To Obscurity and Beyond...

Lost Movie Detective: Dead End (1985)

2012-07-18T11:24:00.000+01:00

Director:

Emerson Bixby

Written by:

Starring:

IMDB:

What if I was to tell you that somewhere out there, bathed in the murky night of bootleg VHS obscurity, there might exist a little-known horror film featuring undead babies, extreme gore, Python-esque surreal slapstick, real on-screen blood (cow, donated by a local slaughterhouse) and vomit (human, due to prolonged exposure to the former), and a satirical narrative that closely mirrors, yet long predates, a certain George A. Romero zombie movie? What if I was to add that said movie was supposedly written and directed by the son of well-loved Star Trek and Twilight Zone screenwriter Jerome Bixby, and is bursting with dozens of movie and TV references, from Rambo to Rocky Horror? Interesting, huh? Well, sorry, because no one on the planet can find the damn thing, despite several online reviews, an IMDB page, widespread word-of-mouth, the efforts of hordes of trash aficionados to find it.

According to the reviews and synopsis posted on IMDB, the plot centers on an independent documentary film-maker, played by writer/director Emerson Bixby, who sets out with crew in tow to investigate what he believes is a UFO crash near a small California town. In fact, the object turns out to be a downed weapons satellite, carrying a payload of deadly biochemical agents which has transformed the local population into ravenous flesh-eating zombies. Desperate to make history at all costs, the director places his crew in incredible danger, attempting to document the horrors he finds, and many of the characters meet with blackly-comic, jaw-droppingly grotesque ends.

The coincidental similarities of the plot to 2007's Diary of the Dead are certainly striking, but more interesting are the numerous cinematic in-jokes alluded to by most sources; the IMDB page lists nearly ninety such "movie connections" for Dead End, mostly in the form of dialogue swipes and complex, surreal sight gags. Given the volume and obscurity of the references, coupled with their apparently manic, off-the-wall, non-sequitur execution in an otherwise ultraviolent, low-budget zombie flick, it seems difficult to make clear sense of the film's tone. Is it Airplane! with misery and evisceration, or Cannibal Holocaust by way of Quentin Tarantino? The apparent conflict of a movie which has, to quote one reviewer, "an unusual 'realism' [...] which is unnerving, and at times I felt like I was watching a snuff film", and yet also features Rocky Horror zombies waiting outside a movie theatre in suspenders and high heels, might testify to a strange and unique film-making style, or it might indicate that not all is as it seems...

I recall some years ago, probably sometime around the early 2000s, performing an Internet Movie Database keyword search for "banned-film" and stumbling upon a 1997 Hong Kong/South Korean co-production by the lurid title of Indian Fetish Cult (aka. Chi fei zhou). Starring Hong Kong Cat III heart-throb Amy Yip, this notoriously violent tale of demonic possession was apparently so brutal and horrific, with near-unwatchable cruelty and disturbing sexual acts, that it had been rejected by more censor boards, in more countries, than almost any other picture. As with Dead End, precious little information was available beyond what was contained in the IMDB listing and repeated around the web by film fans trying (and failing) to secure a copy. This didn't strike me as odd at the time; after all, if it was so widely-banned, it made perfect sense that so few people would have seen it (this was long before I knew anything about the Barbara Streisand effect). So, I filed the title away in the back of my brain under "obscure shit to look out for", and soon forgot all about it. I wouldn't come across it again for several years, but, when I did, it was presented as an example of a hoax film; a fabrication submitted to IMDB by persons unknown, and from there lifted, repeated and propagated across the internet via forum posts, machine-generated film listings, and poorly-researched articles about Amy Yip (many citing the 1997 picture as her last film, when in fact she retired three years prior). Of the multitude of references to IFC, conspicuous by their absence were any reliable news items or official records relating to its banning. As a comparison, try typing 'Serbian Film banned' into any search engine and you will quickly realise why this is so suspicious.

Indian Fetish Cult is not a real movie, and has subsequently been removed from the IMDB, but the idea was convincing and compelling enough to horror fans that it took on a life of its own and become something of a cult item, despite the minor handicap of its complete non-existence.

Could the legend of Dead End fall into the same category? There do seem to be parallels: both films have/had extensively and suspiciously-detailed IMDB entries, in spite of virtually no one claiming to have seen them (so who submitted the data and why haven't they come forward to corroborate it?); both films supposedly feature intriguingly outrageous and/or taboo subject matter; and both IMDB entries make reference to elements that seem deeply implausible for such vanishingly obscure films (a well-known, established star in one; elaborate stunts, explosions, optical effects, a large cast and celebrity lookalikes, etc. in the other). Also, according to archive.org, the "unique" IMDB url for Dead End was, until October 2005 at latest, occupied by a movie called Alien Lust. Six months later it had been changed to Dead End, by which point it already had user reviews, 51 votes, and a rating of 8.3 (a lot of activity in such a small space of time, considering that six years later, it has only gathered a further 25 votes). Might pranksters have created the Dead End listing by amending an existing entry, in order to avoid the automatically greater scrutiny a new listing would have attracted? Or does IMDB occasionally re-allocate titles codes? I haven't been able to get a straight answer on that, but I don't think we need to squint very hard to see similarities in M.O. between this and Indian Fetish Cult.

The hoax hypothesis offers a plausible closure to the whole situation, but there is a flaw in it. An Emerson Bixby-shaped flaw.

The listed director of Dead End, Bixby has a verifiable track record (mostly, but more on that soon) as a director and screenwriter, and currently owns and operates his own movie theatre in California. What's more, he has confirmed several times that he indeed wrote and directed this film back in 1985. In a radio interview, he mentions the title in passing, referring to it as "my first feature". Elsewhere, in response to a fan's email enquiry, he explicitly denies that Dead End is a hoax, but states that the film was never officially released, despite several tapes being sent out to potential distributors, none of whom responded. He adds that his master copy is now lost and that he has failed, as yet, to track down any of the remaining tapes which were given out to collaborators on the project. If we accept this scenario, the IMDB reviewers and others who claim to have seen it must have seen one of those cast and crew tapes, or an Nth generation copy derived from one, since those were the copies most likely to end up in the wild. One IMDB contributor claims to recall a vendor at horror conventions in the late 1980s selling bootleg copies and enthusiastically recommending it to all who would listen, but the description of the seller (long hair, overweight) could apply to two-thirds of the attendance at such events.

At one point, Bixby announced he was offering a bounty of $10,000 to anyone who could track him down a copy; not a bad price for a movie that, according to the director himself, cost a little over a sixth of that figure to produce ($1500, which seems awfully low given some of the claims about the film). That the bounty remains unclaimed illustrates - assuming the film is or was real - that it's well into London After Midnight territory at this point.

Oh, and remember those user reviews? The posters have disappeared from IMDB and won't respond to private messages.

Now, before I continue, I want to make it perfectly clear that I have found nothing to suggest Emerson Bixby has ever lied about the film. From what I have seen of the man, he seems to be an opinionated, abrasive, strangely likable and genuinely passionate film buff. In short, he's one of us, and I consider his statements on the matter truthful until proven otherwise. If you were to ask for my own honest-to-goodness, unqualified, off-the-cuff opinion, on balance I'd say Emerson Bixby probably did write and direct a zombie flick called Dead End in 1985... probably.

However, I'd be lying if I didn't admit there was something a wee bit odd about Bixby's early career. Have a look at his first three films as a writer - you will notice these pictures have a high degree of overlap in terms of cast and crew. Delving deeper, this group of names all share a markedly similar work history, centering around an isolated "cluster" of very specific movies: Bees (1998), Viper (1996), Sea Shells (1995), Savannah (1989), Scorpion (1989), War with America (1987), Dark Harvest (1986), Blood Red (1985), Dead End (1985), Dimension (1984), Space Patrol (1984), The Basement (1983) and Warrior Island (1980). For brevity's sake, we will refer to these films as the "Mystery 13". Not every regular cast and crew name appears under every film but there is a pretty tight correlation, and, excluding individuals for whom one movie is their only credit, each film in the cluster is crewed pretty much exclusively by members of the same "gang".

In itself, this is not unusual; in fact, it is quite normal for indie film-makers to band together and use certain go-to actors and crew from picture-to-picture. What is strange is that, other than Bixby, virtually none of them have worked on anything outwith these thirteen films, before or since, and the very few that have tend towards extra work, walk-on parts or minor production roles that remain difficult to corroborate. This isn't a devastating revelation, but it is surprising that out of the dozens upon dozens of people who supposedly worked on these productions (and the crews ARE unusually large for shot-on-video efforts), practically no one, not even those credited as performing specialist technical duties, managed to break out or do anything vaguely notable or verifiable in the film industry. Only the film Amor (1980) appears to offer a glimmer of hope in all of this - directed by Robert Beavers, a noted art-house filmmaker, the IMDB page lists several "Mystery 13" regulars in the acting credits - Rachel McBride as Cassandra, Dominique Harris as Carmalita, Ruth Franklyn as Polly, etc. - but this too melts away under closer scrutiny: Amor is an avant-garde montage of connected images - hand signals, cloth being cut, scaffolding being erected, and so forth - shot in Italy; it is not a narrative film and, despite the decidedly suspect IMDB cast listing, by no account does it even feature actors or characters!

Nor can I find any record of any of the "Mystery 13" movies ever being released or shown anywhere, or, indeed, even being mentioned outside of the IMDB, except in a couple of cases where they are brought up in connection with Dead End. It is, I suppose, possible that they were all hobbyist productions, made purely for enjoyment and were thus never intended for distribution outwith the group, but that would raise questions of whether they even meet the nobility criteria for inclusion on the database.

In any case, one would expect, in this modern age of YouTube and blogging, that at least one person of the many, many involved would have allowed some clips, some photos, some fragments of information to slip out into the world. But I can find nothing. In all of the Google-searchable web, not a single individual has ever bothered to mention the time they were part of a large amateur film-making collective based in San Bernardino, turning out indie sci-fi and horror flicks over a period of two decades.

I must admit, it has crossed my mind that Emerson Bixby might be a trickster - aside from everything else, the title Dead End seems almost too mockingly apt to be true - but I feel he deserves the benefit of the doubt. He strikes me as a man with bigger and better things to do than painstakingly build up a vast, intricate network of false names and film titles for the purpose of trolling such a small hard-core of film geeks. Anyway, evidence of absence is not evidence of absence...

Besides the hoax theory, and the "official" picture as presented on the IMDB page, there exists a third possibility. Looking back to the example of Indian Fetish Cult, although the 1997 film was almost certainly a fabrication, there was at least a small kernel of truth amidst the lies: namely, an even more obscure Hong Kong-produced 1984 XXX film called Blood of an Indian Fetish Cult, about a Chinese Amerindian-worshipping cult performing weird sex rites in the woods. This picture's focus is directed more towards tacky T&A than gruelling horror, and features far tamer content than was claimed for the other IFC (yawn-inducing hardcore sex scenes notwithstanding), as well as virtually no gore or horror to speak of, and absolutely no sign of Amy Yip. But the film does seem to have served as a jumping-off point for whoever dreamed up the chimerical 1997 version. So, you could approach the Indian Fetish Cult controversy from the point of view that the film did, kinda, exist after all, it's just that all the interesting details which captured people's attention in the first place were either misrepresented, outright falsified, or vastly exaggerated to the point of being unrecognisable.

The situation with Dead End could be similar: maybe when Bixby says he made a shot-on-video zombie movie with some friends for $1500 he is telling the truth, while the more outrageous and large-scale elements mentioned in the IMDB trivia and reviews are fictitious or inflated far beyond the reality. This scenario resolves the inconsistency between the budget and the apparent scope of the production, without contradicting Bixby's statements. This makes believing in the existence of the film feel like less of a stretch, and to me seems the most credible option, at least in the absence of further evidence.

Of course, I could be well wide of the mark on this. Perhaps someone whose dad is a Hollywood figure as notable as Jerome Bixby would have access to the kinds of talent and resources that would be out of reach to other $1500 productions, making a much more ambitious film possible. There is still a chance, an outside chance, that the Dead End we've read about - complete with zombie babies, triffids and "tiny people in jars bitching at each other" - really does exist, gathering dust in some shady corner somewhere.

Go and check your attic.

No, really, go now and look! And while you're at it, if you worked on, or know anything about any of the films mentioned above (and actually exist) please get in touch via the comments box.

Lost Movie Detective: Him (1974) UPDATED

2010-02-11T14:49:00.000+00:00

Director:
Ed D. Louie (pseudonym)
Written by:
Unknown
Starring:
Unknown

IMDB page:
Click here

NOTE: Although my review contains no "adult" content (i.e. pornography), some of the sources quoted in this article include strong language and sexual references. For the purposes of journalistic candour, all are reproduced here in their full, unexpurgated form. Reader discretion is advised.

Are you curious about HIS sexual life? If this ad is a little too coy about giving away exactly whose sexual life it is referring to, let me spell it out for you: J-E-S-U-S - H - C-H-R-I-S-T.

But this isn't just any old scandal-baiting religious art-flick, no siree. Look a little closer, at the strapline under the title: "X-Rated... All Male Cast".

That's right boys and ghouls, Him was a hardcore gay porno... about Jesus.

Oddly enough, despite the explosively controversial potential of the subject matter, surprisingly little is known about the film. It seems to be an example of a truly "lost" movie; to all appearances, it has fallen off the face of the Earth, with nary a dusty bootleg videotape or a scratched-up old film print having shown up to prove it ever existed. Indeed, there are some who maintain it never did, but, by piecing together all known information on the film, as well as dabbling in a little original research of my own, I reckon I've proven the naysayers wrong. Him did exist, and it may still be out there... somewhere.

The film's first, and to date only, mainstream media exposure didn't come until 1980, in Michael and Harry Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards. In this book and its sequels, the Medveds would hand out "Golden Turkeys" to films, in numerous categories, that they considered to be of particularly low quality. In the first book of the series, Him appears as the winning nominee in the "Most Un-Erotic Concept in Pornography" category and is described as follows:

This innovative film, designed exclusively for gay audiences, goes into excruciating detail concerning the erotic career of Jesus Christ. The ads for the film show the face of The Savior (with a cross glistening in one eye) while the headline inquires "Are You Curious About HIS Sexual Life?" Filmmaker Ed D. Louie satisfies that curiosity by showing us that the Son of Man was a voracious homosexual. (After all, why did he spend all that time hanging around with the Apostles?) The central character of the film is actually a young gay male in contemporary America whose sexual obsession with Jesus helps him to understand the "hidden meaning" of the Gospels.
[...]
For sheer tastelessness, this film has no equals. In one scene, our homosexual hero goes to his local priest to confess his erotic fixation on Jesus Christ. The priest sits in the confessional, listening to the young man breathlessly elaborating his perverted fantasies, while taking advantage of the situation to reach under his cassock and masturbate grotesquely on camera. This charming episode surely marks one of the absolute low points in the history of American cinema. Those pathetic few who might want to see Him ought to come to the theater dressed in plain, brown paper wrappers, that hopefully cover their eyes along with the rest of their faces.

However, on the very first page of the book, the Medveds proclaim: "Over 425 actual films are described in this book, but one is a complete hoax. Can you find it?"

This statement has prompted many to believe that Him was the fake film in question, to assume that it never actually existed outside the pages of the book. Likely, given the uniquely obscure and outlandish nature of the alleged picture (in comparison to other films featured in the book), any Golden Turkey readers whose interest might otherwise have been piqued into researching further would have come up against this mention of a hoax, put two and two together, and declared that the end of the issue. Possibly, this goes some way towards explaining why such little interest and controversy surrounds the matter today.

The big spanner in this theory, however is Dog of Norway; a supposed boy-and-his-dog film nominated in a different category, illustrated with a "screenshot" that is, in actuality, a photograph of the Medveds' pet pooch who also appears with them on the "meet the authors" page. Dog of Norway is the true fake. This is quickly backed-up by a simple Google search which turns up no relevant results, except those that specifically connect the title with the Medveds' hoax.

Nevertheless, there has been grumbling from some of the more conspiratorially-minded denizens of the interwebs about the motives the Brothers Medved might have had in including (and, according to some, fabricating) Him in The Golden Turkey Awards. Not as part of a jovial game, in this case, but in furthering an ulterior agenda. Dog or no dog...

These days, Michael Medved is better known for being a cultural firebrand and religiously-motivated right-wing political crusader than he is for reviewing films. Of course, there is nothing a conservative media commentator loves more than a good, old-fashioned furore to help whip up support for their personal brand of "family values", and on the surface Him - with its magic trinity of sacrilege, homosexuality and pornography - reads almost like a pre-packaged moral panic in a (conspicuously absent) film can. All in all, a little too perfect, according to some suspicious souls. Could it really be that Medved invented the movie, gruesome details and all, to help surreptitiously plant the seeds of righteous protest against the "liberal" media of his day? There have been other, more recent, hoaxes about gay Jesus films. Most of these appear to have gestated in America's bible-belt, and have been propagated across the face of the earth via waves of angry chain emails (Snopes has an excellent article on these, although their reference to Him could do with updating, as we shall soon see). Whether we look upon these panics as the fruition of Medved's "secret scheme" or more simply as evidence of the politically emotive power of such claims, they do seem to help the conspiracy theorists' case. But, as with everything surrounding this movie, look a little closer and another layer of the onion peels away:

The first problem with the "conspiracy theory" is timing. The book was first published in 1980 and, although Medved began to voice his political support for the Republican party in this year, he did not become a true fire-breathing political commentator until much later. Secondly, Medved is devoutly Jewish, so his alleged motives for trying to rile specifically the Christian Right into a religious frenzy just don't seem as clear and characteristic as they might at first glance. Moreover, if the description of the film was intended to be inflammatory, it was planted in the wrong place; latterly, Medved has proven himself to be an expert at targeting his intended audience (his talk show on the Salem Radio Network has been ranked as the eighth-most listened-to in the USA), and even in the 1970s Medved was already a seasoned author and journalist who would have had no problem with getting his message out via a more suitably conservative channel than a humour book aimed at transgressive movie buffs.

Of course, not one of these points actually disproves the "Medved Conspiracy" and, in the absence of any actual prints, images, footage, reviews, or (apparently) anyone who had actually seen the damn movie, for the longest time the only things inquisitive folks had to go on were the unsupported claims of the Medveds and pure speculation. It wasn't until the mid-2000s that new information would start to bubble up from the depths of the internet.

In 2003, the now-defunct Pimpadelic Wonderland, a site dedicated to 1970s psychotronica, included Him on a list of lost films, and featured what appeared to be an actual newspaper ad-slick for the film (the one reproduced at the top of this page). The text itself simply states: "Yes, this gay porn take on the life of Christ does (or at least did) actually exist!". Given the address of the cinema mentioned - the 55th Street Playhouse, a small arthouse theatre-cum-porno fleapit, now long defunct - it seemed likely that the ad originated in one of several mainstream newspapers in the New York City area that were regularly publishing advertisements for adult films at the time. Unfortunately, the image was presented out of context with no additional information on its source. Short of catching a plane to New York and trawling though newspapers on microfiche, there was no way of corroborating the ad's authenticity. (You can see an archive of Pimpadelic Wonderland's lost film list here).

Others since claimed to have seen similar ads for the film in own local papers, including The Ottawa Citizen. According to contributors to the 55th Street Playhouse page on Cinema Treasures, the film may have played there for as long as two months and was later shown at the South Station Cinema in Boston. One poster, "Samschad", even quotes a Variety review dated April 17, 1974:

Pic depicts graphic sex acts involving Jesus Christ and includes a scene in which a priest is seen masturbating while listening to a confession. The gay-oriented film is about a young man with a sexual obsession for Christ.

This would be a groundbreaking discovery if only the review was verifiably real. Unfortunately, no such write-up existed in Variety's extensive online archive. Had it been omitted or overlooked, or was Samschad lying? One step forward, one step back...

Then, out of the blue, in December 2005, "Billy A. Anderson", a contributor to the Mesmerize forums, uploaded a full, detailed review of Him by Al Goldstein, editor of Screw, from the April 29, 1974 edition of that magazine:

DIRTY DIVERSIONS
By Al Goldstein

Queen of the Jews

CHRIST'S SECOND COMING

A bizarrely engrossing new film called HIM, playing at the 55th St. Playhouse, between 6th and 7th Avenues, has more to recommend it than some of its mismatched shots, mishmash editing and cheap budget would have allowed. I sat in the theatre next to the delicious Marcia Bronstein, editor of BITCH, so much of my enthusiasm for this film may simply have been the proximity of my thighs to hers. Then again it may have been the vividly poetic photography that loudly proclaimed in favor of cocksucking, ass fucking and other lofty pursuits of this downtrodden group of perverts.

The plot of HIM theoretically is about a faggot who is preoccupied with Christ and constantly has sexual reveries about balling that great Son of God. The plot might have worked, had it been explained to the viewer, but the movie begins inexorably slowly and, for its first 40 minutes, it consists of some solid hard-core in the gay vein and the meaning of the title HIM eludes the spectator. Only deeply into the film does one get the necessary material to permit the audience to comprehend the meaning of the plot. By then it's too late and you really don't give a shit, which is a shame, since so much of this film transcends most of the porno pap that permeates our perimiters.

I thought I had seen everything, but this movie brings in a whole new battery of barnyard banterings, from the opening credits, which are played against a stiff cock being licked by a very pretty white pussycat, to a delicious decadent sequel where a guy fucks a vacuum cleaner with such love that I started to hum, "I want a vacuum cleaner just like the vacuum cleaner that married dear old dad." As they say on Fire Island, it was one of the more legendarily meaningful relationships of last summer, and a blowjob par excellence. Another torrid little scene had a priest jerking off in his confession box as he listened to the tawdry and tear-stained confession of the wandering faggot. The sex on the cross, in particular the graphic anal probings, which is not unlike a World War II boat launching depth charges, was exciting, and, of course, the hot searching lips of Marccia waxing poetic over my body kept me truly excited. At least I thought it was Marcia. Then when I looked down I saw it was the manager of the theatre.

HIM is a hymn to sodomy and the other brazen activities that mark the twilight world of perversity with so much pain and prurience, yet to those who are not so frightened by any blemish on their masculinity and can respond to the heated sensuality of another human being, it's a film that will be innervating and titillating.

Mr. Goldstein's "Peter Meter" Rating of the film, from 0-100 %

I PETER-METER HIM AS FOLLOWS:

INTEREST--POSSIBLE- 60%, ACTUAL-45%

SEXUALITY-
EROTIC POSSIBLE-20%, ACTUAL-20 %

SEXUALITY-
EXPLICIT POSSIBLE-10%, ACTUAL-10%

TECHNICAL-POSSIBLE-10 %, ACTUAL- 10 %

TOTAL-85 %

Until now, the Screw article has been the strongest piece of available evidence supporting the existence of the film. Granted, it was not an actual scan of the page, simply a typed-out re-quoting of the text, but where it differed from the Variety review was in the fact that it appeared on a message forum where its poster is a respected and long-standing contributor and who, it would seem, is unlikely to jeopardise his reputation by fraudulently referencing non-existent information from a checkable source. Furthermore, the discussion is linked to by both Him's Wikipedia and IMDB pages, receiving a relatively high volume of traffic from these sites, and the review has also been re-posted in various other message boards, so it seemed fair to assume that, in the five years since its re-appearance, someone with access to back issues of Screw would have come forward to debunk the Goldstein review, if it was a hoax. In any case, there was absolutely no reason to believe Billy A. Anderson was trying to scam us.

Which leaves Al Goldstein himself. A love-him or hate-him character, Goldstein is well known for being... well, a bit of a rogue. It doesn't stretch the bounds of credulity very far to picture him slipping fake reviews into his magazine for shits and giggles. I have attempted to contact Mr. Goldstein by email, regarding Him, but received no reply. Failing that, I tried my best to research Marcia Bronstein and Bitch magazine, in the hope that she may have followed up with a review in her publication. Sadly, Bitch went out of business soon after it launched, and precious little in the way of information on the magazine exists today.

So was the whole kitt'n cabootle Goldstein's invention, which subsequently escaped into the wild, and picked up by the Medveds? Unlikely perhaps, given the other information available, but not entirely outwith the realm of possibility. Until now.

The impasse may finally be at an end. New information has come to light, thanks to the wonders of Google News Archive, a recent spin-off of Google News and Google Books. The site allows searchable access to the digitized back issues of various newspapers which providers have chosen to make available.

Among them is The Village Voice, the famous arts oriented alternative weekly based out of the Greenwich Village district of New York. While preparing to write this article, and speculatively browsing through issues of The Village Voice from around the period of March-May 1974, I uncovered not only another review of the film, but a whole series of different large-format advertisements for Him, some including actual screenshots from the film!

From The Village Voice, March 28th 1974 (click):

From The Village Voice, April 11th 1974 (click):

From The Village Voice, April 25th 1974 (click):

From The Village Voice, May 16th 1974 (click):

This is The Village Voice review of Him from April 18 1974 (click for higher res):

So there we have it, it would seem that reasonable doubt has been quashed - the Medveds, Al Goldstein, Pimpadelic Wonderland, Billy Anderson and the guys on Cinema Treasures - they are all vindicated. Both the Variety and Screw reviews are quoted in the ads, and I was also able to track down the source of the Time quote, which is, to my knowledge, the first time that publication has been drawn into this search.

Whew! God knows, as a straight male, I never imagined I would ever spend so much time trying to prove the existence of some gay porn! Now only one question remains: where the hell is it now!?

More investigation is required, and perhaps you can help. Do you have any info on the subject that I haven't covered here? Maybe you saw Him on its release in New York, or elsewhere? Perhaps you saw a copy on video years ago (was this thing ever even released on video?) or hell, maybe you were involved in its production, or know someone who was (someone made this movie)? If you know anything, I'd love to hear from you so drop me a line via the comments box below.

The hunt goes on...

UPDATE 22/04/10:

Having read this article, "Billy A. Anderson", credited above as the "re-discoverer" of Al Goldstein's Him review, contacted me and very kindly supplied some photographs of the pages in question (available here and here). In the very same issue of Screw, he also uncovered some new information on the 55th Street Playhouse (pic available here), including, perhaps crucially, the fact that it seems to have shown films exclusively in 16mm format, which helps narrow down the search for any would-be film detectives out there...

UPDATE 14/07/10:

More info from Billy Anderson. By perusing the pages of The Village Voice and The New York Times for ads, he has definitively pinpointed the exact start and end dates of Him's theatrical run at the 55th Street Playhouse. It played from 27th March to 23rd May 1974, a total run of over eight weeks! Here is an ad for the same theatre, from the preceding day, advertising a "Jaguar film festival", and here is a familiar ad from the 27th, Him's opening day. Finally, here is an ad from the last day of Him's run (note the small print beneath the Cowboy and the Old Man ad: "Last times: Ed D. Louie's Him"). Kudos, once again, to Billy for his perseverance and inquisitiveness.

UPDATE 21/07/12:

A couple of weeks ago, a man named Vinny Parrillo saw this article and contacted me to say that his late partner, New York muralist Tava (aka. Gustav Von Will), was the actor who portrayed Jesus in the film. He was kindly able to provide me with a photograph - either a production still or a frame from the actual movie - of Tava as Jesus carrying the cross through Manhattan. I have censored the image here to comply with Google's Blogger content guidelines.

Tava, sadly, passed away on January 15 1991. Vinny currently sells art prints of his mural works - and some photographs, including this one - at his website here (some nudity obviously, so not work safe).