The movie seems stuck in a 70s state of mind, where AIDS came as an accidental interruption to a valhalla  threatened them with electro-shock therapy in the 1950s and so on and that therefore they were driven to the big smoke where an explosion of mutual acceptance and love expressed through sex was inevitable.

Having covered its bases thus, the interesting reflections on AIDS that follow are undermined. The interviewees talk intelligently about AIDS, noting, for example, that the long dormancy period of HIV let “the whole thing get out the door before we could control it” and that “we fucked and fucked and fucked for four years before we realised what we were passing around and how”, but it isn’t long until Larry Kramer appears and celebrates the sense of brotherhood that came out of the early AIDS years (almost hilariously, Kramer sentimentally notes how wonderful it seemed to him that the same guys he partied with on Fire Island were now the ones that helped form the Gay Men’s Health Crisis) and other talkers use words like “heroic” a lot, usually before and/or after phrases like “transcend the limitations that had been placed on us at the time”.

Production values are fairly poor, mini-DV level, and the format becomes repetitive quite quickly, but it’s worth sitting through the (short 71 minute) running time to hear older gays remember seeing Shirley MacLaine in the audience at Bette Midler’s show at the St. Marks Baths, where Midler marched in with a basket of poppers that she handed out to the crowd, or thinking about using condoms in the late 1970s - but deciding not to! 

Additionally, the title is rather misleading as though we hear a lot about sex venues and see the odd xxx-pic or clip, there isn’t a great deal of gay sex in Gay Sex in the 70’s. There must be at least one hard-core leather queen still alive that could have shared with us the gory details of handball, douching and slings.