A Big Bulging Sound

I don't think it will surprise many of you, given all the posting that I've done about it, that the gay biker BDSM romance (or "dom-com" as it's come to be known) Pillion will be one of my favorite movies of 2025. (And yeah I personally will be counting it as a 2025 release because it's being considered that way for awards attention even though it's really not hitting U.S. theaters until February.) Here is my review of the movie from when it screened at NYFF -- I've been relentlessly delighted by the film's press run, and done the posting to prove it. Anyway one thing I haven't mentioned is the music for the film from musician Oliver Coates, and that's a darn shame because I like the music a lot -- so let me seize onto this news that tumbled into my inbox today and do just that. The film's score is getting a digital release this Friday -- presumably you'll be able to listen to it at all the usual places you listen to music. But the even better news if you ask me is A24 is promising a physical release of the score (presumably that means my beloved vinyl) to sync with the film's official theatrical release in February! I don't know if the above art-work (which is for the digital) will be actually the vinyl's cover, but I sure hope it is. It's serving The Rolling Stones' infamous album Sticky Fingers, for real. (Which was photographed by Warhol -- I always thought it was supposed to be Joe Dallesandro but Wikipedia says there are several bulges vying for the esteemed honor.)

RIP Paul Morrissey

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Heat (1972)

Sally: And you're NOT a lesbian. 

I mean, everybody has girlfriends. 

Men have friends, women have friends. 

That doesn't make you a lesbian. 

Do you sleep in the same room with her?

Jessica: Sure. How else can I be a lesbian?

Sally: Where does Mark sleep?

Jessica: With us.

Sally: In the same bed?

Jessica: In the same bed.

Sally: Is that a way to bring up a boy? 

He'll be a lesbian!

Today is the 100th anniversary of the one-of-a-kind Sylvia Miles! I just saw Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse at MoMA a few weeks ago and my god she walks away with that entire film in her two scenes. What a goddamned treasure she was. The movies lost one of its brightest and most shining stars when she passed in 2019. If you've got any tell me your favorite Sylvia Miles movie moments in the comments!

Little Joe Goes Deep

Well here's a perfectly nice Monday surprise -- there's a chat between Warhol legend Joe "Little Joe" Dallesandro and director Bruce LaBruce in the new issue of Interview Magazine and you can read it right here. Bruce goes out of his way to ask Joe about a lot of his roles in forgotten movies so notsomuch the Paul Morrissey movies we all remember him from and it makes for a good unexpected conversation. Although Dallesandro is per usual not the most verbose of figures. I like that he comes off exactly as he did fifty years ago in those movies though -- you can hear every answer in that voice of his. Interview was also generous enough to share these photos seen here of Joe which I have never seen before, and I figured I'd seen them all at this point. 

7 Off My Head: Halloween 2021 Watches

Did everybody have a nice Halloween? Sad to see my favorite holiday in the rear-view but I actually had a really lovely holiday week this year. Stretching from my 4th Annual Vincent Price Dinner last Tuesday (see photos here if you missed it) through getting to see one of my new favorite old movies on the big screen on Saturday night -- 1973's Messiah of Evil, thanks to the ongoing "Folk Horror" series at Anthology, which I posted about previously here -- and then up to the actual day itself, yesterday, where I had myself a little binge. I watched seven horror films I'd never seen before; there's even a Twitter thread...

Gonna do a HALLOWEEN WATCH THREAD -- got off to a late start this morning but #NowWatching RATTLERS (1976) pic.twitter.com/Y0Uo8jbloZ

— My New Dead Pants (@JAMNPP) October 31, 2021

But who wants it to end there? Not me. Halloween all year long! Or at least through this afternoon, anyway? We'll go little steps. I thought instead of just letting the movies I watched yesterday evaporate into the ether like so much I watch these days I'd rank them! Give you a little idea, out of the seven what's worth your time, if any are new to you too. Well I say "seven" but I actually can't speak of the seventh film yet -- that one isn't out until December. Treated myself to a brand new screener to end the evil night with. That movie is called The Scary of Sixty-First and it will hit the Quad Cinema here in NYC on December 17th before hitting some more theaters as well as streaming platforms the following week. Here's its trailer:

I will have more to say on that one closer to its release. But that leaves six movies --Six! Wah ah ah! -- that I watched otherwise yesterday, all of them old things that I can totally share my crusty thoughts on. So let's! Ranked from worst to best...

My Halloween 2021 Watches

6. Rattlers (1976) -- Listen, this was absolutely watchable crap. But crap nonetheless. It was the perfect first film for my fest though -- nothing better than watching some garbage as you wake up on Halloween morning. And this was one hundred percent worth it for the scene where a camping couple's tent suddenly fills with the titular snakes when even more suddenly out of nowhere a soldier with a machine gun bursts into said same tent and starts firing the gun everywhere. Absolute nonsense.

5. 13 Ghosts (1960) -- I was tempted to do a double-feature of this with its 2001 remake because I've never actually seen that one either, but more than that impulse I wanted to veer wildly from genre to genre and that instinct won out. I'll save the 2001 film for next year (I am definitely doing this again). Anyway this is one of the William Castle movies I've somehow never seen and it's totally fun -- I enjoyed every movie I chose -- but it probably lost something not seeing it with an audience, and not having the red-blue Ghost-finder glasses that Castle created as a go-along gimmick. 

4. Pledge Night (1990) -- A jaw-droppingly sleazy frat-boy possession slasher that I can't believe I hadn't seen before - so so gay, this thing. There's a long hazing sequence involving frat boys in jockstraps carrying cherries from one side of the room to the other clenched between their butt-cheeks, for god's sake -- talk about appealing to my interests! It's also outrageously nasty in its violence -- I don't know where this movie came from or where it's been all these years but I can sense it becoming a standard in my house.

3. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972) -- I needed a giallo at this point in the night and this beauty's about as giallo as they come. There's a half-dozen indistinguishable blonde women, a sleazy dude in a robe that's way way way too short, an extended fashion shoot sequence, a red-caped man-woman-killer with a gigantic golden dagger (James Wan had to have been referencing this with his murder weapon in Malignant, I think). Everything to scratch your giallo itch! There's also a flooded castle at the end, and god I love a flooded castle.

2. Black Moon (1975) -- I reviewed this movie called Mayday earlier this year at Tribeca that stars Grace Van Patton, Mia Goth, Juliette Lewis, and Theodore Pellerin (see the trailer here) that's about this girl (Van Patten) who, shades of Alice, falls into  a strange world where Men and Women are literally at war with one another, and I wish I'd seen Louis Malle's Black Moon beforehand because talk about some similar riffs. Black Moon's a better film -- it is made by Louis Malle -- but the similarities are striking. Anyway I love a weird dreamy Alice in Wonderland riff always, literally always, and Malle's movie has Joe Dallesandro wearing golden jewelry while fighting an eagle with a sword, so winner.

1. Beauty and the Beast (1978) -- As soon as I saw and fell in love with Czech director Juraj Herz's film The Creamator on Criterion Channel a few months back -- see it! -- I wanted to see more of (read: all of) Herz's films, but no more than his 1978 riff on Beauty and the Beast, because if there's one thing I love more than weird riffs on Alice in Wonderland it's weird riffs on Beauty and the Beast. And this one did not disappoint. Nightmarish, baroque, surreal, beautiful, this was so very up my alley. It's not the greatest Beauty and the Beast film ever made -- nothing will ever top Jean Cocteau's 1946 film -- but it's probably second best for sure. And come on...

Okay we should probably take a moment to recognize what the Beast looks like in human form in this movie, cuz goddamn pic.twitter.com/oeroc2HSUv

— My New Dead Pants (@JAMNPP) October 31, 2021

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Have you seen any of these movies?

And what did you watch this weekend?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Trash (1970)

Holly: Just because people throw it out and don't 

have any use for it, doesn't mean it's garbage.

Holly Woodlawn was born 75 years ago today!

Which Is Hotter?

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One of my last In Theater Experiences before all this shit went down was in February seeing a collection of short films called "Queer Before Stonewall" at MoMA, which included Andy Warhol's 1965 flick My Hustler, which isn't technically a short at 76 minutes... but in spirit it is, since per Andy's usual nothing really happens. The plot description is short! Two homosexual men and one straight woman leer at Paul America (seen above) for a long time on the beach, and then they leer at him inside, the end. 

He's worth the time spent leering! Anyway since today would have been Andy Warhol's 92nd birthday it seemed an opportune moment to revisit that and drag Joe Dallesandro into the mess while we're at it because I don't know about you but I can't talk about Andy without also wanting to talk about (or leer at anyway) Little Joe...

bike tracks

Which is Hotter?

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View this post on Instagram

Divine painted by David Hockney (1979) — on display as part of the “Art After Stonewall” show at Leslie Lohman #divine #johnwaters #hockney #davidhockney #art #painting #gay #stonewall

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Jul 7, 2019 at 2:39pm PDT

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It's only up for a couple more weeks (until July 21st) but if you're in New York I recommend you try to make it to the Leslie-Lohman Museum's "Art After Stonewall" show and really, the painting above is enough reason. There are other great reasons therein -- some Mapplethorpe, some Tom of Finland, some Alice Neel -- but Hockney painting Divine? Dare I say it? Divine.

Anyway seeing that painting inspired me to pick up John Waters' recent book anew, which I'd set aside for a bit because the thought of finishing it too quickly fills me with the dread of having to wait for the next one, and I read the chapter devoted to John's love for Andy Warhol. It's a terrific chapter (one of many) but there's a bit therein that especially stood out for me, because of personal interests -- John Waters names the two best male asses in all the movies. Calling it "the most important fact in this whole book" he states that Joe Dallesandro's ass is "the best one in movie history, even better than Bobby Kendall's in Pink Narcissus." And how can I possibly resist such an opening?

survey service

5 Off My Head: Hustle Here & A Hustle There

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With the excellent and strange hustler tale Sauvage / Wild out in theaters this week -- you can read my review right here -- it seemed like as good a time as any good time to turn our brains onto the subject of cinematic male sex workers. It's been said that every actress who's ever acted for longer than five minutes has had to play a prostitute at some point in their career and it's pretty damned true, but what about the menfolk hocking their physical wares on the screen? They're not nearly as common but they've turned out some of our most fascinating films about sexuality through the decades all the same. So let's do a list!

5 of My Favorite Movie Hustlers

Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in Mysterious Skin

"Different folks, different strokes."

Paul Varjak (George Peppard) in Breakfast at Tiffany's

"Fifty dollars for the powder room."

Julian (Richard Gere) in American Gigolo

"I'll do fag tricks. I'll do kink.
I'll do anything you want me to do."

Mike (River Phoenix) in My Own Private Idaho

"I love you, and you don't pay me."

Joe (Joe Dallesandro) in Flesh 

"How am I supposed to make any
 money without clean underwear?"

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Who are some of your faves? 

Share in the comments...

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Always Listen To John Waters

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If y'all saw Andrea Arnold's masterpiece American Honey a couple of years ago then you've seen (a lot) of McCaul Lombardi. (He played the dude who couldn't stop exposing himself.) (Naturally we immediately did a great big post on him here on MNPP.) Or if you saw Patti Cake$ last year, well whaddya know McCaul was in that too. Basically dude's racked up a swell little filmography for himself real quick, and this year he took it a step further a leading man role in an indie called Sollers Point, which has him trying to reestablish his life after a drug arrest. 

The movie didn't make a lot of noise when it came out in May (you can watch it right now on Amazon Prime) but none other and no less than John Waters just made us all take a new hard look in its direction by dropping it into his annual Top 10 list for Art Forum. Said John:

"Can a heterosexual director worship his male lead on film just as much as Paul Morrissey obviously did Joe Dallesandro in Trash? Sure looks that way. McCaul Lombardi is a blazing star in this small-scale but beautiful drama about a young parolee’s struggle to reenter lower-middle-class life in Baltimore."

Oh John, bless you. John knows what's what, everybody! And a new thing I just learned: McCaul is actually from Baltimore! Maybe he's just the hometown fella to get John out of film retirement.
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Chelsea Girls (1966)

Ondine: By the way, The Bride Of Frankenstein is
the greatest movie ever made. It's just fabulous. Isn't it?

Andy Warhol would have turned 90 today!

Happy birthday, Andy!

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This picture from the set of Andy Warhol's LONESOME COWBOYS is like the gayest Where's Waldo ever pic.twitter.com/6ImCtWftgK

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 31, 2018

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I took the above picture of that picture at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh last weekend, which I was visiting for the first time - you can see several other photos I took from there on Ye Olde Instagramme. If you're ever in Pittsburgh it's pretty much cannot miss. (Although - I know museums are closed every Mondays, but it seems kinda shitty they are closed today on Andy's 90th, doesn't it?) Anyway here are two bonus pictures from the museum that I took that I think y'all may appreciate:

In related news I have become obsessed with getting myself a copy of the 1974 poster for Paul Morrissey's Frankenstein as of late - have y'all ever seen this beauty?

Swoon. That would look so so fine
hanging beside my Hostel: Part II meat poster.

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Joe Dallesandro in 3D!!!

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That headline is an attention grabber, for sure, but it's not even the best news from today's announcement that The Quad will be screening a slew of classics in The Third Dimension this October, because besides the silly sexy disturbing delight of Flesh For Frankenstein being on the list of titles there is among them the one movie I have wanted to see in 3D my entire life, more than any other, and that movie is...

... Friday the 13th: Part III!!! 

In 3D at last!!!

I have honest to goodness goose-pimples about this, you guys. 10-year-old me, staring at this movie's illicit VHS cover at the local video-store, with its bloody knife poking through that lacy curtain...

... it always seemed so dangerous, ya know? Eventually my cousin and I got permission to rent scary movies from his much more lenient parents a couple years later and off we went, him ogling the boobies, me ogling the boy bits. And Part III has some good boy bits with Rick (Paul Kratka) and hand-walking Andy (Jeffrey Rogers)...

But besides the great gratuity this movie's got everything a growing freak needs from their 3D horror movie - it's got a yo-yo flying at your face, it's got an eyeball flying at your face... it has SHELLY!

Shelly in 3D!!! 

I am painfully excited, y'all.

That there (click to embiggen)  is the full list of films the Quad is showing - the series runs from October 13th through the 19th and they haven't announced the actual schedule on their website yet but I can't imagine that they won't be showing Friday the 13th on Friday, October 13th. MARK YOUR CALENDARS, FOLKS.

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5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1976

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It took Siri seven times to give me a good answer to the question "Pick a number between 1 and 100" today - she kept choosing numbers that we've already done for this series. But she eventually landed on a goodie - pick number seven was "76" and so today we're going to focus in on The Movies of 1976.

I had a pretty easy time snatching out five films from this year for my top five (these are some of my all-time faves right here) but there are a whole heckuva lot of runners-up (I could make a top ten list of just horror movies from 1976) and there a whole heckuva lot of movies I've never seen but should see. That is all to say that this was a fine time for movies, y'all. How fine? Let's see!

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1976

Carrie

(dir. Brian De Palma)

-- released on November 16th 1976 --

The Tenant

(dir. Roman Polanski)

-- released on May 26th 1976 --

Chinese Roulette

(dir. RW Fassbinder)

-- released on November 16th 1976 --

Logan's Run

(dir. Michael Anderson)

-- released on June 23rd 1976 --

Taxi Driver

(dir. Martin Scorsese)

-- released on February 8th 1976 --

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Runners-up: Rocky (dir. John G. Avildsen),  Marathon Man (dir. John Schlesinger), All the President's Men (dir. Alan J. Pakula), The Man Who Fell to Earth (dir. Nicholas Roeg), The Omen (dir. Richard Donner), Burnt Offerings (dir. Dan Curtis)...

... Alice Sweet Alice (dir. Alfred Sole), Murder By Death (dir. Robert Moore), Assault on Precinct 13 (dir. John Carpenter), Network (dir. Sidney Lumet), Family Plot (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), God Told Me To (dir. Larry Cohen), The Food of the Gods (dir. Bert I. Gordon)...

... The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (dir. Nicolas Gessner), Obsession (dir. Brian De Palma), Heart of Glass (dir. Werner Herzog), The House of the Laughing Windows (dir. Pupi Avati), Lipstick (dir. Lamont Johnson), Sybil (dir. Daniel Petrie), The Town That Dreaded Sundown (dir. Charlies B. Pierce), Sebastiane (dir. Derek Jarman)

Never Seen: In the Realm of the Senses (dir. Nagisa Ôshima), Bugsy Malone (dir. Alan Parker), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dir. John Cassavetes), Harlan County USA (dir. Barbara Kopple), 1900 (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci), Freaky Friday (dir. Gary Nelson), Seven Beauties (dir. Lina Wertmüller ), A Star is Born (dir. Frank Pierson), Je t'aime moi non plus (dir. Serge Gainsbourg)

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What are your favorite movies of 1976?

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