A Night at the Adonis

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A Night At The Adonis
A Night At The Adonis VideoCover.jpg
Directed byJack Deveau
Starring Jack Wrangler
Chris Michaels
Big Bill Eld (aka Bill Young)
Mandingo
Distributed byHand In Hand Films
Bijou Video
Release date
  • 1978 (1978)
Running time
90 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

A Night At The Adonis is a 1978 gay pornographic film directed by Jack Deveau and starring Jack Wrangler, Chris Michaels, Big Bill Eld (also called Bill Young), and Mandingo. A highly plot-driven film, it hails from the "Golden Age" of gay pornography and was released by Hand In Hand Films.

Contents

The production was shot outside business hours at the now closed 1,400-seat Manhattan porn theatre The Adonis. [1] The film, which would screen at the Adonis upon its release, was among the earliest to use a Steadicam in an opening shot that wanders through the hallways of the movie house. [2] [1] [3]

Premise

The film tracks Jack Wrangler's evening at the titular Adonis Theatre, a (then) well-known Times Square movie house where sexual activity took place. It featured a bit role by the theatre's real-life female cashier Bertha. [1]

There are sex scenes throughout the theater, in the seats, in the balcony, in the back rows, in the passageways, in the offices, behind the counters and there is a grand orgy in the men's bathroom.

The guys in the film keep trying to get a young management trainee to engage with them, but he refuses because he wants to act "professionally", but the juice bar manager reminds him that "if you're not willing to play yourself, you shouldn't be running a playground." [4]

Cast

Reception

Author Jeffrey Escoffier opined the "film was a tribute in part to the great role that porn theaters played in creating a sexual environment for gay men during the seventies ... it is considered to be one of Deveau's best movies ... it is the most elaborate exploration of the tension between promiscuity and gay men's everyday lives." [4]

The editors of the book From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse noted how one patron of the theater stated "it was well-publicized when it came out, and some of the actors I used to see on the streets of New York ... it was rather odd to be in the exact theater that was being depicted on the screen, sort of a movie coming to life all around you ... what was happening on the screen was also happening in real life as you were watching the film." [5]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Cline, John; Weiner, Robert G. (2010). From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse: Highbrow and Lowbrow Transgression in Cinema's First Century (1st ed.). Scarecrow Press. p. 143. ISBN   9780810876552.
  2. ↑ Waite, Thomas L. (1989-02-12). "New York Shuts 2 Gay Theaters As AIDS Threats". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-07-23.
  3. ↑ Bellini, Paul (March 2011). "Blasts From The Past". fab . No. 419. pp. 11–13.
  4. 1 2 Escoffier, Jeffrey (2021-02-12). Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography: The Pornographic Object of Knowledge. Rutgers University Press. p. 72. ISBN   978-1-9788-2016-6.
  5. ↑ Cline, John; Weiner, Robert G., eds. (2010-07-17). From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse: Highbrow and Lowbrow Transgression in Cinema's First Century. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 143. ISBN   979-8-7651-8523-0.

Further reading

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