Left Handed
One of the first gay hardcore story features, Left Handed opened in 1972 at Manhattan's notorious all-male showcase, the 55th Street Playhouse. Large ads in The New York Times quoting a very descriptive review heralded the film's long run. Left Handed brings to life a homosexual myth of the seduction of the straight guy, a man of little words and dramatic sexual responses. Foremost in the faggot glee, however, is separating the guy from his girlfriend. This plot is the stuff of dirty paperbacks, but it's executed in the artful, sexually explicit manner of an accomplished underground movie.
Left Handed's storyline gets carried by conversations between Ray, the hero, and his "girlfriend" Larry, another gay blade on the make. Ray has the hots for Larry's straight pot dealer, Bob, a longhaired freak who drives to Manhattan from Woodstock to make dropoffs. When Bob makes the sudden, forward gesture of putting his pot proceeds in his crotch in front of these two fags, you know it's curtains for his manhood. Ray gets stoned with Bob and seduces him. Ray continues the affair by doing most of the sucking and all the passive anal. Bob grows emotionally dependent on him and drifts sexually away from his girl. The fag moves in for the kill, playing topman, fucking Bob. Then Ray announces that he "feels like a change," shaving off his beard and trimming his beard, revealing the psychotic malice underneath. He goes to a fisting orgy and Bob turns up at the door. In a cacophony of faggot wish fulfilment, Bob's heart is broken at the sight of Ray being passed around and he begins to cry.
Left Handed is a time capsule of freak era New York City in 1971. It supplies a dictionary of looks, gestures and clothing that indicate membership in homosexual or drug subcultures of the time. Taking place in grey, wintery Manhattan without a leaf on a tree, Left Handed includes great location work: the trucks in the Village, the urban shock of walking in on public sex in a park toilet in what's now a playground. The "straight" guy has S&M tattoos, including a whip on his buttocks, an extremely kinky statement back then. Left Handed's biggest surprise is the erotically and sensitively shot straight fuck between Bob and his darkhaired hippie girlfriend. Left Handed is a pioneering effort at early story porn, a freak era manifestation of the sexual shape of things to come.
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