Vintage Gay Loops

Above: You don’t need to workout when you naturally get washboard abs from scrubbing your clothes against your stomach. Below: I know what you’re thinking… Hairy is so 1972! Well, this is 1972.

by Rick Wood
November 6, 2009

If you are discovering Vintage Gay Loops for the first time, you’ve got to understand one thing. Throw away all your preconceptions of what a gay porn star is supposed to be. Better yet, erase all your ideas of what a homosexual man is supposed to be.

All of the contemporary gay archetypes that have become part of our day-to-day vocabulary – the bear, the twink, the leather daddy – these didn’t exist back then.

This was a time before Marky Mark and Brad Pitt heated up the male image with their smooth, chiseled, six-pack abs. This was a time when men were raw, hairy and sweaty. If they were built, they got their muscles from doing hard labor not by going to the gym eight days a week.

There is a certain masculine sexiness that has been lost over time – something natural, perhaps even innocent, about the way the men in vintage gay porn let themselves go and feed their primal desires for male flesh.

Of course you will get a kick seeing all the cheesy moustaches and puffy ’70s hairdos. But if you are not normally into hairy chests, you will be surprised when you find yourself jerking off and wishing you could slide your hands down across these bushy male bodies.

We did manage to dig up a few scenes for those who like it smooth. But again, the smoothness seems natural when you are looking at the young studs with defined abs. These boys haven’t shaved; they’re hairless because the hair hasn’t grown.

You will be excited to know that Vintage Gay Loops were not without their caricature gay guys. In fact, these are the scenes that laid the groundwork for the porn stereotypes we quickly identify today. Fucking the gay male jock in the locker room. Dreaming about the cute pool boy. Humping the horny farmhand. And, yes, watching gay cowboys who are hung like horses stroke their massive man meat. This is where these fantasies began.

So take off your blinders and open your mind to a truly new experience. Let go of your contemporary perceptions and enjoy these old gems. When what once was old is new again, Vintage Gay Loops proves that everything has a cycle.

by David Stidler
October 29, 2009

At the time when the 8-mm films found here on VintageGayLoops were produced, the demand for porno films become so big that hetero films like “Deep Throat” and “Debbie Does Dallas” started showing up in the B-Rated movie theatres.

People were having a great time, but, of course, the government was against it. Porno flicks were declared obscene and racketeering laws came into effect so the authorities could go after the mob, which was funding everything. According to the rule book, if you were found producing or showing something obscene, they could take away your whole business.

During the 1970s, people like Playboy’s Hugh Hefner fought court battles in the name of first-amendment rights. There were a lot of arrests and the porno theatres were closed down.

These battles eventually lead to what is known today as community standards, where the decision to allow the distribution or exhibition of gay porn, or any porn for that matter, lies in the hands of the community. This is why nowadays you can go to a place like Palm Springs where there is a huge gay community and you will find the laws governing gay porn much more relaxed than right next door in Cathedral City. Each community, to a certain degree, can decide its own standards.

But then came video.

The gay porn industry exploded to a whole new level. Everybody and their mother got a video cassette recorder. Analog video cameras become available for about $1,000, providing a much cheaper option to film.

Most importantly, x-rated films moved from being shown in public theaters, to being seen in private homes. This shifted the position of government officials from being totally against adult film to saying, “Well, if it is in your own home, then I guess that’s okay.” Mind you, the government still wanted to regulate how the video stores handled it so children browsing for the latest Disney cartoon wouldn’t stumble on it (hence the creation of black-curtain sections at the back of shops that hid the adult products out of sight), but such regulations were insignificant along side the simple fact that adult film was now legal and easily accessible to the general public.

The effect was immediate. All of a sudden throughout America we started seeing that it was okay to carry certain gay porn. Every video store had an adult section. Certain shops in New York, San Francisco, even Chicago blossomed. Some started a mail-order business and they are still huge today. T.L.A., for instance, has been around forever and they have made a fortune.

In the beginning, video stores were not like they are today. In addition to giving them your credit card information in case you ruined the video cassette they paid a lot of money for, you also had to pay a membership fee, maybe $50 per year, plus the rental fee, unless you wanted to buy the video, which would cost as much as $120. But they could get you whatever you wanted; as long as the community standards were cool with it, the store would bring it in. In some case, even if the community standards weren’t cool with it but the store knew you, they’d bring it in; they just wouldn’t advertise that they had it. They would keep it for their gay customers and rent it out in a private, anonymous fashion.

by Rick Wood
October 20, 2009

If you don’t know already, this is GLBT History Month. With all the Pride celebrations around the world taking place in the summer, the autumn is a good time to reflect on what we’ve achieved in the fight for queer rights. (Apologies to those who don’t like the term “queer.” I know it means “weird” but weird is so much better than normal; normal is boring!)

For the fourth year in a row, the GLBT History Month Web site www.glbthistorymonth.com marks the achievements of a different gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender icon every day for the month of October.

When I heard of the list, my first thought was that it would consist of a bunch of obscure names only known to stuffy, queer academics. But no! I was happy to see many names I’ve not only heard of, but many are people still around today.

This year’s list includes Alfred Kinsey, who’s Kinsey report remains the most in-depth and comprehensive scientific analysis of American sexuality. He’s the guy who interviewed thousands of people about their sexual habits, behavior and experience and came up with such statistics as 1 in 10 adult males identify as being gay, a statistic we still refer to today. A movie was made of his life in 2004, called “Kinsey” and starring Liam Neeson in the title role.

I am impressed that Gus Van Sant is on the list. The American director’s film “Elephant” (2003) is the only thing I have ever seen about the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that deals with the fact that the two boys who did it were gay and the source behind their anger was the homophobia they faced at school on a daily basis. The mainstream media never discussed this; even Michael Moore missed the point in his documentary “Bowling for Columbine.”

Van Sant’s film aptly takes its name from the expression “elephant in the room,” which refers to a situation where there is something big happening, it’s on everyone’s mind and impossible to ignore (like an elephant in the room) yet nobody talks about it because nobody knows what to do about it. So the issue goes ignored. The Columbine massacre was a major news story. Everyone talked about it, but the gay issues we completely ignored.

Other names that pop out are country singer k.d. lang, artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and experimental music composer John Cage. You can also check out profiles of all the people who have appeared on the previous years’ lists on the GLBT History Month site.

Check out the price on these movie box covers. Fifty dollars is more than anyone would pay for a film today, let alone back in the 1970s. Think again. The demand for gay films back then was so high and the films were so rare that people paid big bucks for this stuff. Paying $50 for a film back then would be like paying $200 for a DVD today.

by David Stidler
October 13, 2009

Vintage Gay Loops is a chronicle of the history of 8-mm adult gay films from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. These films, made in black and white or color with no sound, were produced as calling cards for escort services. They were developed as 8-mm loops and special screenings were eventually set up to show these films. It was all underground, run by the mafia.

It wasn’t long ago that gay porno films were illegal, unlike today when we have full amendment rights, such as free speech. You have to understand that there was a fight for these rights. The foundation for the gay rights movement that was sparked in the ‘60s was that gays couldn’t congregate; they couldn’t get together in bars. This was illegal. So the mafia was running everything – gay escorts, the gay bars (Stonewall was run by the mob), and they were the ones producing gay porn.

These vintage gay loops come from a time when only three per cent of the population had the money to afford the latest, greatest gadgets – the film cameras to shoot scenes, the money to develop the film and the projectors to watch it. The mob had to find a lab and work underground with technicians at night to process the film. The mob watched everything every step of the way.

As the demand for people to watch these gay films grew, screenings were set up. The screenings were rarely busted by the cops because where the films were shown was always out of the way, not anywhere in a commercial environment or establishment. The mafia owned a lot of real estate – industrial parks, car repair shops – in different parts of town where they would throw down steal, fold-out chairs and set up a screen and projector.

They would pass out these little postcard invitations to the screenings and charge an admission and men would walk in and be able to see the loops. At that time, they were not shown in any kind of real theater, but it became common knowledge in the community where you could go and see them.

The films would be in warehouses in areas where kids wouldn’t be around. You really had to go out of your way to go where it was at if you wanted to see it. There wasn’t any, “Oh! Oops!” I walked into the wrong door by accident. If you were there, you knew what you were there for.