Customer Reviews

The Gay Deceivers

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sure, it's a low-budget 1969 movie, but the absolutely pristine DVD mastering breathes new life into this underrated gay farce. The sound is a bit low and slightly scratchy, but heads and tails over the previous vhs video release. It's like discovering a long-lost friend again! Try to overlook the low-budget origins and some of the dated humor: It's still very timely, courageous, and above all...FUNNY! For those who enjoy Michael Greer's over-the-top flaming performance as the landylady Malcolm, check out his performance as Queenie in "Fortune And Men's Eyes"...very different and fierce! Good statements in "Gay Deceivers" regarding anti-war sentiments and (believe it or not) gay rights. The two straight roommates, posing as a gay couple, ultimately even have a greater acceptance of alternate lifestyles by the film's end. Not to be missed!

I bought this movie trying to find something interesting and didn't expect to love it so much. I have been on a search to find something as intriguing to me as The Adventures of Sebastian Cole and this was it. Almost entirely due to the presence of Michael Greer. Since watching this film I have tried to find other Greer films without much success but this film shows was a great actor he was and how fabulous gay film can be!

I saw this film first run my freshman year in college. I probably was amused by it, since it is clever. Watching it again is a good lesson on how attitudes can change over time. The movies is 40 years old and tells the story of two straight men who want to avoid the Vietnam draft by acting gay. Michael Greer is the best in the film, he is gay and was able to be 'real' in the part. There is no heavy message here, more of a time capsule piece.

this is such an amazing movie for the time it was made on. the draft of the vietnam war, & 2 straight guys that pass themselves for gay to don't be drafted. the filming is contemporary to the matter & the caracters such a cliche. don't miss the landlord, the gossiping at the party & the final surprise.

This is a Really Funny Movie I think I originally saw at a Drive-In Theater!! I believe it was in the late 60's. Two Guys trying to get out of going to the army, pose as a gay couple at the Army Induction Center. They have a really tough time after they do succeed. They have to move in together in a gay Community of apartments, to throw off the ever watching Army induction officer and his staff. It is very funny what they have to go through......Watch It and enjoy!! This is not a gay movie (No Offence Intended), These Guys are straight pretending to be gay......Just a light-hearted Comedy!The Gay Deceivers

This is a really fascinating look at the gay culture or how it was perceived circa 1969. A lot of the flamboyant clothes, mannerisms, interior decorating and attitudes are a bit exaggerated for fun but like all satires they are based on some facts. It is hard to imagine that this movie was intended for a large commercial audience but it actually was. The Vietnam war by 1969 was as popular as the current US occupation of Iraq is today. But unlike todays quagmire young men were drafted and made to serve regardless if they wanted in or not. All the characters and the "types" they represent get to be the butt of many a joke but the army gets it the worst in the movie although not really until the end. If you know any gay men from this time you will be in on a lot of insider jokes but there are lots a great moments in this movie to make it a pleasure. My favorite scene involves peonies and marigolds.

I don't know how the release of this film coincided with the Stonewall riots of the same year, but either way I approached it with trepidation. Directed by Bruce Kessler, a veteran of such TV comedies as The Monkees and I Dream of Jeannie, my curiosity was on the level of how offensive could this treatment be to a modern gay person. The setup is that two straight men pretend to be gay to avoid the Vietnam draft, and this pretence extends to them living together as a couple in a pre-decorated "cottage" in the ghetto of San Francisco. My reservations were not about how gay the two would pretend to be, but rather what kind of authentic gay men they would be surrounded by. Soon we meet Michael Greer as their landlord who is a walking stereotype - he cooks, he likes opera, he quotes Maria Montez movies, he is effeminate, inconsiderate, vain, over-emotional, mysogynistic, and has poor taste, to boot. The fact that Greer emerged from this enterprise as a "star" to appear in Fortune and Men's Eyes and later doing his Bette Davis in The Rose years later, is probably testament to the kinds of roles gay men were stuck with at the time. Kessler belabours jokes about the campy decoration of the cottage eg a pink bedroom, statues of naked men (which Greer has done), having the two deceivers repeatedly receiving guests who demand a tour. There are also noticable pauses after each line, presumably for the laugh and to compensate for TV's ubiquitious laugh-track. However, not surprisingly, the laughs are few, unless you can listen to "fag" repeatedly, and the words "normal" and "sick" are also used unsubtlely. What did give me a laugh was the performance of Sebastian Cole as Greer's "husband" because he adopts a ridiculous vampire voice that has to be a put-on. We get a set-piece at a gay bar with the men reacting to a punch-up as if gay men never punch, and a party at Greer's place there is the suggestion of the spectrum of types amongst gays. There is a plot possibilty of one of the two deceivers being latently gay but this is soon dropped, and washed away with the excuse that any man who is promiscuous has problems. Kevin Coughlin probably works better as the "straight" man of the two, since he takes the whole thing seriously and doesn't play it for comedy like his buddy, Larry Casey. But then since Casey is the more physically attractive of the two (he spends most of the film with a bare chest), it is easier to accept their behavioural choices. One gets the sense that Casey would have a gay experience just to "get off". Kessler provides one amusing edit from a blown kiss to someone wiping their mouth with a napkin, but ends the film with a stupid cheap gag.

It would be okay to be a little dated if the story and writing had been tighter, more interesting, and if the movie had a better ending. I kept expecting something to happen or some change to occur, but it pretty much just lurches on with a one-joke storyline until it runs out of steam and is mercifully over.

There are a couple good scenes and some interesting moments, but the story wanders all over the place and never finds it's rhythm. It's interesting for its time, but still sub-par.

This isn't really a "gay movie" as it's really about two straight men pretending to be gay, even though they are somewhat homophobic. I guess it would have been too shocking to depict them as accepting, although they seem to make some progress toward the end.

Dated and not very involving or interesting (or funny.) I'd avoid this one unless you like older movies and feel like tolerating the homophobia.

Truth be told, I first saw this film at a theatre when we were at least four years from the end of the Vietnam conflict.

Then, a few weeks ago, I went to see "The Kids are All Right" with Annette Bening. It was an excellent story, the acting was out of this world. But most important, I was interested in how the culture has changed since "Gay Deceivers" was made.

It's interesting, really. There were words used in this film, frequently, that really aren't tolerated in our culture any more. You can talk until you're blue in the face about "politically correct" and the like but, like the "N" word, it's nice to see that some language is less appropriate than it was just a few years ago.

Then the assumptions of the characters: Danny Devlin's father, played buy one of two actors who'd I'd ever seen before, Richard Webb, assumed that if his son is gay, he needs some serious psychiatric treatment. That sentiment was shared by Danny's sister (Jo Ann Harris) and his girl friend, played by Brooke Bundy who's the other actor I'd ever seen before.

The story is simple: two guys trying to get out of the army by playing gay. But their plans get derailed again and again. Frankly, the script could have been written by a junior high school kid. And the stereotypes of both gays and of macho heterosexuals were legend.

That leads to another interesting facet of the film. I often look on the internet movie database about a film, espeically one in which none of the actors are familiar. It's amazing how many of the actors have already met their maker, and perusing their backgrounds is interesting. For example, Kevin Couglin, who played Danny, was killed in a hit and run accident. Richard Webb committed suicide. Michael Greer, who played the particulary flamboyantly gay Malcolm was typecast. He died relatively young of lung cancer.

Well, anyway, if you want a laugh or two, and a view towards gays that rivals the racial views of D. W. Griffith--or if you want to see how that subculture was portrayed just a few years ago, this may be your cup of tea. But as to a good or creative story, you're not going to get too much out of it.