Sid Davis | Boys Beware / 1955 || Boys Beware / 1961 || Boys Aware / 1973

homosexuals, the lurking monsters

 

Sid Davis (director) Boys Beware / 1955

Sid Davis (director) Boys Beware / 1961, colorized version

Sid Davis (director) Boys Aware / 1973, same text with a different cast

 

One of the most notorious films of anti-homosexual content, Boys Beware, is often listed as being released in 1961, the Public Broadcasting Company and other reliable sources describing it as black-and-white film, directed by Sam Davis with the cooperation of the United School District and the Police Department of Inglewood. The date is important since it makes clear that the film cast its influence over the classroom for a far longer period that is often imagined, from 1955 until at least 1979, when a new, revised version, also directed by Sid Davis, but with a new direction and text my Michael Heldman, the latter version supported by the Pasadena City Police Department—a film I discuss separately.  

     Surely the city of Inglewood or any other US community might not be blamed for wishing to show their students the possible dangers of sexual predators not only upon girls (a separate film, Girls Beware appeared in 1961 or perhaps earlier) but upon young boys. Their attempt was to logically explain how predators might represent at least four variants of behavior: a passive friendly stranger meeting up the boy and befriending him before gradually involving the child in sexual activities (what today we might describe as grooming the child); a violent predator who almost grabs his victim and kills him the moment they are alone; a trickster who lures a boy into sexual action through clever lies; and a man hanging out in a place where young boys often gather, a public bathroom to attack, like a jackal, when a boy separates from his friends. 

      We all know such people exist and that statistically most of such stalkers of male children are male adults, who younger or older and often relatives or family members, uncles statistically being the most frequent offenders. We all know, moreover, how many thousands of boys and girls were molested over the years by priests and ministers. And undeniably, a large number of these individuals also displayed homosexual tendencies, either closeted or openly.

       Indeed, as I have learned, sometimes to my detriment, it is impossible to discuss gay film without discussing, on some level, gay child abuse—just as if I were discussing heterosexual films I would encounter a large number of movies, perhaps even more, also dealing with child abuse. Child abuse is a problem in both the straight and gay communities, most statistics suggesting that it is more common in the heterosexual world however. But the topic of 10-minute Boys Beware,

obviously, is boys, and many child molesters, we cannot deny, are gay, even if the abuse of boys is far less common than that of girls.*

   The horror of this small film is its total ignorance about homosexuality, its insistence that homosexuality is itself a horrifying and even more astounding, a contagious “sickness of the mind,” and, even more terrifying, its total conflation of homosexuality with pedophilia. In fact, people, male and female, who are sexually interested in pre-pubescent children or teenagers are often not homosexual or are attracted to children of both sexes. If some pedophiles are also homosexuals, the vast majority of homosexuals are not pedophiles and are as disgusted by such behavior as any heterosexual parent might be.

     In these films accordingly all homosexuals seem to be equally attracted to boys, and homosexuality, as the culture believed in the 1950s, was described to its student audience as a disease, or as the film describes specifically in relation to the character of Ralph, who has gradually become a friend to a youth named Jimmy: “What Jimmy didn’t know was that Ralph was sick. A sickness that was not visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious: a sickness of the mind. You see Ralph was a homosexual, a person who demands an intimate relationship with members of their own sex.”

       Told by a character named Lieutenant Williams (narrative by Timothy Farrell) on his way to lecture to students at a school, the officer previews his lecture in his Chevrolet Biscayne. He begins, as I suggest above with the “passive” offender, Ralph. After playing a game of ball, Jimmy makes the first mistake that Williams points to, he decides to thumb a ride. A stranger (Ralph) pulls up and offers a ride. Inside the car, Jimmy finds the stranger to be quite friendly, engaging in a full conversation with him until he reaches Jimmy’s home. The next day the stranger is waiting for him at the park, and Jimmy gladly jumps in for another meeting. Before taking Jimmy home, Ralph stops by a drive-in to treat Jimmy to a Coke. And days after, so the film indicates, the two are visiting a duck pond and then fishing together, now on a first name basis.

       The film casually mentions something that I find quite fascinating: “Jimmy hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in a long time.” Clearly, the film, perhaps unintentionally reveals, something is not right at Jimmy’s home when a simple event with stranger represents one of his most memorable days of his young life.

        In the very next frame, the stranger is sharing some pornographic pictures with the boy—one wonders are they male or female images, and if male, why the teenager reactions so positively to such images. The narrator tells us: “Jimmy knew he shouldn’t be interested, but well, he was curious.” Surely they must be male figures since the next statement is the one I quoted above about Ralph’s sick homosexuality. Is Jimmy’s sense of knowing that he should be interested a statement about his own latent sexual feelings? The straight-forward text becomes increasingly ambiguous as it goes along.

        For example, we are now told Jimmy now felt a fondness for Ralph and they continued to go places together, the camera showing us a picture what appears to be a miniature golf course. We’re told, in fact, that Ralph has taken him to many interesting places and done many things for him. But just as they seem about to climb the stairs to a motel room, the narrator comments, “but payments were expected in return.” The way Jimmy willingly strides up the stairs suggests he is not going to bed with Ralph quite as unwillingly as the narrator hints. “You see, Jimmy hadn’t recognized Ralph’s approach soon enough.”

       And we have to wonder, where were his parents on all these outings; how did they respond to the gifts and money his son was receiving. While the narrator moralizes that Jimmy should have discussed the matter with his parents or a teacher, we can only wonder why weren’t these figures represented as being there in Jimmy’s life all along. Certainly, a father or mother might wonder about a son going on a fishing trip with an adult male? If nothing else, themselves questioned him about his long absences from home.

       All is resolved in this film, however, when Jimmy finally tells his parents, who report it to the Juvenile authorities, the result being Ralph’s arrest. But Jimmy too is held responsible, released on probation in the custody of his parents. Clearly there will not soon be a special day like the one in which he and Ralph went fishing. And why didn’t these concerned parents go straight to the police instead of reporting Ralph’s behavior to juvenile authorities first, as if their son were responsible for his obvious sexual encounters. I have to say, I’m as troubled by the parental care in this section of the film as I am in the actions of the molester.

     The next example, that of the violent molester, is more clear-cut. Mike Merritt is simply playing basketball when he is spotted. The game breaks up, and Mike’s companions leave, but the lurker observing the game approaches, offering to play another round of basketball with him—despite the fact that he is dressed in a suit and bowtie—a better situation, Mike concludes than playing alone. When he’s ready to go home, the stranger offers him a ride. But soon after getting into the car, the stranger pulls out a gun, the narrator hinting that Mike is killed after being sexual abused, trading “his life for a newspaper headline.” Clearly Mike is not involved in a “trade of any kind,” a decision made for him by the killer, the somewhat unsympathetic narrative using Mike’s naïve behavior almost as weapon with which to warn their young audience of the dangers of the world. Although this murderer is not named as a gay man, his clothing is the standard signification of gay men, fussily dressed in the middle of the day, hanging out with boys instead of being part of the working heterosexual world.

      In the third situation, two boys are busy sorting out newspapers for delivery, when a car suddenly appears having evidently been chasing another boy on a bicycle. The boy, so the driver of the car claims, has stolen his son’s bike, and he asks the boys to join him on the chase since they might certainly recognize the thief. Denny quickly joins the man on the chase, while his shyer and clearly more thoughtful friend remains, writing down the driver’s license. The friend soon visits Denny’s mother and tells her what’s happened, reporting the license plate number to the police, whom she quickly calls. The police catch the man when he has already captured Denny and wrapped him out into a blanket, a molester preparing to leave the state.

     The fourth incident is the least disturbing, except that once more it clearly suggests that homosexuals are almost exclusively responsible for such crimes. It begins with a standard assertion: “Public restrooms can often be a hangout for the homosexual.” Having not noticed the man when they changed their clothes, Bobby tries to convince his friends to take the route under the pier home, but his friends, we are told, prefer the “more traveled way home,” presumably referring to Robert Frost’s 1915 poem “The Road Not Taken,” perhaps even chastising the already conservative Frost for bringing up another possibility.

    Fortunately, Bobby quickly recognizes the man following him as having been in the bathroom and changes his plans, returning to the path his friends have chosen, the narrator praising his decision to “stay with his friends,” describing it as a wise decision that may have saved his life.

      Communal behavior, obedience, and the lessons taught by parents and teachers are at the heart of this moral homily, proving that any deviance might result in molestation and possible destruction by those already having parted ways from social and sexual conformity.

      When one thinks that thousands of students over the years saw this film, many of them surely taking heed of its lessons and homophobic attitudes, one is appalled. As late as 1965 Florida State Attorney Richard Gerstein argued that high schools in Dade County, Florida show the film not only to protect their students from possible molestation but as a lesson to “prevent homosexuality.”

      On the other hand, when a Missouri high school teacher attempted to show this film in 2015 to his students as an attempt to demonstrate the attitudes towards gay individuals in earlier times, he was suspended, an early example of now equally close-minded leftist agenda to prevent taboo subjects of the past to even be openly discussed.

      As I mention above, the film was colorized and re-released in 1961, the date IMDb gives for the film’s release. And in 1973 the same text was used, under the new title of Boys Aware, in a version with a different cast, clearly meant to update styles and to introduce more diverse individuals, one black boy appearing as one of Bobby’s friends.

      I discuss the 1979 remake, a very different movie, below, along with the several spoofs and satires later made and films clearly influenced by its moralistic tropes about the salvation of young unsuspecting boys.

 

*To give the reader some sense of the vast differences in sexual molestation between the sexes, I quote from Howard N. Synder’s 2000 report from the Bureau of Justic Statistics covering abuse from 1991 to 1996. Nearly all forcible rapes (99%) involved a female victim. Females accounted for 87% of sexual assault, and 82% of forcible fondling. Only regarding forcible sodomy where there more male victims. “A greater percentage of juvenile sexual assault victims were male (18%) than were adult sexual assault victims (4%). Males were 15% of the juvenile victims of sexual assault with an object, 20% of the juvenile victims of forcible fondling, and 59% of the juvenile victims of forcible sodomy. Presumably the category “forcible sodomy,” moreover, is a subsection under the larger offense of rape. For victims under age 12, the male proportions were even greater: sexual assault with an object (19%), forcible fondling (26%), and forcible sodomy (64%). What this suggests is that except for forcible sodomy, females far out-numbered the males, even at younger ages where the male assaults increased.

      One might imagine that at the time of this film, when even being a homosexual was a near impossibility, and certainly identifying as a gay man was the exception of even those with homosexual desires, that the differences of those percentages might be even higher, females far outnumbering any male juvenile assaults.

      This is not to suggest any sense of diminution of these horrible crimes committed by and upon both sexes.

 

Los Angeles, December 29, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2023).