The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) From Pookie to Sally. B-
Liza Minnelli’s Oscar-nominated turn as quirky, oddball and needy “Pookie” Adams is a preview of her Oscar-winning performance in “Cabaret.”
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Category: Apple TV+
Satyricon (1970) Queer Film B-
Seeming longer than its 129-minute running time, and with no discernible plot, the movie becomes a bit of a chore. However, the images stay with you.
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Performance (1970) Queer Film B+
There will always be an argument as to who was the real auteur behind the camera. Roeg, one of the great cinematographers (The Masque of the Red Death, Petulia) who evolved into one of the great directors (Walkabout, Don’t Look Now), is the obvious candidate. Yet Donald Cammell—painter, provocateur, and Hollywood outsider—was the film’s conceptual engine.
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There Was A Crooked Man (1970) Queer Film A-
Hume Cronyn and John Randolph are our happy and well-adjusted gay couple. Yes, they fight and bicker all the time. However, they are clearly madly in love with each other.
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Little Big Man (1970) Queer Film (A)
Using humor and irony to critique prejudice, injustice and the destruction of Native American communities, “Little Big Man” is, together with “Bonnie and Clyde”, Arthur Penn’s best film. It helped redefine the Western genre, paving the way for more nuanced depictions of Native Americans.
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The Boys in the Band (1970) Queer Film (A)
“The Boys in the Band” was a cultural milestone. As the AIDS epidemic approached, the lives of the actors involved was a collective tragedy.
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The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) Queer Film A-
Excellent work by Robert Stephens (his best screen performance) and Colin Blakely (Dr. Watson). Geneviève Page gives a gorgeous melancholy performance.
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The Conformist (1970) Queer Film. Nando, Vittorio and Bernardo’s Masterpiece. A+
Using Art Deco as a backdrop to the film’s narrative, the partnership of Bertolucci, Storaro and Scarfiotti changed the look of Cinema forever.
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The Anderson Tapes (1971) Queer Film (F)
Hamming it up and mincing all over the place, this is a cringe-worthy performance from Martin Balsam who is not referred to by his given name, just The Fag.
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The Music Lovers (1971) Queer Film (F)
The honeymoon sequence, set to the “1812 overture,” a delirious mix of sexual frustration and nationalistic bombast, may be for Russell freaks only!
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Death In Venice (1971) Queer Film (B)
Visconti’s best idea was changing Aschenbach’s profession from a writer to a composer opening up the movie to the Mahler Adagietto .
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The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971) Queer Film A-
“The Garden of the Finzi Continis” is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by gay Italian writer Giorgio Bassani who is played in the film by Helmut Berger.
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Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) Queer Film (A)
In “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, Murray Head plays a free-spirited bisexual who is having simultaneous relationships with Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch. Finch’s closing monologue, delivered directly to the camera—“I am happy, apart from missing him”—is one of the great grace notes in queer film history: tender, dignified, and devastating in its simplicity. It is also one of the finest pieces of acting ever captured on film.
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The Boyfriend (1971) Queer Film B-
Although not explicitly gay, the film is filled with camp theatrical energy, exaggerated male dancers, coded glances and mannerisms, a backstage world where gender roles blur, and gay actor Max Adrian as Lord Brockhurst, the wealthy, eccentric aristocrat who attends the film’s show-within-a-show, bringing his trademark queer-coded presence. The Boyfriend is unmistakably queer in tone, style, and sensibility, putting it very much in line with Russell’s other 1970s work.
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Diamonds are Forever (1971) Queer Film (C)
In Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are the chief pleasures in a film that ranks among the most disposable entries in the Bond canon.
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Cabaret (1972) Queer Film A+
Cabaret emerges from a remarkable artistic lineage: the 1966 Broadway musical by Kander and Ebb, itself drawn from Christopher Isherwood’s semi‑autobiographical Berlin Stories (1945) and John Van Druten’s 1951 play I Am a Camera. Under Bob Fosse’s revolutionary direction and choreography—and with Minnelli’s incandescent performance—the film stands as one of the defining achievements of the New Hollywood era.
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Deliverence (1972) Queer Film A+
Beatty’s work is astonishingly brave for a debut role. He plays the aftermath of his sexual assault—shame, anger, and the need to reassert dignity—with a precision that keeps the film from slipping into caricature
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know.. What Happens During Ejaculation *A-
Woody is one of the competing sperm determined to penetrate that egg. Our boys have been in training for weeks. But wait! What if it’s homosexual encounter? There’s also a Black sperm! How did he get in the mix?
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Scarecrow (1973) Queer Film (F)
The sexual assault is shocking. No movie has done more to conflate gay identity with pathology and violence than “Scarecrow”.
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Save the Tiger (1973) Queer Film C-
The writer Steve Shagen, an educated Jew, is in the Stone Age when it comes to a human being who has a different sexual preference than himself.
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The Day of the Jackal (1973) Queer Film (A)
Another example of a gay character whose sole purpose in the movie is to be killed. Still, Zinnemmann and Rodgers treat his character with a modicum of respect.
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The Last of Sheila (1973) Queer Film (B)
The actors are in good form, with Raquel Welsh being particularly impressive in her one genuinely good film. Dyan Cannon is a thinly disguised Sue Mengers.
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Freebie and the Bean (1974) Queer Film (F)
Our heroes, James Caan and Alan Arkin, first encounter Morley in a bathtub. He’s preening and lisping, and you can see that he disgusts them.
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Butley (1974) Queer Film B-
Adapted by Simon Gray from his stage play and directed by Harold Pinter, the movie is a testament to Alan Bates, who, having originated the role on stage, delivers a tour-de-force performance, simultaneously witty, pathetic, and tragic.
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The Great Gatsby (1974) Queer Film (B)
Directed by Jack Clayton, from an adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola, this was the third film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age masterpiece.
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Going Places (Les Valseuses) (1974) Queer Film (A)
The second scene is where the boys are horsing around and, wouldn’t you know it, they almost start pounding one another. Very sexy.
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Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) Queer Film B+
Michael Cimino’s directorial debut – he also wrote the screenplay – was an enormous critical and commercial success and paved the way for his Oscar-winning triumph The Deer Hunter four years later. Blending humor, melancholy, and violence with a nod to the American road movie, the film boasts great buddy-film chemistry between Eastwood and Bridges.
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The Phantom of the Paradise (1974) Queer Film B+
Sexuality throughout the film seems less important than transformation, performance and desire. It’s The Red Shoes reimagined for the Me Decade.
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Chinatown (1974) Polanski’s Noir Masterpiece A+
Polanski captured the FEEL of LA better than anyone before or sense. Jack Nicholson gives his greatest performance as private dick J. J. ” Jake” Gittes.
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The Eiger Sanction (1975) Cinema’s First Queer Canine (F)
When we first meet FAGGOT, he is pleasuring himself on Eastwood’s shoe. Who was the dog who played him? Since the little rascal was uncredited, we will never know. Did the little fellow realize that the audience probably hated him as much as they hated his master. Was it nature or nurture? Where was animal protection in those dark days of 1975?
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