Bob Mizer | 42nd Street Hood / 1957

 copping the hood

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bob Mizer (scenarist and director) 42nd Street Hood / 1957

 

    From my viewpoint, there is little visual artistry—even in his early complex “epic” works such as his Aztec Sacrifice and Boy Slaves for Sale, the mini-spectaculars of the 1950s—and even less “acting” talent displayed by his early silent posers in their straps. The narrative was minimal, usually involving an encounter with two popular gay “types,” a greaser and a cop, college boys and Tijuana bandit, fraternity boys and their pledges, cowboys and Indians (now more appropriately described as Native Americans), sailor boys and Marine Corps recruiters, yard workers and their employers, etc. The plots consisted of the two “types” meeting up, unwillingly or willingly stripping one another, and fighting or wrestling for dominance, sometimes moving off together into the sunset. The standard hierarchal figure of the day would usually “win” over the rebels. The actions are carried out in a near symbolic, what I shall describe, as “American porn-Kabuki” manner. Although violence is the central mode of behavior, it is never truly expressed but simply indicated by gestures and bodily leaps and maneuvers. The guns and knives used to prod the “other(s)” in action might as well have been sticks, and some cases actually were.

    Consequently, it would be utterly meaningless and unworthy of the vast effort to attempt to write about all or even many of his films. I have, accordingly, chosen a few examples, mostly works well known at the time, that represent his standard tropes.

     The one considered here, the first of the selected works which will ultimately include films previous to this one and after, is his 1957, 10-minute short, 42nd Street Hood.

      In this work Doug Scott as a greaser “hood” stands near an alley on 42nd Street, grabbing any cute boy that passes by to rough up and rob. After we watch him rob one such victim we see a policemen (Rick Spencer) dressed entirely in leather walking up to him to demand his identification. A pat-down ends in the discovery of four billfolds, which obviously requires a thorough strip-down.

      The hood is slow getting his boots off so the cop pulls them off tripping the boy up and sending him to the sidewalk. But soon he’s got him stripped down to his posing strap (it’s odd that none of these boys seems to have ever every imagined wearing a jockstrap).

       But the minute the cop turns his attention to the boy’s jeans, the hood grabs his gun and points it at the cop, demanding that he now strip as well, a request to which the cop, seemingly casually and almost joyfully, obliges. But once more, impatience wins out as the hood grabs the pants off the cop, sending him also to ground.

       Before long the two are wrestling or, as we might better describe it, choreographing movements which reveal their muscles and butts, almost always ending up with one lifting the other high into the air as if in a sexual act, before returning to the ground to maneuver their bodies into positions for which the camera might want to get a close up.

    Eventually good (the cop) ends up winning out over evil (the hood), and at film’s end, the two walk off apparently to the police station, still undressed. We have only to imagine what might happen at the station and within the jail.

 

Los Angeles, July 17, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2021).