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workout / HIM


preview clip for Workout directed by: Alan Purnell (1982)

8 replies on “workout / HIM”

I just watched this for the first time recently, it’s pretty good. I don’t recall seeing very many (if any) cumshots until the very end but there’s an eroticism to the sex scenes, and it weaves the different scenarios and the four actors in and out of the action to the point that it has a sort of dream-like quality to it all. There were a few disco songs I couldn’t identify but at least two by Eastbound Expressway are heard – Never Let Go starts, plays, stops and then starts back up frequently between about 11 and 35 minutes, followed by Better Look Before You Leap from 35 to 39 minutes. Both songs are found on their self-titled 1979 album.

I think there’s a wonderful “dream-like” quality to this too, although some parts are more erotic than others, of course. Very interested to know about “Never Let Go” (I never even noticed “Better Look Before You Leap”), that it’s back from the “First Disco School”, one might call it. Time of the original Studio 54, which I went to once early on, and I think they let me in because I was truly so totally bored by the whole scene and only there because a visiting French friend wanted to see la mode plus I was pretty cute, too (there’s a marvelous docu from a few years ago (just studio 54), showing Liza, Andy and Bianca and all the chicanery behind it–I like docus on the big screen for some reason–very good.) Never heard of Eastbound Expressway, great name, like a precursor to “Smooth Operator”‘s lyrics. I found that it’s “Love me till I never let go” from comments under one of the youtube’s. Naturally, in my continued incurable lewdness, I had always heard it as “Fuck me and I’ll never let go”.

I think this dream-like quality is enhanced by there being no spoken dialogue, the music is never too loud to break the spell, and the sounds are also quite varied. And I think I recall there are some scenes with no sound at all–hypnotic. I love the movie–but then I would…the perfect capstone to all the L.A. movies that preceded it. And it really is a kind of Art Film.

You’re smart to post here zephyr, since the other “Workout” posts, are kind of crowded. : )
I love reading some of the inside information regarding this film, from BJ’s responders!

This film is indeed, pretty interesting. And to think it came from England! I would love to know the inside info on why; aside from his Colt loops, this is the only porn film that Toby did! I’m really into muscle and sex, so of course; Morgan Winner got my attention – his only film! : P

Leather Lite – I appreciate that the S & M theme, is only implied (thank God!). : I

I actually first saw this in a theater! It was at the Adonis All-Male Porn Theater on Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood. The small movie house closed down years ago. : (

GEVI say this was released in 1982. But I must have seen it later on. I’m trying to remember if I saw this, before or after; originally seeing “A Matter of Size (1983)”, at the same theater. : /

Apparently, this is the only film that the studio, “HIM Films”, ever made. I remember being very impressed, with the studio’s animated logo! : 0

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8SLiiBLuT0g/W4PcYrfxUjI/AAAAAAAC94Q/SIE8PuGUs98ZKdr-CG9dzPfJ0DG7Pnp8gCLcBGAs/s1600/HIM%2BFilms%2Blogo%2B%252880s%2529.gif

; )

Obsessed, re: “You’re smart to post here zephyr, since the other “Workout” posts, are kind of crowded. : )” I noticed that LOL. I figured if I inaugurated an unused comment section I would at a minimum, be able to find my comment later since it would land right at the top. I don’t know that I missed BJ’s other threads about this film, but without having seen it myself I didn’t really have as much of a basis of knowledge about it.

Parisian, re: “And it really is a kind of Art Film” I agree with that. This film stands out in that way, it’s less of an emphasis on exactly what the guys are doing, and moreso on the scenarios and possibilities between them. Which kind of runs counter to what most of us (myself included) expect from porn, we want the sucking, fucking and throbbing cocks erupting right into our faces, or at least that’s the way most porn filmmakers approach it. That’s the bread and butter of porn, after all, and the elements of real sex that we enjoy the most. But there’s more to it than that, with film or even erotic fiction, when a writer or director creates a vision for his art including when making porn.

Of course the music is always one of my longtime interests in porn, I talk about it enough. Eastbound Expressway’s disco tunes jumped out at me due to the lyrics that I could search for and find, the instrumental songs (which disco had a bunch of) are somewhat harder to do the old fashioned way that I have always used.

I wish I knew more about the early years of porn in England, or any country other than the US and France, basically. And if it weren’t for Cadinot I’d probably have to add France to that list. So much of what I’ve known about gay porn of the 70s and even 80s is so US-focused that it creates huge gaps that must have been filled by magazines and films (or loops) that we know so little about, or at least I don’t. Some underground by necessity I’m sure. By the 90s there are loads more examples of international porn, the Bel Amis and Cazzos and the like, but it makes me curious about what preceded it. Wonder what Rupert Everett was wanking to in the 80s in jolly old England? Either the videotapes he must have had, or if there were porn theatres in England then? If he was stroking to A Matter Of Size or Powertool or some other American import that would make me laugh, actually, but there must have been some local talent he and others were aware of in that era and before.

This wiki entry is quite interesting, and extraordinary that “Swingin’ London” of the 60s still encountered Victorian-type censorship when it came to porn–even in the 70s. Was startling, in fact, how behind the UK was to almost all continental nations. So, I read these under “Cinema, Video and Television”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_the_United_Kingdom#Cinema

Yes, there were all the new Czech and Hungarian things, and then in the 90s or 00s Britain had MenAtPlay and UK Naked Men, but this wiki points out the Danish and Swedish imports that got into England much earlier, but no English porn itself. So there was, in the Golden Age of Homosexual Porn–the 70s–likely almost no British gay porn. In fact, I never heard of any of it till the 2 mentioned above, although there must be a good number by now.

The wikipedia article is very informative, thanks. Also the section just below what you linked, when it switches focus from cinema to home video. I guess that explains the lack of many British gay porn actors or films from the period before the 90s anyway, what existed was likely low quality and underground in nature.

And to think it came from England! I would love to know the inside info on why; aside from his Colt loops, this is the only porn film that Toby did!

I don’t know what the British porn-film scene was then, don’t remember a single other of them, but aren’t the other models all British, not to mention Toby is himself English, and would naturally have known everybody sex-business-wise in England even from the past, and especially after the Colt work. I like the total difference from the Colt loops and mags–more dark and hidden, and I have to reiterate that keeping the music at those low decibels makes it all the more rarefied. So many porno movies have blaring loud sound, and maybe it’s right for them. He looks phenomenal at the pool table, and his Prick looks even longer than usual there.

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