Bob Mizer | Monte Hanson / 1967 || Monte Hanson Outdoors / 1967 || Monte on the Rooftop / 1967 || Monte on a Cycle / 1967 || Monte in the Pool / 1967

full monte

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bob Mizer Monte Hanson / 1967 || Monte Hanson Outdoors / 1967 || Monte on the Rooftop / 1967  || Monte on a Cycle / 1967 || Monte in the Pool / 1967

 

Suddenly, after a number of performances with Bob Mizer throughout the early 1960s, including his highly homoerotic exercises of Military School Initiation (1963) and his erotic wrestling duo with Tony Gallo (1964)—as well as Mizer’s almost pornographic sex wrestling rapes of Tijuana Bandit of the same year—all performed with the necessary posing penis pouches (almost invisible I might argue, given the fact that even Facebook put me into their monthly prison because of the presumed nudity their algorithmic preceptors couldn’t detect as giving their performers' cover), in March 22, 1967 Monte Hanson went naked, showing off his cock in a determined way to arouse the gay male public that could no longer be described as an expression of aesthetic male athleticism. A couple of years later Mizer would ponder the question of “Why the Wooden Indian Wouldn’t,” but he had already made it clear in 1967 that he would no longer obey the codes of Hollywood productions.

      In that lovely film Monte Hanson the model quickly stripped down and took it all off, revealing a good-looking cock which he proudly showed off for 13 long minutes, an innocent porno film to which Mizer and so many others had been pointing to since they began their male infatuations. Something in this moment changes so radically that I think even the gay community couldn’t quite fully embrace it. Monte Hanson was there for you to love, suck off, even stroke his quite cute butt. He was totally available in a way that no other movies before permitted their male models to be. Monte Hanson had gone full “monte” and was ready for your love and attention. Mizer had broken the code without even bothering to register its existence.

     In Monte Hanson Outdoors of that same year, Mizer moved into depiction of what he was now describing as the healthy life of nudism. But anyone who loved boys knew that nudism in the world of 1967 was not at all perceived as being truly healthy and that Monte’s butt and cock where on the screen merely to please and tease them. The handsome and more than willing Monte begins, as usual now, with stripping off his pants, pouring a little lotion over his body to entice the eye into what you might imagine your hands applying to his muscular motion, and then, breaking down what appears to be a ball of twine intended to tie him up in your arms, into a jump rope which, of course, displays the movement of his balls and cock. Oh Bobby, you’ve gone back clear to the roots of gay cinema in Eadweard Muybridge and the painters before that such as Thomas Eakins.

     Monte lifts weights to help make his cock dangle in delight. The workout movie has become something else, to which any gay man lifts his eyes in recognition of the weight lifted from his shoulders. Mizer winked, and winked and finally put it all up front. “You like this, don’t you, and so do I.” Monte Hanson was there not for any other reason than pure sexual pleasure. The ropes of his possible entanglement become a workout device to excite us further into his sensual pleasures, a development of the muscles and everything else we want to tie him up into for our sexual satisfaction. God, does Mizer know his sexual tropes! He’s been studying them for so many long years.

    And finally in Monte on the Rooftop, this time in color, he gets it all wrong, posing his model on a rooftop of rocks, where he pretends to be a mustachioed muscle builder, showing off the positions of those who spend their entire lives attempting to establish their muscular emptiness as the later Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger would establish as the substance and sustenance his entire career. Forget it; we already know muscle builders have a lot of muscles (although poor Olson can’t compare with them in that regard), but generally tiny penises, which he has plenty to shout about. But even Monte’s cock seems to have gotten smaller in color. Now he is kind of Saga hero, pulling out a ridiculously sunny sword which doesn’t at reflect positively on him since Mizer has fucked up, mistaken his beefy black-and-white heroes for color-film heroes, something he simply couldn’t get out of his head since his really trashy color films of the late the 1950s such as Aztec Sacrifice and Slave Market. These, the precursors of all of John Waters films, for which I bow down to Mizer in thanks, miss the point of his black-and-white voyeuristic looks at the beautiful post-World-War II boys which shuffled off into this Hollywood palace.

   I wanted to go there and fuck up all the beautiful 1950s and early 1960s boys he put out to touch; but the later the 1960s and 1970s colorized gay boys he presented to me were so far less interesting that I couldn’t have imagined even putting my hand into their inviting unzipped denims. What had happened to sex?

     As Olson makes quite apparent, it’s hard to sit on rocks. The newly identified Monty had to throw away his identity again to become Monte on a Cycle (1967), no gimmicks here. Monte is on his motorcycle, now fully in mustache and long hair, older than in any other movies he made the same year. He puts himself in position as only Kenneth Anger might have imagined him, the slide of the cock to the leather of the bike. He’s ready to ride with anyone who might want enjoy this now slightly older hippie off into the impossible space we recognize is the end of his career. Poor Monte, now merely a representative of his former sexual self-assured cock, an empty shell of what we all know we will quickly turn into when we take ourselves too seriously as he surely now has.

    In the final quick movie, Monte Hansen in the Pool (also 1967) we get another glimpse of his rose tattoo upon his butt, as he quickly struggles back to surface to dangle his penis in our nose, while in the background far cuter new boys seem to present complete hardons. Alas poor Monte is a stringy-haired mess from another generation.

 

Los Angeles, January 2, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (January 2025).