon Brady as the Hitchhiker.  Nick plays his boyfriend or victim (it's hard to tell from the trailer).

More after the break

Russell Posner: The incredibly cute gay teen of "The Mist" plays a politician, gets tied up, shows his d*ck, and vanishes. With bonus n*de Morgan Spector and Jack Black

 



Link to the n*de dudes.


I used this photo of an incredibly well hung guy as an  illustration for my profile of the Norwegian Fire Viking.  He looks a lot like the incredibly cute Russell Posner, so I thought I would do a profile, on the off chance that they are the same person.





Turns out that the incredibly cute Russell Posner is not too easy to track down.

Famous Birthdays promises "A complete biography."  The complete biography consists of: "Canadian actor, born in 2003." 

Rotten Tomatoes adds: "began acting in commercials while in elementary school, and made his stage debut in Lost in Yonkers in 2012." When he was nine years old?

Broadway World likewise promises a "complete biography," and says only that he starred in The Mist.

His listing on We Audition says only that he's a "New York based actor" 


Trying to find him by googling "Russell Posner" and any of "high school," "college," "theater," "commercials," "Canada," and "actor" yields a guy from Florida who died at age 77 and a postdoctoral researcher in oncology.

Plus a shirtless photo of an incredbly cute guy who doesn't look like him.






Russell has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, beginning with the 11 year old son in Eugene! (2012), a tv movie starring Eugene Mirman.

He played the 14-year old son of  Dan Landsman (Jack Black) in The D Train (2015).  Dan is organizing a high school reunion, and tries to get the most popular guy in school, Oliver (James Marsden), to come.  They end up doing incredibly s*xy stuff.  

Next Russell played the son of a journalist who decides to research The Pirates of Somalia (2017).

Russell's most famous work to date is in The Mist (2017), based on the Stephen King novel.  I just read the plot synopsis on the fan wiki, but it sounds incredibly homophobic:

As a murderous mist descends upon the town, high school Adrian (Russell) is at a party with his girlfriend, getting bullied for being gay (wait, he has a girlfriend...).  Later while taking refuge in a hospital, he kisses Tyler (Chris Gray), who beats him up, then relents and agrees to do stuff.

He is kidnapped by a psych ward patient who sees "the incredible evil" in him.  Must be about being gay

His Dad says that he could have loved him "in spite of being gay,"  if only he were "right in the head."  In spite of?  

More after the break

Jacob Tremblay: Gay sea monster, gay subtext Miracle, heterosexist Good Boy, Boyfriend. With Brady Noon and n*de dudes

  


Link to the n*de dudes



You probably saw Luca (2021), the Disney/Pixar animated movie about the friendship between the closeted sea monster boy (Jacob Tremblay) and a human boy named Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer). And you were probably upset when director Enrico Casarosa vehemently denied the possibility of a gay reading of the couple.  "They're kids!  They're much too young to be gay!"   

Got it, Enrico. All boys are born heterosexual,  Gay is something that happens in adulthood.  Gay about who you invite into your bed.  Heterosexual is the Eternal Feminine that draws us to the City of God. 

Yeah, I was unhappy, too.  


But it wasn't the fault of the actors.  I heard that Jack Dylan Grazer and Jason Maybaum (general voices) are gay.  Let's see if Luca himself, Jacob Tremblay, is involved in any gay-friendly projects.

He has 43 acting credits on the IMDB, most long before Luca.  I've never heard of most of them, but there seem to be some interesting gay subtexts here and there:

Gord's Brother (2015): The human Gord and his monster brother (Jack Irvine, Raphael Alejandro) searach for the legendary City of Monsters.  Jacob plays the Young Gord.




Wonder (2017): "The incredibly inspiring and heartwarming story" of a boy with facial differences who goes to school.  How to come up with a title that gives you absolutely no clue to what the movie is about.  

There's a girl -- there's always a girl -- but he makes a male friend (Noah Jupe), too.  




Good Boys
 (2019): Three six-grade boys skip school to go on an "epic adventure" involving two of them (Jacob, Brady Noon) trying to win the Girls of Their Dreams (of course).  The third (Keith L. Williams) is a bullying victim who doesn't try to win a girl.  Hey, in a raunchy, heterosexist  "coming of age" comedy, I'll take any gay hints I can get.  

Will Forte plays one of the dads.









More Brady Noon on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

More after the break

Aug 27, 2025

The Norwegian Fire Viking: Keefe's Fire Dance double is muscular and big beneath the belt, but the braggadochio and spelling errors....

 

Link to the n*de photos

In Righteous Gemstones Episode 3.3, Keefe entertains the family at Cousins' Night with a fire dance.  



A professional fire dancer taught Tony Cavalero how to use the rope darts, and stepped in when it came time to set them on fire.








The fire dancer is not listed in the IMDB cast list, so his identity remained a mystery to fans until recently, when Tony Cavalero "liked" his Instagram post about the experience.  He is Phillip Funderud, aka the Norwegian Fire Viking.  According to his professional description, he is  "a muscley circus artist/fire performer specializing in spinning and fire breathing."

It's muscular, dude.

His stunting profile says that after the Gemstones, he was hired to do fire dancing regularly on HBO shows, but nothing is listed on the IMDB.




Phillip is also a model, fitness trainer, general stunt performer, and bodybuilder (he competed for the first time at the NPR Atlantic Coast Championships in 2024, and won the True Novice award). 

There aren't many biographical details available, no home town or high school.  He speaks "a little Norwegian," so we can conclude that his parents moved to the U.S. before he was born or when he was a baby.


 Now Phillip lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.  He is heterosexual, with a wife and daughter posted in the third photo on his Instagram.  

More after the break

Aug 26, 2025

Maxwell Jenkins: The "Lost in Space" guy and his boyfriend visit Paris, with travel tips and n*de Parisian dudes

 


Link to the n*de dudes


When I last profiled Maxwell Jenkins, in April 2025,  the former Lost in Space Will Robinson was starring in The Bondsman with Kevin Bacon and majoring in Global Studies at UCLA.  He had a lot of beefcake and guy-hugging photos on his social media, leading me to conclude that he is "probably gay."

The Bondsman is finished, leaving Max free to concentrate on his studies, plus cheerleading and acrobatics.  In August 2025, he posted some cute and romantic photos of his holiday in France with his boyfriend (so we can move from probablement to sans doute)



I've been to Paris several times, so I immediately recognized the Pompidou Centre, an event venue and art museum. in Les Halles. The Krash Bar, two floors of cavernous corridors full of guys anxious to hook up, is right around the corner.









Everybody who visits Paris for the first time has to see the Eifel Tower.  After that, you give it a miss.

Same with the famous Moulin Rouge in Montmarte. But they have an interesting artists' market nearby, in the Place du Tertre.



Max's boyfriend is Shawn J., a Global Studies major at UCLA who runs the program Refugee Connect, offering direct assistance to refugees around the world.



















You're supposed to do that with wine glasses, guys.

N*de Parisian dudes and travel tips after the break. 

Aug 25, 2025

"Two Summers": Ten Belgian hunks, one gay tease, a lot of straight people

 


Two Summers (2022), a Belgian tv series on Netflix: "A close circle of friends reunites for a lavish holiday, decades after one of them was a victim of a s*xual assault."  

The promo shows only guys, including two who are obviously romantic partners, so it's probably a group of gay friends. S*xual assault with male victims rarely appears in mass media, except as a joke, and s*xual assault of gay men is practically unheard-of.  

So this will be a groundbreaking series.   I'll watch the first episode.


Scene 1
: Silicon Valley, USA.  Wait -- I thought it would be set in Belgium.  I can see the USA anytime, but I haven't been to Belgium for like ten years.  An ultra-modern glass-and-steel mansion.  Rich Guy plays with his cell phone on the toilet, watching an old video of partying young adults (June 18, 1992).  Two guys kissing on an unconscious girl.  He's horrified.  "This can't be happening."  Hey, I thought it was a gay man being s*xually assaulted, not a girl.

Romée calls in to ask if he's ok.  I have the mute on, so I can't tell if it's a male or female voice.  It had better be male.

The person who sent the video texts Rich Guy: "That was 30 years ago.  Now it's payback time!"  They waited exactly 30 years?  "Pay 100 bitcoin by Monday or the video goes viral."

Rich Guy  obviously participated in the assault, or videotaped it, but he thought that the tape had been destroyed.   He groans "Oh, f*ck!" and splashes water in his face.

Out to the expansive living room.  Romée is a woman!  What about the four guys together in the promo, two of them nearly kissing?  Maybe there were gay guys at the party back in 1992. 

I figured out the Belgian angle: The party guests were all Belgian, speaking Flemish.  Rich Guy has moved to the States since.

All of the party guests who are still alive have different actors playing their older and younger selves.  I checked several reviews for the gay guests:


1.-2. Rich Guy Peter (Tom Vermier, Lukas Bulteel) is one of the two guys who assaulted Sophie in 1992.  He was dating Romée, another party guest, and now they're married. Straight.

3-4. Didier (Herwig Ilegem, Bjarne Devolder, left) was dating Victim Sophie in 1992.  He watched, but didn't intervene.  Now he and Sophie are married. Straight.







5. Mark
(Felix Meyer) is the other guy who assaulted Sophie.   The next day he died (presumably) when the house caught fire, and he was trapped in his room. Straight.

More after the break

Pontius Gemstone and the Boy Named Stacy: What happened after the Gator Farm Massacre?



Link to the n*de photos and s*xual content

July 7, 2025:

Stacy woke slowly, his eyes gradually adjusting to the hospital room. The monitors on his left side, the nightstand with cards and books on the right.  The window that looked out onto the parking lot, with maybe a little green beyond.  A countertop loaded down with "Get Well" balloons.  Two chairs -- wait, there was a figure sitting in one.  His eyes weren't focused yet -- who was it, his brother?

"You're not here to tell me how lucky I am, are you?  Another inch, and the bullet would have hit my aorta, and I would have bled out before the paramedics arrived?  God was watching over me, but not the 17 men that Cobb killed?"

"Hell, no."  Stacy recognized the voice...but...the guy slid his chair over to the bed with a loud screech.  His friend Pontius!  Well, not really a friend -- Stacy had seen him on tv and at the Salvation Center, of course, but they didn't really meet until he started going to the skate park last month, and they had only spoken a few times..   "I'm here to tell you to get well, so I can get back to watching you wipe out your *ss on the tail slides. "

"Har-har, big joke.  Dude, you know you're a wannabe mobber.  Just wait til I get back to that skatepark."  He hadn't realized how much he missed skating, and jamming about skating.

Pontius grabbed Stacy's free hand and pressed it against his own.  "I brought you some chocolate Turtles, 'cause you know, you're into reptiles, working at the Gator Farm, but they accidentally got eaten in the car on the way over."

"Jackass!" 

He laughed.  Stacy felt surprisingly happy to see him. His brash, no-nonsense attitude was the perfect remedy to a week of "God had his hand on you!"


"I wanna know what it was like to work for Jeffrey Dahmer.  Did Cobb like, give you body parts to feed to the gators?"

"It was weird.  I liked working at the Gator Farm. Cobb was so nice to me, always asking about my classes and the Salvation Center, and and all the time he was killing people, and he kept that guy Big Dick as a slave, like five feet from where I was mopping the floor."

"Yeah, dude, if you knew, you could have splattered the mother-f*cker!"  

"Hey, do you think he was asking so many questions because he was keeping tabs on your Grandad?"  

"Probably.  Seems like every year, some guy pops up with a grudge against my Grandad, the World Famous Eli Gemstone or whatever."  He reached up and squeezed Stacy's left shoulder.  "Does this hurt?'

"No.  I was shot in my right..."

"How about this?"  He moved his hand down to Stacy's crotch and squeezed.

"Hey, knock it off!"

"Just checking to see if your junk still works. Scoot over."  Pontius slid onto the bed next to him, so their thighs and legs were touching, and grabbed the tv remote.  "You get any p*rn on this thing?" 

"I don't think you're supposed to do that." 

"So call a nurse and complain."  

Stacy had never sat pressed against someone before, except maybe his brother when they were little.  He dated a couple of girls, back before he figured out that he was gay, but they never did any hugging, just handshakes and goodnight pecks.  He had been with two guys, but they were just hookups, don't say hello in the hallway the next day.  Was this what having a boyfriend felt like? Were they cuddling?  

Wait -- wasn't Pontius straight?


Pontius was casually clicking on the remote as if the closeness didn't bother him at all. Flustered, Stacy tried to think of something simple to talk about. "Did you know that your Grandad visits me every day?  Your brother Gideon has been by, and Kelvin.."

Uh-oh, Pontius took that as an accusation.  "I would have come before, but I've been busy.  Gideon is starting a new Christian-themed skatepark.  I'm going to be the manager"  He stopped on Spongebob Squarepants, then put down the remote and took Stacy's hand.  Their fingers interlocked.

They watched in silence for a few minutes.

"This is nice," Stacy said.

Pontius started to blush, a reddening in his neck and face.  "Yeah, well, touching a dude is good for healing, or some New Age bullshit." 

He had a thin, tight frame, small hard biceps, some cool tattoos, and the most beautiful hands.  Why had Stacy never thought of asking him out?  


Reason #1: Stacy was a straight-A student at the College of Charleston, a biology major, planning to become a herpetologist. And Pontius was kind of a screw-up.  Fun to hang out with, but no goals, no future.  Wait -- managing a Christian-themed skate park?  

Reason #2: Wasn't he straight?

"I've seen this episode," Pontius complained.  Let's find some chicks, or some dudes."  He clicked until he found a soap opera with a shirtless hunk sitting on a couch. "Awright! Check out those pecs! Man, I'd love to be working on those."

"I thought you were...you know...you like girls."

The full story, with n*de photos and ex*plicit situations, is on RB Beefcake and Boyfriends



Next:
 "Dad Can't Know I'm Gay": An Abraham Gemstone Romance, with a special appearance from Pontius and Stacy


Topkapi: A jewel-encrusted daggar, gay subtexts, and technicolor Turkey

In the early 1960s, before Google Maps, if you wanted to see southern Europe, you got on a plane for an expensive, once-in-a-lifetime trip, or you went to the movies.  Dozens of films had plots about glamorous, attractive people (except for an occasional comic relief lout) doing something or other that required them to drive mopeds through quaint hillside villages in Sicily or rush at breakneck speed through the Parthenon, giving viewers a bright technicolor Cook's Tour.  Usually you saw France, Italy, or Greece, but in Topkapi (1964) you got to see Istanbul.

Glamorous jewel thief Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) invites us to tour the  Topkapi, the palace complex of the Ottomans during the height of their empire, now open to the public.  Many tourists are drawn to the Treasury, with its displays of Turkish opulence, especially the emerald encrusted daggar of Sultan Mahmud (1730-54).  It was actually crafted as a gift for Nadir Shah of Iran, but never delivered, but she tells us that it was a gift from his lover. And she plans to steal it.

The caper requires her to assemble a band of experts:

1. The dashing, cosmopolitan Walter (Maximilian Schell, right)
2. Mechanics expert Cedric (Robert Morley)
3. Acrobat Giulio (Gilles Segal, left)
4. Muscle Hans (Jesse Hahn)
5. Stooge Arthur (Peter Ustinov), who will take the fall for them.

Beefcake: Hundreds of shirtless hunks engaging in Turkish oil wrestling.

Hans, Giulio, and Walter all have their shirts off (Giulio is ripped!).

Buddy bonding: Walter and Giulio (they definitely look like they are going to kiss), Arthur and a burly Greek cook (Akim Tamiroff) who becomes his confidant:

Cook;  You foreign, no?
Arthur:  No, I'm English.
Cook: (Puts his arm around him).  Everybody out there -- Russian spies.  I kill.  I get medal.
Arthur: (Suspecting that he is a spy.) Are you here officially?
Cook: Fishily?  No, I give  English friend good meat.
Arthur:  Good meat, I understand.  (Cook kisses him.)  Well, I thought I understood.

There are complications, some humorous, some suspenseful, and of course they don't get away with it.  But not to worry, they are soon out of prison and on their way to a new caper: stealing  the crown jewels in the Kremlin!

No sex, no romance, no violence,some buddy-bonding, lots of oiled-up Turkish guys, and location shots in Greece and Istanbul.

Not a bad way to spend two hours.

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