Tom De Simone's gay porn feature CHAINED is his riff on THE DEFIANT ONES, that excellent Poitier/Curtis thriller from the '50s that happened to win Oscars (hardly remembered fact today) for both script and photography. Tom's XXX version gets merely a booby prize. His career move after this into mainstream soft porn with women-in-prison movies should have landed him a Pam Grier/Margaret Markov assignment, but wiser heads prevailed.
The two long-haired convicts, chained together on the run, are white, avoiding what I would have thought was preferable, namely mixed-combo action. Obviously had Sid and Bernie had sex in the Stanley Kramer original, well film history would have taken a decidedly different turn.
With the taller of the cons dominant, they invade a house and manhandle a young kid whose dad is away. Perhaps a sensitive side to the auteur is revealed when the three are sleeping and it is the sub who makes love to the kid - dom wakes up and tolerates this, going back to sleep. Hardly the roughie one might expect.
Next day, however, dom is angry at his partner, breaks the chain and they split up. That seems to defy the whole premise for the movie, but so be it.
However, the twist is that they are soon back together, as dom is found with his foot caught in an animal trap and needs his partner's support. Helping him walk in pain, finally they're bonding (through pain - I guess thematics are starting to creep in).
Discussion between the two begins to get personal, with a city boy vs. country boy backdrop. Sub tells how he used to be straight, cuing a vaseline-smeared lens flashback of him at a gym, accosted by two guys who rape him. (Finally, the roughie content.) He resists in the now time-honored fake porno manner.
Dom is sympathetic to this story, looking a bit like Jim Morrison (can't hurt). In fact the dom starts playing the harmonica, not a Doors touch but still sentimental in context. The duo make love, and it's '60s time, romantic with romping in a field of flowers.
The sub is shot dead, presumably by the authorities, and with both of them nude, the dom carries his body away Christ-like. The print saved by Something Weird has a shredded ending, the film literally drifting away.
Perhaps of value to a historian of Gay cinema, the film left me cold and is only interesting as a sketch, not a fully realized work. How it went down at the all- male theaters of its day, I'll never know but I suspect its combination of pretentiousness, downbeat world view and false sentimentality did not constitute the desired escapist entertainment or boy/boy date flick.
The two long-haired convicts, chained together on the run, are white, avoiding what I would have thought was preferable, namely mixed-combo action. Obviously had Sid and Bernie had sex in the Stanley Kramer original, well film history would have taken a decidedly different turn.
With the taller of the cons dominant, they invade a house and manhandle a young kid whose dad is away. Perhaps a sensitive side to the auteur is revealed when the three are sleeping and it is the sub who makes love to the kid - dom wakes up and tolerates this, going back to sleep. Hardly the roughie one might expect.
Next day, however, dom is angry at his partner, breaks the chain and they split up. That seems to defy the whole premise for the movie, but so be it.
However, the twist is that they are soon back together, as dom is found with his foot caught in an animal trap and needs his partner's support. Helping him walk in pain, finally they're bonding (through pain - I guess thematics are starting to creep in).
Discussion between the two begins to get personal, with a city boy vs. country boy backdrop. Sub tells how he used to be straight, cuing a vaseline-smeared lens flashback of him at a gym, accosted by two guys who rape him. (Finally, the roughie content.) He resists in the now time-honored fake porno manner.
Dom is sympathetic to this story, looking a bit like Jim Morrison (can't hurt). In fact the dom starts playing the harmonica, not a Doors touch but still sentimental in context. The duo make love, and it's '60s time, romantic with romping in a field of flowers.
The sub is shot dead, presumably by the authorities, and with both of them nude, the dom carries his body away Christ-like. The print saved by Something Weird has a shredded ending, the film literally drifting away.
Perhaps of value to a historian of Gay cinema, the film left me cold and is only interesting as a sketch, not a fully realized work. How it went down at the all- male theaters of its day, I'll never know but I suspect its combination of pretentiousness, downbeat world view and false sentimentality did not constitute the desired escapist entertainment or boy/boy date flick.