Tintorera: Tiger Shark

Tintorera: Tiger Shark

UK/Mexico – 1977

Director – Rene Cardona Jr.

Media Home Entertainment, 1983, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour,31 minutes

Tintorera came to my attention because of the Hugo Stiglitz name and the raggedy old Media box in which I spotted it. It quickly became evident that despite more obvious on-screen distractions, there was a lot of subtext in the sex and violence that pervade the film, and I wanted to figure it out. Monsters pretty much always represent more complex issues than their own physical or spiritual presence. Animals as monsters, despite common connections to fears of science, can also embody some socially or personally repressed aberration (or both).

Tintorera: Tiger Shark centers around Steve (Hugo Stiglitz,) an affluent and bored middle aged bachelor vacationing in Mexico and his relationship with Gabriella (Susan George) and Miguel (Andres Garcia). Initially Steve chases women in the bars and beaches, but his interest is ambivalent at best. After an insincere argument with Miguel over one particular woman, he and his rival quickly become friends and begin chasing women together. Soon they meet Gabriella with whom they establish a Menage a Trois with some important rules; no attachment to her, and no other women. Much of Steve and Miguel’s remaining time together is spent interacting with one another while Gabriella, whose character remains largely undeveloped beyond her introductory lines, remains peripheral and safely within the prescribed confines of female sexual object. Her presence serves to superficially deny what is becoming increasingly readable as a journey of sexual discovery between our two brotagonists.

 

In the opening scenes while pursuing women, Steve is horrified by a local fisherman’s wanton killing of sharks, but as his relationship with Miguel quickly becomes closer (although never explicitly physical) his friend teaches him how to hunt sharks and he actually begins to enjoy it. Up to this point the violence meted out against sharks is largely implied, but when they start hunting together it is shown quite explicitly, and becomes rather difficult to watch in its gruesomeness. For both the narrative and the film itself, this graphic penetrating violence clearly implies sex between the two men and Steve’s increasing comfort with this new identity. The first time they take Gabriella on one of their hunting forays she is shocked when she witnesses what the men are doing, and as if on cue Miguel is eaten by a Tiger Shark. According to the established rules of the three way, Gabriella takes her leave and Steve is left alone again.

Until this point, social disapproval and condemnation of his sexuality have pushed Steve into bitterness and even self repression which, with Miguel’s tutelage he has overcome. Through their commission of the transgressive act, the sex as violence, the men kill their feelings of lonely ostracism and guilt. In the final scenes after his lover’s death Steve goes completely apeshit and begins clubbing and spearing every shark he sees in a desperate attempt to find the one that ate Miguel. When he does, he kills it at the cost of his own arm.

Violence committed by men has a long and multicultural filmic tradition as a metaphor for sex, so it is not really a surprise to find it surfacing in a Mexican Jaws knockoff. What is interesting are the connotations of that violence as meted out against sharks in Tintorera, and the fact that contrary to Hollywood’s imperialist tradition, it ends on a positive note with the outsider still outside and unrepentant. Although Miguel’s death truncates the possibility of an continued or overt relationship, and the brilliant white hospital room in which Steve wakes suggests a return to safe institutional normalcy (that is, the hetero-normative), Steve is undeniably and visibly marked by the experience. The look of satisfied serenity on his face leads me to believe that his guilt-demons have been finally exorcised.

 This post is part of Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs

German poster from Grindhouse Database

Japanese art from Super Trash Cinema

"Cult" Classic? I hardly think so.

Three French VHS inserts, all from Agressions Animales

Saigon In Beverly Hills

Saigon in Beverly Hills

United States - 1993ish

Director - Tuan Anh

Tuan Anh Productions, 1993, VHS

Run Time - I don't have the karaoke stamina to count

What blogathon would be complete without a random oddity from the Lost Video Archive VHS vault?  In this case, transgender Vietnamese variety show hosted by singer Tuan Anh who just happens to be on tour right now!

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs

Charles Bronson Deja Vu Double Feature

The Evil That Men Do

United States - 1984

 Director - J. Lee Thompson

Goodtimes Home Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 30 minutes

But WAIT! Haven't we seen this same classic manly, phallic-symbol Bronson pose on the promo art for another film?

The Mechanic

United States - 1972

Director - Michael Winner

MGM/UA Home Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 41 minutes

An interesting story that you will find on the Wiki about The Mechanic:

"In Lewis John Carlino's original script, the relationship between Arthur Bishop (Bronson) and Steve McKenna (Jan Michael Vincent) was explicitly gay. Producers had difficulty securing financing and several actors, including George C. Scott, flatly refused to consider the script until the homosexuality was removed.

There's more too if you just click the link above.

 

Queer Film Blogathon

Lost Video Archive will be contributing at least one post to this worthy event. 

Check out host Garbo Laughs for a complete list of contributors and information on participating yourself.

In the meantime, I wrote a short essay on the important subject of "Naming Your Girl Band" which was published yesterday over at the preeminent music blog Illogical Contraption.

Can't Stop The Music

Can’t Stop The Music

United States – 1980

Director – Nancy Walker

Anchor Bay, 2002, VHS

Run Time – 2 hours, 3 minutes

My assumption about the Village People up to this point had been that they were simply another shitty disco group that earned their cultural status for wearing costumes. Of course, there was much more back story, I’d just never stopped being annoyed with the music long enough to look deeper. Suffice to say that upon watching this movie I was surprised at how unabashedly gay it was. I was glad that nobody even mentioned it though, it was simply an established factor of the plot that didn’t require attention or apology. As a breeder I have at best an outsider’s perspective, but it seems like it would be profoundly demeaning to have to perpetually identify oneself by other people’s labels. Why then should gay film, or in this case simply a film with gay people, openly identify itself as such any more than a straight film should? Ultimately I understand the struggle between demanding acknowledgement and respect for ones differences, and simply wanting to be left alone. But again, I’m a white male breeder, so I can't really know. The fact that I notice it however suggests that it is still uncommon enough to be grab one's attention when it does appear, which I’d like to point out is thirty (30) years after this film was made. What this means is that we still need more films in which gay characters are just characters whose sexuality is simply not an issue. Really, we need more of that in general.

I’ll make no excuse for thinking the music was pretty bad, for I am a child of punk, the natural enemy of disco. But years ago after seeing The Apple and Skatetown USA, something strange and unspeakable happened. Put it this way, a year and a half ago I was watching Thank God It's Friday with my friend who was grumbling and squirming in his seat like he'd just swallowed the worm. A year later he called me up one night saying, "Hey I just bought all these disco movies for my girlfriend." As he was telling me this I could hear her in the background yelling, "What? For me? I don't think so, I didn't want any of that shit!" I can understand his conflicted behavior.

In the case of Can't Stop The Music, I was able to overlook the music largely because I found it refreshing to watch a film that wasn’t totally focused on horny breeders and tits. There was a little of that thrown in (Valerie Perrine), but it was intentionally comedic and illustrated the ridiculousness of the male-female social interaction. If nothing else, Can’t Stop the Music forced me to read up on the Village People and think about the status and role of non-hetero characters in mainstream film. And as a capsule of American pop culture at a particular instant, it’s definitely got something going for it.

Plus it stars Steve Guttenberg and you get to watch full length “music videos” of YMCA and Milkshake. Y’know, if that’s a selling point for you.

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior

United States - 1993

Director- Boaz Davidson

Cannon Video, 1994, VHS

In a post apocalyptical U.S of A the remaining hetero population has been herded into a big slum where a gay machine imbued with artificial intelligence keeps them under control with the use of heavy metal cyborgs. Naturally, as under any sinister state Electric Eye, a group of underground resistance fighters is just waiting in the wings to jam up the gears of the man’s machine with a little vaginal intercourse. The scratch here is that since the end of the war women have been infertile, and it's suggested that the birth of a child however freakish and messianic will somehow change everything. In a secret breeder base under the ruins of the city, that very thing is taking place, in a fashion.

In a squirt of not so subtle metaphoric genius, The baby's mother is named Mary (this probably should tell all of us hopelessly aberrant heteros that she will not be showing any skin in this film) and in a budget aphorism which simultaneously enhances the sciency part of this fiction, the baby is kept alive in a jar. Mary must transport the rubber rugrat 10 miles through the anarchic city to the ocean, where a legendary boat from Europe will come to pick it up and raise it to adulthood at which point something dramatic is going to happen. Just as Mary and and her two escorts are about to leave the secret base, a Rob Halford cyborg clad in a leather jacket studded with English steel bursts into the lab and starts enforcing homogenaety.

Ramming the rubber baby down in her backpack, Mary is the only one to escape alive and finds herself alone in the city. She quickly runs afoul of some of the crusty denizens of the ruins only to be saved at the last moment by Austin, a rugged but feminine featured macho warrior with a glistening well-groomed mane of Kenny G hair and well powdered face. Halford smashes up the happy encounter demanding that Austin stop living a lie.

Mary and her new slightly uncomfortable looking and standoffish protector, the romance-novel-cover rugged Austin flee, but time and again are hounded by that hellion Halford-borg, determined to ram denial down. Austin repeatedly, but only temporarily stops him, finding each time that he has another thing coming. He even slashes Halford's throat open releasing a gout of strange white fluid, but this bizarre solution only helps the cyborg regenerate the wound. In a final confrontation, just as he himself is snuffed out, the ruthlessly tyrant Halford-borg rips off Austins arm. Weeping uncontrollably like an elderly Polish widow -in fear and a measure of relief- Austin clutches his bloody stump, discovering on close inspection that he too is a cyborg, a Red Blooded American Cyborg! Stitching Halfords own severed arm onto his own stump in posthumous tribute, Austin takes Mary the last few blocks to the ocean where she passes the rubber rugrat to some French guys in a rotting wooden dinghy who plop the sucker into a big maraschino cherry jar at the very last minute.

Knowing he must now do all his living after midnight, Austin decides that he's destined to remain in the city, and in a graceful farewell to a former lifestyle turns his back on Mary and walks away knowing that his personal liberation has somehow helped save humanity. As a parting shot Mary promises to name the rubber baby Austin.

If this whole plotline sounds somehow familiar, you're not alone, just let the comedic effect sink in and enhance the experience. Above are some alternate covers for the American Cyborg story.

Someone Behind the Door

Someone Behind the Door

France - 1971

Director – Nicolas Gessner

Gemstone Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Despite Bronson's decent performance in Rider on the Rain, it was a French film, as is Someone Behind the Door and that in itself is a tiny tragedy in a bottle. I bought this film, which is based on a French novel, strictly because of the Bronson name. I am above all loyal.

Mr. Bronson is dropped of in a daze at an English hospital where a brain doctor, Anthony Perkins takes him to a room and does cursory diagnosis and injects him with a tranquilizer before suggesting they return to his house where Perkins can “observe” him, something he does with his patients “occasionally.” OK, crude insinuation noted.

At his mansion, Perkins makes a lot of blunt suggestions, postulating explanatory possibilities for Bronson's loss of memory. While Bronson is out of the room Perkins plants a gun in his jacket pocket and drops several more tranquilizers in his orange juice. Really? When Bronson passes out Perkins dictates his sinister plot-like diagnosis onto a reel-to-reel tape. His wife, Jill Ireland wakes up and the two of them exchange bitter, hateful insults through a veil of coy and practiced friendliness. She leaves for a trip to visit her brother and Perkins goes through some kind of stiff awkward attempt at estranged husbandyness.

Bronson awakens and wanders the empty house inspecting fruit and searching for some purpose to his employment in this film. The waxen Perkins returns with a suitcase that contains a bunch of conveniently suggestive evidence, and a letter detailing infidelity and a sordid love triangle. Perkins further insinuates hypothetical explanations in order to rile Bronson, speculating all kinds heavy adulterous situations. Finding himself playing across from a disinterested two-dimensional wet blanket, Bronson decides he really ought to flip his wig if he’s going to make this film interesting.

Perkins shame unravels when Ireland's brother shows up looking for her, and its revealed that the whole thing is an elaborate harebrained scheme to frame Bronson for the murders Perkins intends to commit using the very justifications he’s been feeding to Bronson.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, it works, Ireland and her lover show up, and Bronson plays his role with glee, shooting the lover repeatedly, and tearing Ireland's clothes off in what amounts to a near-rape. (Keep in mind Bronson and Ireland were actually married at this point)

The many faces of emoting Bronson in Someone Behind the Door.

The whole thing takes on a depressing dimension because it’s quite clear that it is all an elaborate and subtle vilification of Perkins own sexuality and homosexuality in general, whether or not he realizes it or the film ever suggests anything overt is beside the point. In fact, that’s the real catch, it can’t be mentioned. Perhaps too it’s an accusation of a society that forces gays to hide themselves away and live double lives. That’s the second tragedy of this movie, I can’t tell who it’s pointing the finger at and if I keep it up I could dissect this thing for hours and that would be more boring than the film.

Perkins shuffles in pale and sweaty, withered by shame and the monstrous relief of being released from living his own double life. He breaks the news about the whole fake wife brainwashing thing and Ireland slips comfortably back into her sex object role, coolly mocking him with dripping disappointment and accusations, even slutty women (the deplorable/desirable patriarchal trope) it would seem are superior to the gays.

Bronson meanwhile has exited very quickly and is wandering the beach wondering what the hell happened.

Some alternate covers for the film, all of which vilify Bronsons character. The last one from Unicorn Video is my favorite but sadly does not improve the film.