Falconhead Part II: The Maneaters

If any old school American semi-mainstream poofter porn flick adequately depicts what homo Hades might be like for all the S&M leather-fags who succumbed to AIDS in the 1980s, it is most certainly Falconhead Part II: The Maneaters (1984) directed by Michael Zen (The Filthy Rich: A 24 K-Dirty Movie, The Naked Fugitive). Indeed, while most sequels suck shit-marinated mothballs, especially in regard to porn sequels, The Maneaters is nothing short of infinitely superior to Zen’s first film, Falconhead (1976), which I found to be an abject disappointment that, although carefully coated in Cocteau-esque mirrors and man-loving mysticism of the nude and nefarious sort, is essentially nothing more than a bunch of pseudo-butch dudes with conspicuously contrived beards and mustaches engaging in rather repellant buggery and whatnot. Of course, The Maneaters features its fare share of male masturbators and shadowy sodomy, but the film is more interested in audacious neo-Gothic aestheticism and a foreboding atmosphere than anything else, as if it was directed by a man who wanted to become a serious arthouse director but lacked the money and morality to do so. Rather nightmarishly nonlinear in structure, The Maneaters is essentially a curious and sometimes creepy collection of patently 'perverse' (in more than one sense of the word!) petite vignettes that resemble the fragmentary structure of early Werner Schroeter operatic celluloid epics like Eika Katappa (1969) and Der Tod der Maria Malibran (1972) aka The Death of Maria Malibran, albeit with an ominous and onieric visuals that lie somewhere in between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou (1929) aka An Andalusian Dog, Steven Arnold’s Luminous Procuress (1971), Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987). The shuddersome sodomite tale of a muscle-bound being with a falcon head and a human body named the ‘Falconhead’ who captures young narcissistic Nancy boys with his magical masturbatory mirror in a sort of poof purgatory until they learn to become sexually altruistic and selflessly satisfy the needs of other young and not so young men, The Maneaters is an aberrantly allegorical tale that probably sent the wrong sort of message when it was released in the mid-1980s during the Dark Age of AIDS, thus further adding to the wanton and wayward work's dark and sinister appeal. A rare fag fuck flick that addresses the innate narcissism associated with male homosexuality and the tendency for PBFs (pretty boy fags) to be attracted to men that look exactly like them, The Maneaters—a film that carries an unintentionally hilarious message that is the innate literal inverse of “go fuck yourself”—is also a work that will seem extra horrific to the authoritarian LGBT crowd. 

Beginning with the Falconhead (Paul Barressi)—a humanoid-like being with a falcon head and human male body—stroking himself in the forest, The Maneaters then introduces a semi-mature blond twink with a British accent named Barry (Rick Taylor) who is haunted by dreams of brutal bird-like creature, but he soon gets over these nightmares and begins to stroke himself in the shower after recalling a discrete encounter he had with a young blond buck that he recently defiled in a local park. Barry is a proud self-absorbed narcissist who only cares about pleasuring himself, though he is willing to fuck other men so long as they look almost exactly like him. One dark night, a seemingly demonic, Svengali-like leather-fag in full gay Gestapo regalia shows up at Barry’s home and tells him “Tonight… You will find the Falcon mirror.” A true jerk-off asshole, Barry mocks the mystery man and ask him “who the fuck are you?” in a not so nice manner, so said mystery men angrily tells him, “You listen…Falconhead is a creature that captures young narcissistic men…through the mirror…and keeps them imprisoned until they are capable of fluffing someone else besides themselves. Falconhead lives in the reflection of every narcissist.” Apparently, the Falconhead’s weapon of choice is “a man-eating mirror where lovers of self-reflection become their own reflection” and the bitchy blond Brit Barry has a date with said mirror. That same night Barry attends a somber and surreal queer masquerade ball (which he calls “hardly a party”) that is full of all the ‘usual creatures,’ including queens, fag hags, hustlers and—most importantly—the young narcissists, among other things, but they are all wearing bizarre costumes reminiscent of Luminous Procuress.  Luckily, The Maneaters lacks the hippie homoeroticism of Luminous Procuress and prefers to wallow in more wickedly wanton worlds.

 True to self-flattering fag form, Barry becomes enamored with two blond twinks who look like him and purportedly have the ‘same cocks,’ so he watches them engage in literally and figuratively steamy sodomy. From there, The Maneaters enters the naughty nightmarish realm of the pernicious magician Falconhead’s ‘poof pandemonium’ mirror. In one rather startlingly angelic Mishima-esque scene contained within a completely white and otherworldly room in what seems to be homo heaven, a young blond dude masturbates himself using a red rose with thorns, thus drawing the blood of the young poet. Following the lurid lead of an over-the-hill homo sporting a white wedding dress who somewhat resembles Sean Connery in John Boorman’s Zardoz (1974), Barry listens and watches as perverts imprisoned in the Falconhead’s mirror tell their sexually psychopathic stories in an ultimately feeble attempt to seduce the bratty blond Brit. In a scene that falls somewhere between the ‘subliminal’ homoeroticism of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1964) and the all-out motorcycle-molesting degeneracy of Fred Halsted’s The Sex Garage (1972), Barry watches as two biker boys wearing nothing but jockstraps bugger one another. Barry also voyeuristically gazes at a self-described “cockfreak” who could “eat cock and ass for hours” and “gets off to natural smells” as he sucks off an alpha-cop with a ‘cock-shaped helmet.’ In the end, Barry manages to ‘deny all’ the sinister seductions of the demonic perverts in the Falconhead’s mirror, including a Medusa-like MILF who seems rather out of place in homo Hades, thus he is trapped in pansy purgatory indefinitely. Naturally, Falconhead Part II: The Maneaters (1984) concludes with the eponymous ‘villain’ busting a load in the forest and devilishly declaring to the viewer, “You have reawaken from a dream and found yourself soaked with your own cum.”  Unfortunately for Mr. Falconhead, I did not spill a single seed while watching the film, though I did drop some greasy Chinese rice on my pants.

A sort of celluloid micro-saga of the pseudo-Ancient Greek sort featuring a synth-driven soundtrack in the delightfully dreamy and diabolical spirit of Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising (1972), Falconhead Part II: The Maneaters is nothing short of a mystical arthouse flick with horror and fantasy elements that has been aesthetically defiled by hardcore pornography, sort of like Jean Genet’s sole film A Song of Love (1950) aka Un chant d'amour, albeit more pornographic. Indeed, The Maneaters also recalls the films of Polish auteur Walerian Borowczyk (The Beast aka La bête, The Streetwalker aka La marge) due to its artfully fetishistic combination of phantasmagoric imagery and naked naughty bits. In that sense, The Maneaters almost seems like an aesthetic tragedy as a work that has virtually all of the ingredients of a arthouse cult flick, but is ultimately hardly known outside the sad semen-stained world of forgotten vintage gay porn. Probably more than anything else, The Maneaters feels like an extra-gay arthouse take on Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (I honestly would be no surprised if Barker, who is gay, saw Zen's flick and got influenced by it) due to its foreboding feel and tendency for characters to enter forbidden realms of unnerving darkness and decadence, though Michael Zen’s flick is nowhere as stringently S&M-themed, even if it an authentic fag fuck flick.  For whatever reason, auteur Zen went the same dubious route as aberrant-garde kraut auteur Jörg Buttgereit did with his Nekromantik series as he refrained from directing a third Falconhead and thus failing to making it the trilogy it should be. Of course, considering Zen currently directs shot-on-video trash fuck flicks with titles like Young, Hung and Horny (2002) and WMB: Weapons of Masturbation (2003), as well as straight porn videos like Jenna Loves Diamonds (2008) starring Jenna Jameson, I think he gave up on making arthful blue movies long ago, as he probably did not want to lead a loser life plagued by poverty.  After all, the last thing Americans want to see is poetic porn flicks with allegorical imagery and esoteric storylines and I am sure The Maneaters proved to be an anti-masturbatory experience for the majority of perverts who saw it when it was originally release nearly three decades ago.  A rare 1980s gay porn flick that blurs the typically fine line of not only art and pornography, but horror and homoeroticism as well,Falconhead Part II: The Maneaters is ripe for rediscovery for the adventurous sort of libertine cinephile who thinks Marian Dora is a real artist and who falls asleep at the thought of having to watch another plodding Godard agitprop flick.

-Ty E