Starring: Bob Alvarez, Alvin Baltrop, Barton Benes, Tom Bianchi
Director: Joseph F. Lovett
Running Time: 71 mins
Certificate: 18
Release Date: July 26th, 2010

The documentary Gay Sex In the 70s both does what it says on the tin and completely fails to at the same. Joseph F. Lovett’s doc is a mixture of interviews, vintage photos and footage that look at the idea that the gay rights movement in the 1970s led to increased visibility and a more stridently upfront attitude, which resulted in an explosion of gay decadence and sex, with men screwing each other all over the shop. This was then brought to an abrupt end by the emergence of AIDS in the early 80s.

It’s a potentially interesting subject, and indeed this documentary isn’t the first to paint the 70s as some sort of halcyon age of gay free love that’s gone forever. Its problem though is that it never seems to get to the heart of anything, merely hinting at things that it doesn’t develop. [Read more…]