Posts tagged zak spears
Abomination
REDEMPTION
USA, 1995
Director: Steven Scarborough
Stars: Zak Spears, Brad Stone, Tom Katt, Chuck Barron
Available on DVD, download or stream - order here
The Abduction series, so nearly sublime, ends in ridiculous fashion with this coked-out muddle. For no apparent reason, the story has been transferred to a tacky-looking mock-Moroccan pleasure dome where some cheesy Prince What’s-his-name requires endless sexual gratification to perpetuate a magic spell that has granted him everlasting youth and beauty (it obviously hasn’t worked).
Via a clumsily-worded three-and-a-half-minute story crawl at the start of the film - a la Star Wars – we learn that this film is connected to the previous two movies, which were set in spare and sexy fascist dungeons, are connected because the dungeons are where the Prince’s minions secure him new meat. A rebel band of rescuers are trying to bust up the secret abduction ring, and their efforts are draining the Prince of his life force.
This bloated preamble sets the scene for high absurdity with the film opening on an effete High Priest summoning some kind of dwarf-wizard to assist the ailing Prince. A bunch of black guards in Aladdin costumes force the wizard to do the bidding of the ghastly Priest, who is made up like Mephisto and whose disembodied chalk-white head keeps popping up throughout the film in the style of Eileen Dietz’s “demon face” flashing up to great effect during The Exorcist.
Conflict of Interest
THE CONFLICT
USA, 1993
Director: Steven Scarborough
Stars: Zak Spears, Jake Andrews, Chance Caldwell, Jesse Tyler, Brad Stone
preview, stream or download The Conflict
Though superior to its predecessor, The Conflict is still Nazism via West Hollywood and so it doesn’t really delve any deeper into the problematic erotic psychology of its chosen milieu: fascist torture prisons and the homo-sexy aesthetics of the Nazis. It doesn’t go any further into s & m porn, either, but that’s intentional and well done: this is light, dress-up s & m made for the vanilla viewer, which made it pretty hot stuff in its day, before Treasure Island Media et al opened everyone’s eyes to what some guys get up to. Further to that, this is one of the last big budget, sets and costumes porn films made by the big studios, before the online market made such carry on look instantly retro.
Saddle Sore
BUCKLEROOS
USA 2004
Director: Jerry Douglas and John Rutherford
Stars: Dean Phoenix, Marcus Iron, Zak Spears, Brad Benton
stream preview or download Buckleroos here
A mini-industry of its own even before the release of Buckleroos Part Two, Buckleroos Part One won 11 GayVN Awards and spawned a feature-length making-of mocumentary (eXposed: The Making of a Legend) which played at g&l film festivals around the world. Five years after its 2004 release it’s a little hard to see what all the fuss was about as this “groundbreaking” gay porn film is pretty indistinguishable from innumerable other gay porn flicks set down home on the range such as Muscle Ranch, Farm Hands or even Spokes, which is also set in a barnyard.
Indeed, everything from Christian Haren’s original Marlboro Man to Brokeback Mountain and some of Tom of Finland’s drawings all drew from the same evergreen well of reverent cowboy erotica that Buckleroos drinks at. You just can’t beat the allure of tight denims, sleeveless checked shirts and that sore-from-the-saddle swagger, topped by a pair of stale-cigarette, bourbon lips, especially if you’re a present day urban gay guy who dreams of a life more exotic waiting beyond weekdays at the call centre and weekends on amphetamines.
In Buckleroos, a magic belt buckle - wielded by a phantom cowboy clad in top to toe black (Zak Spears in a non-sexual role - the equivalent of putting Fred Astaire in a non-dancing role) - offers to its wearer the power to fuck whoever they want. This comes in handy for buddies Kick (Dean Phoenix) and Jed (Marcus Iron) who have lived together for ten years, but who haven’t had sex with each other since the first night they met. They’re convinced that having sex with the same person twice leads to an irretrievable loss of heat that’s steadily replaced by what they call the “life sentence” of an increasingly platonic partnership.
