DIRECTOR: ALAN PARKER
BOTTOM LINE: Based on Billy Haynes’s real-life memoir, director Alan Parker’s highly fictionalized treatment is excruciating. Billy’s long-term gay Turkish prison affair is deemed too much for audiences, yet his chewing through a prison guard’s tongue and spitting it at the camera – something that never happened – is deemed OK! This is the worst kind of filmmaking, vulgar in the extreme. Only Giorgio Moroder’s score lifts the movie above an F. Screenplay by Oliver Stone. When gay actor Brad Davis, who suffered from major substance abuse problems, was not nominated for an Oscar, you knew that something was up. He died a few years later from an AIDS-related illness.
Seventy Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967)
Seventy Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967) Table Summary
https://thebrownees.net/seventy-queer-films-of-the-new-hollywood-1967-1981
Seventy-Queer Films of the New Hollywood (1967-1981) Table Summary
https://thebrownees.net/fame-1980-film-review/
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