Brick: A high-tech wall traps two hetero couples, a sleazoid, and a gay villain. Plus Mathias d*ck and everybody's backside

 

I  like movies about people trapped in things, like Vivarium and The Cube -- a metaphor for the heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, kids that is so often promoted as the Meaning of Life  -- I clicked on the Netflix movie Brick (2025), about "a couple whose apartment building is suddenly surrounded by an impenetrable brick wall."  Plus it stars Matthias Schweighöfer (right), who has been in some gay stuff, so I figured there would be gay characters. 

Scene 1: Munich. Tim (Matthias) in a Zoom room conference where they're complaining about a client. They ask for his input, but he exclaims that it's all bullshit.  Like most meetings I've been in. 

He flashes back to The Girl of His Dreams asking what he loves about her.  Heterosexual identity established at Minute 1.30.   He likes her eyes shining in an infinite sky.  They smooch. 

A montage of being in love stuff and kissing, kissing, kissing.  It goes on for f*king ever. I'm fast forwarding to after her death, when Tim is alone and horribly depressed in his apartment.

Scene 2: Begins at Minute 7.2, after the five minutes of kissing.  Tim awakens alone and horribly depressed in his apartment.  Wait -- The Girl of His Dreams is not dead, just leaving him.  Except when she tries to go out the door, it's bricked up! Metallic bricks of various shapes.

"Girl of His Dreams" is clunky.  In the middle of kissing, we learned that she is an architect, so I'll call her that.

The windows are bricked up, too. Banging, pounding, and drilling doesn't work. They're stuck!

The Architect checks the building layout: maybe she could drill through another wall?  Nope, the Bricks are all around the apartment.  

There's no cell phone reception, so they can't call anyone (his cell phone background is them kissing!).    

There's no running water, and almost no food in the fridge. I hope air can get through.

Scene 3: They break through to the apartment next door, where a Spanish Tourist (Frederick Lau) and his Girlfriend note that they got high last night, did stuff a few dozen times, and woke up to The Bricks.  Their theory: Aliens.

Spanish Tourist becomes hysterical, so his Girlfriend takes him into the bedroom to do stuff and get high: maybe that will calm him down. 

Next, the Architect discovers that the Bricks are highly magnetic -- silverware, keys, and things stick.  But then they shoot away, injuring Tim.

Scene 4: Tim and the Architect burst into the next apartment, and reunite with the Spanish tourists. The dude is still hysterical, so they tie him up.

The Architect has studied the history of the building, and knows that there are air raid shelters in the basement that connect to the subway.  They just need to go through three floors to get there. 

Scene 5: They break through the floor to the apartment below, where an elderly guy on oxygen brandishes a gun. "You're not getting any of my supplies." 

 20-ish Granddaughter persuades him to let them look for the tunnel to the subway.  How long have they been trapped?  I thought it was just a few hours, but he acts like it's been days.

Scene 6: They burst through to the apartment next to Elderly Guy, full of scary taxidermy and machetes.  It is occupied by the owner of the building (Alexander Beyer). Dead-- his hands were cut off, and he bled out. Probably he had them in the wrong place when the Bricks appeared. 

Into the apartment below.  But this time, one jolt, and the floor collapses, injuring the guys. 

Scene 7: They are greeted by Yuri (Murathan Muslu), who is happy to see them.  He notes that he was visiting his "good friend" Anton for a few days, but Anton stepped out just before the Bricks appeared.  I'll take "good friend" as evidence of gay identity at minute 41. 

His theory: Contamination.  There's a war going on outside, and the Bricks were installed to keep everyone safe.  They can't leave, or they will die of radiation poisoning.    

And, by the way, he was fudging a bit: Anton is lying dead in the bedroom. He collapsed in front of the wall -- it shorted out his pacemaker.  I thought Yuri was going to turn violent, but he just lets them move on.  

Granddaughter stays behind to offer her condolences over the death of his "friend."  She appears to have identified them as a gay couple.

Scene 8: Next floor: the basement. They burst through a metal hatch that leads to the subway tunnel.  But it's Bricked up, too!

Everyone is shocked.  The Spanish Tourist is so upset that he shoots at the Bricks; the bullets bounce back and hit the Elderly Guy, who dies.

More after the break.

Blake Bashoff: "Bushwacked," "Big Bully," and a goat ranch with his husband

 

14-year old Blake Bashoff became a gay kid favorite for Bushwacked (1995):  Max (Daniel Stern),  hapless delivery guy who gets mixed up with organized crime and must go undercover as a scout leader, buddy-bonds with Gordy (Blake), and saves him from a literal cliff-hanger.

Blake continued the gay-subtext roles in Big Bully (1996), playing the bully who harasses and then makes up with Cody McMains.

In  The New Swiss Family Robinson (1999), he displays no heterosexual interest, instead lettin ghis brother Shane (John Asher) romance the desert-island girl.  That is not his d*ck

He began playing gay characters in 2001, with Eric Brown, an abused gay teen taken in by the genial judge and her family on Judging Amy (2001-2003).

Blake's jumpy nervousness and wounded expression got him cast as some murderers or arsonists, usually gay-vague, but then he jumped back into gay characters with Duncan, the only gay student at a magic academy on a 2004 episode of the paranormal Charmed.

More after the break

Saturday Morning with Joel and the Bots

During the 1990s, when I was living in West Hollywood, we watched a show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 every Saturday morning, before gong off to buy groceries or go to the gym or do whatever errands needed doing.

I remember a thousand Saturday mornings, eternal, brightly-colored, golden like Lewis Carroll's "golden afternoons," except in my memory  it wasn't summertime.  It was always those magical few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

MST3K was about a grown-up kid lost far from home: the smiling, laconic Joel (Joel Hodgson) has been zapped into space, onto the phallic-looking "Satellite of Love,"  where two mad scientists torture him by forcing him to watch horribly inept "cheesy movies."

 
After five seasons (1989-1994), Joel escaped to Earth, and the mad scientists abducted the hunkier Mike  (Mike Nelson above), who stayed on for ten seasons, until the series ended in 2004.

Joel, Mike and the "bots" (their robot chums, Tom Servo and Crow) stayed sane through the worst of bad-movie torture by making fun of the artifice and ineptness -- jokes, pop culture references, and sarcastic comments came fast and furious.  There were also interstitial sketches and comedy bits, often with guest stars from the movies being riffed.

The riffs and interstitials often made homoerotic subtexts visible, and many of the movies featured extensive beefcake, but that's not enough to make my memory of the basic-cable farce "golden."

Maybe MST3K was a metaphor.  Most gay people are trapped far from home.  The overlords are constantly torturing them with heterosexist statements and scenes, proclaiming over and over again that no gay people exist, hoping that eventually they will cease to exist.  The only way to stay sane is to laugh, to riff on the ineptness and artifice of the heterosexist myth.

It is no wonder that the slow, ponderous final theme, played over the ending credits, always filled me with a profound sadness.

H. R. Pufnstuf: The Dragon and the Witch Compete over Jimmy's Flute

 I can’t watch H. R. Pufnstuf anymore. The lightning-quick takes, psychedelic colors, lame wise-cracks, and aggressive laugh-track are annoying. But in 1969, when I was 8 years old, I looked forward to it all week.

In the opening segment, a cute, androgynous sixteen-year old named Jimmy (Jack Wild, fomerly of Oliver), with a Beatles moptop and a cowboy hat, is prancing through a bucolic mountain countryside, playing with his golden flute (it is not really gold in color but dark bronze, thicker and blockier than real flutes, and extremely phallic later, as it peeps out of Jimmy’s pocket).

 A “kooky old witch” named Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes), passing by on her supersonic Vroom-Broom, spies Jimmy and decides that her drafty old castle could use his youthful vitality – and his ten inches of flute. She instructs a sentient boat to lure Jimmy aboard with the promise of a pleasant journey to Living Island. But when the trip commences, the boat develops arms and claws to hold Jimmy securely in place, while the witch laughs maniacally, and:

The sky grew dark
The sea grew rough
And the boat sailed on and on and on and on


In a scene that is still frightening today, Jimmy manages to free himself from the grasping claws, and dives into the dark, choppy sea. He crawls onto a distant, desolate beach and collapses, half-drowned and exhausted. Then – somewhat too late – help arrives. A tall green-and-yellow dragon named H. R. Pufnstuf resuscitates Jimmy, moves him into his cave, and dresses him in a garish Fab Four outfit (one wonders where the dragon got human clothes. Have there been other Jimmies, lost boys washing up on the beach over and over forever?). Then Pufnstuf introduces Jimmy to the citizens of Living Island, various animals, plants, and inanimate objects, all sentient and wise-cracking, almost all male.

Since Jimmy is well protected, Witchiepoo turns her attention to the flute, now sentient and named Freddy. Most episodes involve Witchiepoo’s grandiose, impractical schemes to steal Freddy, or, when she succeeds, Jimmy and company’s equally grandiose, impractical schemes to retrieve him. Jimmy also mounts a few half-hearted escape attempts, but it is obvious that he has no real desire to leave Living Island. Witchiepoo is more cranky than evil, promising excitement more than threat, and Jimmy is having the time of his life, dancing, singing, putting on plays with a group of caring, attentive friends who tolerate all of his many gender transgressions.

The feature film Pufnstuf appeared in July 1970. In a new back story, Jimmy has recently moved from England to a resort town (Big Bear Lake, California), where he plays the flute in the school band (rather a fairy choice of instrument, I thought). During a practice session on the front lawn of a gaudy, baroque junior high school, the other boys insult him, mock his accent, and finally trip him, and he knocks over some music stands. True to junior high form, the teacher concludes that Jimmy is the troublemaker, and kicks him out of the band. Jimmy runs away, through a town of small brown cabins and autumn-orange trees that, for all its beauty, promises nothing but brutality and viciousness. Eventually he stops by the lake to rest. Suddenly his flute grows longer and thicker, changes from gold to brown, and starts to move of its own accord – an awkward moment for Jimmy to enter puberty!

Witchiepoo happens to be flying overhead, and the plot proceeds as in the series. But now she has a homosocial motive for her designs. She believes that Freddy the Flute will be a perfect trinket to impress the other witches, especially Witch Hazel (Mama Cass Eliot of The Mamas and the Papas), with whom she has a sort of Auntie Mame/Vera Charles rivalry.

All of the many witches we meet in the film are female, and all are aggressively heterosexual. Witchiepoo tries to sneak into Pufnstuf’s cave by flirting with him as vampish dance instructor Benita Bugaloo, and when she telephones Witch Hazel, their conversation consists mostly of gossip about which female witch is dating which man. The film makes Living Island, conversely, a veritable Fire Island, inhabited by ten men (or male beings) and only two women, Pufnstuf’s sister and Judy the Frog (a parody of gay icon Judy Garland).

 None of them is married or involved with the other sex, nor do any of the male residents “boing” with lust over Witchiepoo in her bodacious disguise. It was not unusual for children’s films a generation ago to omit heterosexual content, but quite unusual to place it squarely in the laps of evil witches while infusing the hero and his friends with a blatantly gay sensibility.

Certainly Jimmy’s cherubic cuteness and sexy Cockney accent made the show a must-see for me in 1969, but there is more. The crux of the action is a competition between the female Witchiepoo and the male Pufnstuf over control of Jimmy’s phallus ( Freddy the Flute), and it ends unequivocally in the male camp. Witchiepoo lives in a dark, sinister castle dug-through with dungeons and pits, and Pufnstuf in a gaudy psychedelic Arcadia, with living trees and flowers. Witchiepoo barks out orders to cowering servants, Pufnstuf offers advice to dear friends. Who would disagree that the Dragon is far superior to the Witch?

There's a gay hookup story about Jack Wild on Tales of West Hollywood.

Gilligan's Island: Gilligan and the Skipper, a gay couple? The Professor asexual? Ginger a drag queen?

Gilligan's Island (1964-67), the tale of seven nitwits who set out from Honolulu for a “three hour tour” and end up stranded on a desert island,  has become iconic for its ineptness and naiveté. They pull endless supplies from nowhere, build anything they need (except a boat) from bamboo and coconuts, and get a steady stream of visitors who promise rescue, but betray them or forget the island's location.  Even Santa Claus dropped by to offer holiday cheer.

But  actually, it was no more inept or naive than other 1960s sitcoms.

In case Gilligan's Island is before your time, the seven castaways are:

1.-2. The Skipper and his first mate Gilligan, who ran an island tour service out of Honolulu, and brought five passengers on the "three hour tour."

3.-4. The absurdly wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Howell, who for some reason brought suitcases full of money on the tour.

5. Glamorous Marilyn Monroe-style movie star Ginger.

6. Wholesome Kansas farmgirl Mary Anne.

7. The Professor, who has a B.A. from USC, a B.S. from UCLA, an M.A. from SMU, and a Ph. D from TCU, yet works as a high school science teacher.

The Skipper and the Professor were never referred to by name, except on the radio in an early episode.

There was a lot for gay kids to like:

1. Beefcake First mate Gillian (Bob Denver, below) was slim, smooth, and occasionally shirtless.

Lithe, hard bodied Denny Miller, a 1959 Tarzan (left), appeared twice, as a "jungle man" and as as a surfer who rode a wild wave all the way in from Honolulu.


 In February 1965, Kurt Russell appeared as a jungle boy, wearing only a loincloth (he counts as beefcake when you're five years old)

Even the Professor (Russell Johnson) took off his shirt a couple of times.

2. Utter lack of heterosexual interest.

There was lots of heterosexism, of course.  When the Professor wonders why headhunters would abduct only the girls, Gilligan quips “Because they’re boys!”  

When Mrs. Howell becomes the recipient of anonymous love letters, she interrogate all of the male castaways. They are innocent.  "But that's impossible!" she exclaims.  "We've asked everyone on the island!" She is omitting Ginger and Mary Anne. 

The Skipper occasionally bats his eyes at Ginger or Mary Anne, but the other two single men, Gilligan and the Professor, never display the least interest in girls.

  (Incidentally, Russell Johnson's son was very active in gay politics in Los Angeles.  After his death from AIDS in 1994, the elder Johnson devoted himself full-time to fundraising for AIDS research.)

3. Same-sex bonding.  

When Gilligan and the Skipper fantasize about being rescued, they mention hamburgers and milkshakes, but never girls or “settling down.”

 Perhaps they've already settled down: they’ve been together since the War (probably the Korean War, over a decade ago), without even a perfunctory search for girlfriends or wives. 

Presumably Bob Denver, who had previously played "allergic to girls" on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,  played Gilligan as a man-child with “arrested development,” excused from demonstrating heterosexual desire because he hasn’t “discovered” girls yet,

But occasionally we see a hint of an alternative explanation:. In “High Man on Totem Pole” (February 1967), headhunters capture the Professor, the Skipper, and Mr. Howell. The girls are disconsolate:

Ginger: All of the men are gone!

Gilligan: I’m still here!

Ginger: [Dryly.] I said, all of the men.

But what sort of man is not really a man?

 In the last original episode of the series, “Gilligan the Goddess” (April 1967), savage tribesmen visit the island in search of a “white goddess” to throw into a volcano. Gilligan pretends to be a girl, donning a wig and a sixties mod dress, so he will be selected (the plan is to go to the other island and call Hawaii for rescue).

 Blustering King Killiwani (Stanley Adams) demonstrates an interest in Gilligan even when he is male, ignoring the other castaways while forcing him to dance, but when Gilligan becomes “Gilliana,” he becmes downright grabby. Unwilling to reveal the truth and ruin the rescue plan, but also unwilling to let Killiwani commit date rape, the castaways try to distract him with food and entertainment.

Mrs. Howell: Anybody for passion fruit?

Gilligan: No passion fruit! I think I’ll have a banana. [He grabs one and peels it, then feeds a piece to Killiwani.]

Girls: And now for your pleasure we present the great magician, Thurston Howell the Third!

Gilligan: [Applauds.] He’s great. He knows a thousand tricks, and I want to see them all.

Killiwani: [Places hand on Gilligan’s knee.] You the only trick I interested in!

Gilligan rejects the passion fruit because he is skittish about getting passionate, of course, but his choice of a phallic symbol-banana instead suggests another dimension, especially when he feeds it to Killiwani. His gesture is natural, almost unconscious, and surprisingly intimate; he behaves as if he really in a romantic relationship. (We should note that he objects to the ruse because he doesn’t want to dress like a girl, not because he dislikes Killiwani’s attention.)

Maybe  same-sex desire was  not beyond all imagining, even in 1967.

Shock Treatment: Romance is Not a Children's Game

In the summer of 1981, just after my junior year at Augustana College, I went to see Shock Treatment, which was widely advertised as "the sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show!"  

Ok, so it starred Brad and Janet from the original movie, played by different actors (Cliff de Young, Jessica Harper).

No other characters from Rocky Horror, no references to Rocky Horror, no sweet transvestites, no gay relationships, no references to gay people except for a racist/homophobic anecdote!

But once you get over your initial disappointment, Shock Treatment presents an interesting conceit: the world is a tv studio, and everyone a player (shades of Shakespeare).  Everyone is under surveillance, everyone is acting in a show within a show within a show.  There are no private moments; everyone is always being observed, commented on, controlled.

And they're trapped.  Like many stories with gay symbolism, there is no way out.  This is the whole universe.

The story is a heterosexist fable: studio owner Farley Flavors is in love with Janet, so he hires Drs. Cosmo and Nations McKinley to institutionalize Brad in their psychiatric-hospital Faith Factory program.  To make Janet forget about Brad, they groom her to star in her own show.

Jessica Harper has a much stronger voice than Susan Sarendon, the original Janet.  Shock Treatment is worth watching just to hear her paeon to egotism, "The Me of Me"

Deep in the heart of me, I love every part of me
All I can see in me is danger and ecstasy
I'm willing to die for me.
One thing there couldn't be is any more me in me

Or to feel the throbbing sexual energy as she walks through red-draped hallways and cruises "young blood."

Janet:  I want some young blood, I want some young blood, and I'm going to get it somehow!
Brad: I'm looking for love....
Janet: I'm looking for trade!

The gay symbolism comes when the various couples prepare to bed down for the night.  Cosmo and Nation begin an SM game, with evocations of the danger of the "jump to the left" that comes with acknowledging one's same-sex desire.

Nation: What a joke.
Cosmo: What a joke!
Nation:  You feel like choking, you play for broke.
Cosmo: Romance is not a children's game.
Nation: But you keep going back just the same.

But even more evocative is "Look What I Did to My Id," in which the cast is in the dressing room, preparing for Janet's big debut, and hoping in vain that it will allow them the freedom to escape:

Cosmo and Nation: With neurosis in profusion, and psychosis in your soul.
Eliminate confusion, and hide inside a brand new role.

Ralph: This could take us to a new town nowhere near here.

I've used that line many times over the years.



The key to escape is not power, not love, but as in Rocky Horror Picture Show, desire, a passion that vitalizes, sets priorities, and makes life clear.

Judge Oliver Wright and Betty Hapschatt, suspecting a nefarious purpose behind the studio, hide in the rafters all night to investigate without being observed.  When they discover that Brad and Farley are twin brothers separated at birth, they break Brad out of the asylum, take him to confront Farley Flavors, and reunite him with Janet.  Then the four find a way out and exit into glorious sunlight while singing about sex:

Some people do it for enjoyment.
Some people do it for employment.
But we're going to do it anyhow, anyhow
No matter how the wind is blowing.
We just gotta keep going.

It's not far from Frank-n-Furter's "Don't Dream It, Be It."

Not a lot of beefcake, although Gary Shail, who played the lead singer of Oscar Drill and the Bits (Janet's opening act), was somewhat attractive.  He also appeared in Quadrophenia (1979). 

Run, Buddy, Run: My first crush

There were a few tv programs in the 1960s that I couldn't bear to miss, that I thought were "good beyond hope": That Girl, Maya, Dark Shadows.   Revisiting them after 40 years, it's sometimes hard to figure out why.  But the appeal of Run, Buddy, Run (1966-67) is obvious.

The plot was ok: mild-mannered nebbish learns a terrible secret about organized crime, and must run from the baddies who want him dead.

But said nebbish, Buddy Overstreet, played by Jack Sheldon, was very cute, hirsute, and muscular, and couldn't keep his clothes on.  In every episode, the writers found some reason show him shirtless or in his underwear.  He's in a steam room, in bed, at the beach. His shirt gets ripped off when he tries to flee. Or there is no reason; he's just shirtless.

Head gangster Mr. D, played by Bruce Gordon, had a passion for shirtless muscle-bear shots also.

This is an extremely rare phenomenon in 1960's sitcoms.  You never saw Donald Hollinger, Darren Stevens, or Major Healey in their underwear.

Jack Sheldon has appeared in some other tv series, including a starring role in The Girl with Something Extra. He was the voice of "The Bill" on Schoolhouse Rock (1975), a bit which has been parodied on both The Simpsons and Family Guy.  But he is primarily a a jazz musician -- trumpeter and vocalist -- who has worked with every great in the business, from Dizzy Gillespie to Lena Horne. He is apparently heterosexual, with a wife and four kids, but he was certainly a gay icon in 1966.

Gulliver's Travels

When I was a kid in the 1960s, books were strictly divided into "boy" and "girl."  Boys got tales of swashbuckling adventure: Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe. Girls got families and horses: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Little Women, Misty of Chincoteague.


Both boys and girls got Swiss Family Robinson and Gulliver's Travels, maybe because they had both families and swashbuckling.

The main illustration was invariably Gulliver on the beach, tied by innumerable tiny ropes. It was strangely erotic, with Lilliputians walking all over Gulliver's body (one standing directly on his bulge, as if it was a little hill).  It was hard to resist imagining a comparison between a Lilliputian and Gulliver's  endowment.



Our adaptions of the original 1726 novel contained none of Jonathan Swift's misanthropy or biting social satire, just a man shipwrecked in Lilliput; and maybe, if we were lucky, Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms.

Like the original novel, our books contained no heterosexual romance.  Indeed, after Gulliver's stay among the sentient-horse Houyhnhnms, he can barely stand to be in the same room with his wife. But film versions always had to add some.


The 1939 Fleischer animated version popped up on tv occasionally. It stayed in Lilliput, and had Gulliver facilitating a Romeo-and-Juliet style romance.

The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960) saddled the hapless merchant (played by gay actor Kerwin Mathews, left) with a fiancee who shares in the adventure.








In 1996, the tv movie Gulliver's Travels starred Ted Danson of Cheers (left, reacting to someone standing on his bulge).  He was back home, telling his loving wife about his travels.

The only exception was The Adventures of Gulliver (1968-70), a Saturday morning cartoon that had a very buffed teenage Gary Gulliver (voiced by Jerry Dexter) shipwrecked in Lilliput, looking for his father and a buried treasure, and evading an evil pirate.  His dog is there, too. Quite a lot of plot for 17 episodes.  But no heterosexual intrigues, although the king had the foresight to name his daughter Flirtacia.

1970s Saturday Morning Beefcake

During the late 1970s, there was a fad for live-action adventure on Saturday morning tv. Mostly low-budget, sometimes stage-bound, but with lots of cute boys and men for the preteen set.  Occasional shirtless shots and some buddy bonding.  In the fall of 1977, for instance:

At 8:00: Space Academy (1977-78), starring Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space as the headmaster of an academy for kids with paranormal powers.  The main hunk was second-in-command Chris (Ric Carrott, seen here in a later softcore porn flick).  But there was also the super-intelligent Paul (Ty Henderson), the super-strong Tee Gar (Brian Tochi), and their mascot, an orphan boy named Loki (Eric Greene).

At 8:30: Skatebirds (1977-78). A Saturday morning  ripoff of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, lacking the earlier series’ insightful social commentary or wry wit.  But one of the live action segments, Mystery Island, starred the muscular Stephen Parr , the robot from Lost in Space, plus their two teen companions, played by Larry Volk and Lynn Marie Johnston.

At 9:00: Kids from C.A.P.E.R. (1976-78), about four teenagers working for the Civilian Authority for the Protection of Everybody: the leader P.T. (Steve Bonino), muscular Bugs (Cosi Costa), gentle Doomsday (Biff Warren, left), and intellectual Doc (John Lansing).  They displayed varying levels of heterosexual interest in the girl of the week, and the blond, muscular Doomsday, none at all.

At 9:30: Search and Rescue (1977-78): the Alpha Team consisted of Dr. Bob Donell (Michael J. Reynolds), Katy (Donann Cavin), Jim (Michael Tough, left), and some specially trained animals

At 10:00: The Red Hand Gang (1977-78), inner city kids who fought crime: leader Frankie (Matthew Laborteaux, center, who would go on to star in Whiz Kids), J.R. (J.R. Miller, right), Lil Bill (Johnn Brogan, second right), and Doc (James Bond III, right).

And there were many other with that I missed.

See also: More Saturday Morning Live Action Beefcake

Head: More of the Monkees

After their spectacular, media-orchestrated rise to fame in 1966, with a top-rated tv show and several #1 hit songs, the Monkees were on top of the world.

 But not for long. They chafed at their "boy band" restrictions; they wanted be known as serious artists, to move beyond teeny-bopper love songs,  to tackle serious issues. They wanted to be free. Their handlers disapproved.

In the spring of 1968, they wrote and produced a movie, Head.  It premiered with great anticipation; fans thought that it would be a comedic documentary, like the Beatles' Hard Day's Night.

It wasn't.

You say we're manufactured -- to that we all agree.
So make your choice and we'll rejoice in never being free!

It consists of a series of sketches, most about the difference between reality and the manufactured plotlines of their tv series: Davy becomes a boxer; Micky is lost in the desert; they visit a haunted house and the Old West.  They constantly disrupt the stories, changing their lines, dropping character, or just saying "We don't want to do this anymore" and walking off the set.

But every set leads to a new story.

They think they have escaped, and settle down to throw a birthday party for Mike.  But he starts yelling that this is not his apartment, these are actors, not his real friends, it's all a fake.

They escape from a box only to find themselves in a bigger box.

They try to commit suicide, only to find that that, too, isn't real; there is no escape.

The constraint of modern life, the inability to ever be free, is a common thread in 1960s media, and resonated strongly for gay kids growing up in a constant drone of "What girl do you like?  What girl do you like?  What girl do you like?"

We've seen it in Easy Rider and Alice's Restaurant, in the Tripods series of dystopian mind-control novels, in Richard Schaal trapped in The Cube; in Number 6 trapped in The Village, even in the Castaways trapped on Gilligan's Island.

Still, this version is worth a look for:
1. The clever "box inside a box" concept
2. The frequent beefcake.  You see more of Micky and Davy than ever before, constant shirtless and semi-nude scenes, and all of the guys gets close-ups of their very, very tight pants.
3. The homoerotic buddy bonding that shines through, in spite of the frequent girl-kissing.  These guys are into guys.

In a way, Head represented the suicide of the group.  Teen fans hated it, and the psychedelic generation stayed away.  Their tv series was cancelled, and their songs stopped charting.

But, 50 years later, the memory remains.

Head is streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Prisoner: We Want Information

When I was a little kid, we had only 3 stations, but sometime in the early 1970s, we got PBS -- the Public Broadcasting System -- and with it, a British invasion.  Suddenly I could see Doctor Who, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Tomorrow People, and even fluffy comedies like Father Dear Father and No, Honestly.  I guess they figured that anything British was bound to be educational. They were certainly easier to find subtexts in.

Take The Prisoner, which appeared in Britain in 1966-67, and on PBS in the mid-1970s.

The plot: a British secret agent (Patrick McGoohan) resigns, angrily, then goes home and packs for a trip.  He is gassed, and awakens in a scenic, well-scrubbed Village, where everyone has a number rather than a name ("You are Number Six.").  The Villagers are mostly kidnapped secret agents, from a variety of countries, more or less brainwashed and docile.











The mysterious Number Two, who is in charge of the Village, wants "information."  Number Six wants to escape, or, failing that, to find out who his keepers are.  But plots soon moved beyond the "Why did you resign?" maguffin to explore questions of conformity and individuality.  In order to live together in a community, we must require certain behaviors and banish others, but at what point does the need for conformity impinge upon the rights of the individual to think and feel what he pleases?

It was heady viewing for teenagers in the 1970s, on the par with Animal Farm and Brave New World.  And it was especially evocative for gay teenagers, who were told, day after day, hour after hour, "You must conform. You must desire the opposite sex, date, have sex, marry."

The gay symbolism made up for a decided lack of beefcake -- handsome Patrick McGoohan never so much as unbuttoned a button, not even to work out.  And a lack of bonding -- though there might be a homoerotic subtext in the cat-and-mouse game played by Number Six and the current Number Two (the Village leader changed in almost every episode).

However, there was one plus: virtually no heterosexual content.  Sometimes Number Six got a girlfriend, or pretended to in order to harass Number Two, but they never kissed.  McGoohan had it written in his contract -- no kissing girls (but not because he was gay; he wanted to stay faithful to his wife).

McGoohan starred in many other movies during the 1970s and 1980s.  He is perhaps most famous for playing King Edward in Braveheart  (1995), and eliciting homophobic audience cheers by pushing his gay son's lover out a window.  Not that I believe McGoohan, who died in 2009, actually condoned throwing gay people out of windows.

More of Ike Eisenmann

Speaking of Ike Eisenmann, most Boomer boys are so fixated on his beefcake scenes in Return from Witch Mountain (1978), or maybe his superlative performance as a racist in tight jeans who has a change of heart on The Jeffersons  that they don't remember a decade of buddy-bonding and tight jeans.

1. The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon (1976), an ABC Afterschool Special about the friendship between shy, retiring Duffy (Ike) and outgoing school hunk Peter (Lance Kerwin).

2. The Fantastic Journey (1977), which had nothing to do with either of the two similarly titled movies (one about shrinking scientists, and the other about a dog and cat finding their way home).  This one was a precursor of Lost, about people from various times and places trapped on an island in the Bermuda Triangle.  Ike played the teenage Scott Jordan, who hung out with the mysterious Varian (Jared Martin).  There was also a prissy gay-coded villain, played by Roddy McDowell.

3. The "High Explosive" episode of Chips (1978), with Ike as a country boy who fires a pellet gun into traffic.  He's just aching for some hand-on-shoulder big brothering from Ponch (Erik Estrada), and favors us with several shots of an amazing aptitude beneath the belt.

4. The "Phantom of the Roller Coaster" episode of Wonder Woman (1979).  Roller coaster enthusiast Randy (Ike), who again wears extremely tight jeans, buddy-bonds with David (Jared Martin again), without realizing that David's disfigured twin brother is the sinister "phantom."

5. Preston, Scotty's nephew, in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982), whom Kirk calls "a tiger," and who dies trying to save his fellow crew members.