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| Bobby Kendall in Pink Narcissus |
Cast: Bobby Kendall, Don Brooks, Charles Ludlam. Screenplay: James Bidgood. Cinematography: James Bidgood. Art direction: James Bidgood. Film editing: Martin Jay Sadoff. Music: Gary Goch, Martin Jay Sadoff.
James Bidgood's shoestring fantasy is a reminder of the fine line between the erotic and the comic. Filmed in his apartment with a cast of friends, it's a lush evocation of the daydreams of a man (Bobby Kendall) waiting for the client for his sexual favors, in which the man, credited as Pan, imagines himself in various guises: a bullfighter, a harem boy, a Roman slave, and so on. In short, the familiar setups for gay porn. Though there is plenty of male nudity and at least one sexually explicit moment, Pink Narcissus never quite crosses over into pornography -- at least in the eye of this beholder. The score is made up of snippets of Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, and a Haydn horn concerto, designed to set up a languorous mood. There's no plot, but none is needed. The usual word for this sort of film is camp, and the presence of Charles Ludlam in a variety of roles reinforces that adjective. Certainly it's all a little too much, and the blazes of color, soft-focus photography, and busy editing are sometimes eye-straining, but it's still an intriguing glimpse into one man's imagination.
