My 20 Coming Out Movies, from "Bomba the Jungle Boy" to "Popeye." Yes, "Popeye. " With a surprising number of n*de dudes.

Link to the n*de dudes

 In the Nazarene Church, going to a movie theater was a serious sin, so I only went two or three times before high school, when I started sneaking out to the Showcase Cinemas in the next town.  But I saw a lot of movies on tv, and some had some gay-vague characters, buddy-bonding subtexts, or beefcake that told me "The adults are lying, only real is real."   

These are my top 20 coming out movies, arranged by premiere date. I may have seen them a few years later.

1. Bomba the Jungle Boy  (1949-54). The former Tarzan's Boy always got a girlfriend and never buddy bonded with anyone, but who paid attention to the plot?

Can I play with your spear?

2. The Magic Sword (1962). A bizarre, gruesome plot with a heterosexist ending, but it was worth it to see a shirtless Gary Lockwood tied up and fondled.

3. Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964).  Paul Mantee crash lands on Mars, rescues a muscular alien from slavers, and the gay-subtext romance is amazing.

We'll put the guest bath over there, and over by the foyer...

4. Viva La Vegas (1964).  Elvis and Cesare Danova find each other.

There's a thousand hot dudes waitin' out there
And they're all livin' devil may care
And I'm just the devil with a p*enis to spare
So Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas

5. Kilroy was Here (1965). In a three-movie series, Warren Berlinger saves small-town Wilton Junction, gets a boyfriend, and succumbs to hetero destiny.

6. Village of the Giants (1965).  Dreamy Tommy Kirk and his friends (including Beau Bridges and Tim Rooney, right) magically turn into giants and dance in beefcake-heavy togas.

"So, if we're thirty feet tall, that means that six inches turns into..."

7. The Secret of Boyne Castle (1969)  Kurt Russell as an exchange student in Ireland runs afoul of spies, and flees through the countryside with bystander Patrick Dawson.  At one point, they smile at each other.  That smile changes the world.

8. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969).  College boy Kurt Russell (sigh) gets zapped by lightning and turns into a human computer.  He is kidnapped and rescued by his friends (Michael McGreevy and Lassie boy Jon Provost).  I don't remember a Girl of His Dreams.

9. The Cube (1969). Richard Schack is trapped in a square. windowless room.  Other people come in to taunt or advise him, but he can't escape until he realizes that nothing is real. 

10. If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969). Wacky American tourists in Europe, with Ian McShane as the world-weary tour gude and some queer codes, but mostly it's about escape, with a wistful theme song that still haunts me.

If this is love, then why am I crying?

These tears are falling too fast to be from joy.

If there's no hope, then why am I trying?

I wish I'd never heard of  Rome

More after the break

Aleks Kurdzielewicz: Femme boy from Poland with some gay subtext roles and Pride merch. And grown-up co-star d*cks, of course.

Link to the n*de photos

My "Profiles to Do" folder has guys that I added with minimal research, and now, for some of them, I don't remember why.  Have they played gay characters?  Are they gay in real life?  Are there n*de photos?

For instance,  Aleks Kurdzielewicz, a femme boy model and actor from Poland. 

1. Has he played gay characters?

Aleks has nine acting credits on the IMDB, all in Polish or German productions.  Let's hope that they're available to stream in the U.S.

2020: 

Berek, a music video by Plan Be (Bartosz Krupa). Bartosz is chased by men in black masks past a school classroom, a blond women, teenagers smoking, a man and a woman on a couch, and a depressed looking family on a park bench.  Eventually they join him.  Sounds like a critique of the heterosexist job, house, wife, kids trajectory.

2022:

How I Fell in Love with a Gangster, about the rise of infamous gangster Nikos Skotarczak (Tomasz Wlosok, p*nis on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Aleks plays the young Nikos.

An episode of Professional Secrecy (2022), about a woman discovering dark secrets about her husband

2023:

An episode of Na sygnale, about paramedics.  Starring Dariusz Wieteska, left, who has been in 434 episodes to date.

An episde of Dzielnica strachu, about cops fighting crime.

2024:

Oderbruch: Lucas Gregorowicz plays a detective solving a murder in the Oderbruch region of Germany, near the Polish border.  Aleks plays his son. 

Two episodes of Ojciec Mateusz, about a priest (Artur Zmijewski) who solves murders in his spare time. Over 400 to date. 

 He posts a scene where he's getting dressed up and wears his dad's cologne, but he calls it "perfume."  He doesn't mention having a date with a girl.  Sounds like the kid is queer-coded.

The n*de photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends is from Artur's performance piece "The Whole One."  Or it might be another Artur.

More after the break

Brandon Spink: The young Batman, Jack*ss, and Baelfire takes a girl to the prom but comes out later. Maybe. With his stuff and Superman's backside

  

Link to the not fully clothed photos

Recently I profiled Mason McKenzie, who played Gideon in Once Upon a Time, where all of the Disney fantasy characters you've ever heard of are connected in a huge genealogy.  I thought I would research some of the other actors that gave me a gay vibe.  First up, femme boy Brandon Spink, who played Baelfire, son of Rumpelstiltskin and his first wife (making him Gideon's half-brother).  He is briefly swayed by the gay freedom offered by Peter Pan's Lost Boys, but in the end accepts his hetero destiny and marries Emma Swan.  Their son becomes the Chosen One. 

Let's see if the same thing happened the real-life Brandon (center).

Spink, by the way, comes from an Old English word for "finch."  It's not a bad word.

According to an article in Oz Magazine, Brandon was born in 1995 in Marietta, Georgia, and began acting on stage at age seven, playing Captain Hook's life partner Smee in Peter Pan.  After minor parts in Game of Your Life (2011), with Nathan Kress, and Devil's Knot (2013), with Colin Firth, he hit the big time in 2015, playing the young version of the Jack*ss star  a tv pilot called Untitled Johnny Knoxville Project. 

The young Johnny is a prankster and rebel growing up in the "outlaw culture" of 1980s Knoxville, Tennessee. 

N*de Johnny Knoxville is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

That same year, Brandon was cast as the young Bruce Wayne in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).  Playing the iconic figure was "a dream come true" for the boy.  Plus he got to work with Ben Affleck (grown-up Bruce), Henry Cavill (Superman, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), and Jeremy Irons (Alfred the Butler).

Next came Game of Silence (2016), with childhood secrets threatening a successful lawyer; the teenage Baelfire in Once Upon a Time (2017); Berlin Station (2017), about CIA agents in Germany; and a few show that I've never heard of.

Brandon's next big break was in Fear Street: Part Two (2021), the second in a trilogy about paranormal events in a small town in different historic periods.  In 1978, it's a summer camp, with fear.  Brandon's character, Will Goode, is the mayor of the town, with wife and kids, in Part 1 (1994).  As a teenager, he bullies the other teens and survives the night.

There are lesbian characters in every Fear Street episode, but gay men do not exist.

In 2025 Brandon appeared in four episodes of the sports drama All American, as a random football player; and three episodes of NCIS: Origins, about the NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigation Service) in the 1990s, as the teenage version of agent Michael Franks (played by Michael Erik White, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Michael seems to be gay in real life, but the character is straight.  

In fact, all of Brandon's characters have been straight or straight-by-default. 

He'd better be gay in real life, or what am I doing this for?

More after the break

Survival of the Thickest: Mavis and her nemesis spar in Paris, Khalil and Luca "get closer," and who the heck is Lopez? With his d*ck and n*de models

Link to the n*de dudes

I wasn't planning to review Survival of the Thickest, about a thick black woman finding body positivity as a fashion designer.  But Queerty said that it had gay representation, and one of the cast members, somebody with the last name Lopez (I didn't record the first name), appeared on the n*de celebrity subreddit, so I figured I'd give it a shot. 

In Episode 3.4, "C'est la vie, Bitch," they visit Paris Fashion Week, while back in New York, Khalil and Luca "connect." They must be the gay couple, and there'll be shots of Paris. 

Khalil is played by Tone Bell, backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Scene 1: Mavis and her friend on a tour bus, shouting "I'm a designer!"  They reach their destination, the Victoria Palace Hotel , but they're actually staying at the horrible hostel next door.

"It's got character," Mavis says, trying to look on the bright side. "It's got [a vulgar term for lady parts]"  

"It smells like an 18th century pap smear."  A lot of lady part jokes.

She likes the doorknobs in the center, like a belly button, and asks the concierge if she can check his belly button.  He refuses.

Scene 2: Seven flights of stairs and a hallway bathroom, but there's a view of the Eiffel Tower from the window.  Of course -- on tv every Parisian hotel room looks out at the Eiffel Tower, even if  it's miles away and facing the wrong direction.   Mavis washes up  with a handi-wipe, while they discuss how far they've come in two years.

Whomp, someone farts.  Turns out that the ladies have a roommate sleeping under the covers in the top bunk.  

Scene 3: Luca (Marouane Zotti), the one who's going to connect with Khalil (hopefully by kissing), is counseling a refugee couple, assuring them that they'll get housing soon.  They also need a job.  "I promise that you'll..."

His coworker Donny Wang (Ronnie Chien) butts in to tell them that their chances are slim,  When they leave, he advises "Never promise anything.  Keep their expectations vague...."

In other news, a girl asked him to DJ at the gentlemen's club tonight.  

"Sorry. I have plans with friends," Luca tells him.

"Oh, I wasn't inviting you.  I was bragging about all the n*ked ladies I'm going to see."  Ugh, a character whose shtick is being a slimebag.  

Left: Ronnie seems to be gay in real life.

Scene 4: Mavis is giving a pep talk to her models, telling them to "eye f*ck" everyone.  There are some androgynous and genderqueer types, and some plus-sized, like David Ventakapen (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).   They walk across a portico (with the Eiffel Tower in the background, of course) and get photographed.  Then Mavis is introduced to thunderous applause.   A journalist tells her that the genderqueer outfit has made her the Best New Renegade of Fashion Week, which comes with a Vogue cover.  And she's invited to the Vogue party tonight.  Wait -- she's the most renowned fashion designer in the world, but she's staying in a youth hostel?

Suddenly Mavis almost collapses in pain, but her friend tells her to dance it off.  Chekhov's Gun: This better be important.

And when are we getting to the Lopez guy?

Scene 5: They have time before the Vogue party tonight, so we get a montage of the usual.  They want to take a boat tour, but the tour guide won' sell them tickets, even though the boat is only half full. And when they try to go to a restaurant, the waiter (Theo Pham) tellsl them that it's closed.  Racism plotline? About 10% of the French population has African ancestry, more in big cities.

They try a Senegalese restaurant in the Black neighborhood, Château Rouge in the 18th Arrondissement,  and are served immediately.   "I like Black Paris a little better than the rest of Paris," the Friend muses.

Khalil and Luca getting close after the break