Bob Mizer | Monte Hanson and Tony Gallo / 1964

queer victory

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bob Mizer (director) Monte Hanson and Tony Gallo / 1964

 

On the one hand there is absolutely nothing different between this short film and dozens of others, with or without plots, that Bob Mizer made from the 1950s up in the early 1970s. But there’s something so utterly straight-forward in its intentions and charming in its two “characters’” demeanor that this gay erotic wresting bout between beefcake cuties Hanson and Gallo stands out among Mizer’s earlier works. Hanson is clearly the lead, mugging for the film audience, with Gallo following in kind.

     The film begins with what be described as the pinnacle of such beefcake showoffs, their names featured on a sign board which the two hold up together as they Hollywood calling card. Finally, Mizer himself is forced, if the film is to continue, to come and take it from them.

     Briefly they pose before the camera in the traditional manner of male physique models, demonstrating first their muscles head on, with hands high in air behind their heads, then turning to display the development of their upper torsos, and, most importantly, their pleasing buttocks, turning back to the front to make sure you now take a full look at the cocks barely held in place in their posing straps.

     Hanson holds out his hand to Gallo and after what seems to be a far too long handshake pulls him toward him before flipping him to the ground.

 

     What follows are ten delicious moments of wrestling meat, as the two, without bothering to care in the least about any rules of traditional wresting, roll around and against each other’s bodies, pulling one another upon their own selves by grabbing thighs, shoulders, asses, and anything else they can get their hands on—except, of course, the “no no” even in such obvious sexual displays of the day, their flopping and slightly hardening cocks. They flip and flop, lifting their asses toward the camera to display their assets, one by one, often lifting and pulling those buttocks even closer to their faces, while breaching to display their cocks. 

    Critic Conor Williams, writing in Fantastic Queer Motions continues in a slightly more purplish prose than I am prone to publish, but which, nonetheless, seems appropriate:

 

“These men are engaged in a dance with time — grappling with each other, with themselves, their role as beefcakes, the potentiality of queerness. That eruption of queerness. A queerness spoken in the space between their tattooed bodies as they feel the rush of a day’s air blow past them, in the handing off or stealing of a camera — that machine revealing this queer image — or the way their bodies feel against each other — the heat of Monte’s frantic movement, of his breathing, and the slam of Tony’s body against the floor. Their grunts and groans we do not hear. Where are they spoken? In that cathartic scream across time.”

 

    Finally, the clear queer victor, Hanson literally picks up his wrestling partner, whirling his body through the air, in a literal dance, before tossing him in a final fit of dismissal to the floor. Gallo gives in, and the two lay out beside one another for a time to simply catch their breaths, the camera still hovering over the actual “hunks of flesh” they have become. Gallo eventually waves a shy goodbye, while Hanson, refusing to fully give up the camera, almost struggles to sit up, declaring his victory, before he too waves his audience a final, somewhat dismissive farewell, as the camera shuts off.

 

Los Angeles, August 30, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).