The Gay Deceivers

The impact of this film recently became clear to me when I realized that having seen it only once, nearly 25 years ago, I was still thinking of it. It has become part of my internal landscape, and I tend to compare every comedic treatment of gays on film to my memory of The Gay Deceivers. It is rather sad to think that the best and probably most honest comedy about gay life in America was made so long ago, and in a time when homosexuality was still rarely hinted at in main-stream cinema. See this rare and wonderful film if you can -- urge your local film festival, art house or PBS station to acquire the rights to screen it. It deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation.

So two guys try to convince the army that they are gay to avoid being sent off to war. Of course, they decide they have to move in together, next door to the queeny landlord. Michael Greer should have received SOME award for this work. Lawrence Casey and Christopher Riordan were pretty much just hired to spend the movie with their shirts off. Kevin Coughlin and his big blue eyes do a great job in a very believe-able role. Watch out - that drag queen at the party is the butchest one in the flick. On the DVD from Dark Sky Films, there is a funny bonus interview with director Bruce Kessler. The big difference between this film and ones like "Chuck & Larry" or "Partners" is that this one treats the actual gays living in their natural habitat with a lot of respect, albeit with some stereotypes (the pink, the nudes, the ascots). I understand... at that time, that's how you knew who was gay and who was not. Fun for the most part. They spend so much time worrying about getting caught by their family, friends, or the army, that its a little more serious than it needs to be. Also some frontal female nudity and butt shots. Hats off to the actors for having the guts to make it.

I saw this via YouTube May 12, 2018. Not great, but also not as bad as some people say. It's a mildly diverting farce offering comedic bits of average cleverness that must have seemed more clever in 1969. "Stereotype" cannot begin to capture the degree of subtlety on offer here. Michael Greer's portrayal of the guys' landlord, Malcolm, just seems crazy today, but everyone else in the movie, whether straight or gay, male or female, old or young, civilian or military, is similarly broadbrushed. A farce will do that. The story ingredients combine the response of Vietnam era young men facing the military draft with the status of gay people as not "normal". This farcical recipe had the misfortune of being overtaken by events only a few years later. Centuries old customs and understandings, thought permanent without even having to think about them, changed very fast. The movie was released in the year of Stonewall. The draft ended January 1, 1973, the United States' involvement in the Vietnam war a few weeks after that. Later that year the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its catalogue of mental disorders. Gone in less than four years was the movie's gay vs. "normal" dialectic . Gone as well was the story's premise of a military draft. The focus of conflict between gays and the military shifted to that of barring gays wanting to serve in the armed forces. There is a limit to how much blame attaches to making what was at the time, strangely enough, a mainstream, financially successful R-rated movie. It's hard enough to make any movie, let alone one that can anticipate sudden changes in what plausibly appeared at the time of filming to be the established patterns of life, law, and thinking, however much things needed to change. And did.

Having watched this amateurish comedy recently, I was shocked at some of the other comments here. While "The Gay Deceivers" is as good an indication of how gays were portrayed in the late 60's (i.e. swishy, nellie queens and leather butches), it's no better than a curio - certainly not required viewing for anyone other than gay cinema completists.

There's very little here that's truly funny, since the direction and editing is so poor that basic comic timing goes out the window. Michael Greer has his first appearance as the queeny neighbor of the two hetero boys pretending to be gay to avoid the Draft. It became a typical role for him.

What's amazing is how long it took for Hollywood to graduate (even in part) from films like this, "Partners," and "A Different Story" to something approximating reality among gay people. And directors/writers still get it wrong more often than right.

I'm nuts about films from the 60s and this was a pretty adequate comedy about being gay to get out of going to Vietnam. It is interesting to see how gays were being represented in the popular cinema during a time when homosexuality was still pretty underground. But for me it was interesting knowing that the producer-director team of this film also made ANGELS FROM HELL, one of my favorite biker films. Weird, huh?