That Boy

The closest thing to a real-life living and breathing Narcissus, gay Aryan sex icon Peter Berlin was so obscenely enamored with his own blond beast beauteousness that he acted as his own photographer and would not allow anyone to take portraits of him, aside from the occasional guest like Rick Castro (who is probably best known in the cinema world for co-directing the 1996 cocksucker cult classic Hustler White starring Madonna’s one-time ‘kept man’ Tony Ward). With that being said, it should be no surprise that he would also direct himself in his own quasi-hardcore fag fuck flick, That Boy (1974), under the pseudonym ‘Peter Burian’ (Berlin opted to adopt his current pseudonym after a Hollywood actor named Peter Burian threatened to sue him). Born in 1942 as ‘Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene,’ Berlin came from a poor Prussian aristocratic family that lost all of its money and possessions during the Second World War when the future sex icon’s young father was killed in battle and the family's eastern estate was stolen by the Soviets occupiers. A relative of Baltic German fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, who was also gay and worked with Hebraic Hollywood homo-auteur George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story, My Fair Lady) and acted as a color consultant on his film A Star Is Born (1954) starring Judy Garland, Berlin may be somewhat of a dumb blond, but he also has an innate talent for photography, or at least so much is clear in That Boy, which features a number of the iconic kraut cocksucker's iconic portraits spliced in throughout the film. Starring Berlin as his alter ego ‘Helmut’ (one reviewer speculated the name might be a tribute to Helmut Berger and/or a reference to his ‘warhead’ of a cockhead) in a role where he becomes infatuated with a newly blind boy because he “seems so different from all the other street people” and “lives in a world all his own,” the film is ultimately the most bizarre example of the star/director’s rather intricate and bizarre brand of post-WWII Teutonic fairy narcissism and vanity. The second and final film Berlin starred in before directing a couple obscure shorts and dropping out of filmmaking and acting altogether, That Boy is the height of homo vanity in quasi-avant-garde form as a sort of west coast equivalent to the Warhol/Morrissey films, albeit minus any sort of irony, cynicism, or sociopolitical context, thus making for a seriously silly cinematic work that is distinctly charming due to the fact that it is completely unintentionally humorous despite its sentimental ‘humanistic’ aspirations as a rather ridiculous tale featuring camp elements (including middle-aged tranny hippie homos!) about a glamorous gay boy who falls in pseudo-love with an equally ‘side-pipe’ plagued blind boy. In the world of Peter Berlin, nothing else exists except him and his many horny admirers, who, at best, only are allowed a mere tiny taste of the muscular Teutonic twink. While dead serious in an almost poetic fashion, That Boy is also a superlatively side-splitting depiction of the delusional beauty of an exceedingly eccentric gay dude with a silly Dutch boy haircut whose personal weltanschauung is self-worship and self-glorification. Indeed, if nothing else, Berlin is the ultimate unrivaled ‘Übermensch’ of sod sex icons, but of course, no one ever had to tell him that.

As a Blind Boy (Arron Black) narrates regarding the hypnotic sexual allure of protagonist Helmut (Peter Berlin) at the beginning of That Boy as the Aryan alpha-homo cruises down south of the Market and Polk Street areas of San Francisco as various people admire him: “Showing off that huge pleasure organ of his…everyone would stare at him…weird people, boys, girls, young men, freaks…everyone staring at this cock, doing anything to get his attention. Still, he ignored everyone…there was nothing anyone could do. I suppose he knew they’d follow him…anywhere, everywhere…just to get one more look at his cock. I followed too. I followed him…watched him everyday…strolling along the street…showing off his fine muscular body. I watched others look at him…pass him by as he stood on the street corner and take another look. Often, they would return…planning how they could lure him from his isolation.” While Helmut rebuffs every single glaring girl and boy that passes his magnetic gay gaze, he develops a soft spot for the Blind Boy because he cannot imagine a life where one is deprived the sight of physical beauty, especially his own. Indeed, Helmut worships himself and derives the greatest satisfaction from being wanted by others who cannot have him. At the most, Helmut will let someone play with his cock and he might occasionally allow someone access to his poop-shute, but other than that he is a mere cockteasing cocksucker who does not even care about sucking cocks. When Helmut turns down some degenerate with a leather-fag mustache and Nazi hat, the unhappy fellow calls him “jack off” and hatefully proclaims, “you will be sorry bitch.”  Of course, Helmut barely even acknowledges the bitchy street sod and goes on his merry way, as he only has eyes for the poor Blind boy.

Ultimately, That Boy is comprised of a series of Anger-esque montages that are divided into a couple segments based on different SF street people that worship Helmut, which include an S&M photographer (who literally puts Helmut on a pedestal!), an exercise-obsessed high yellow negro twink, a urine-and-whip-loving ‘power bottom’ in a campy gay bar, and of course the ostensibly tragic Blind Boy character. And why is this Aryan hunk so obsessed with a Blind Boy? As Helmut narrates, “This boy intrigues me because he dresses so well and cares so much about his appearance.” Apparently, the Blind Boy lost his vision the year before in an accident and is well aware of Helmut’s appearance. Their ‘relationship’ begins when Helmut walks up to the Blind Boy and, while not saying a single word, helps the visually challenged twink cross the street in a hilarious scene where the bulges in each characters' pants is glaringly apparent. Surely, Helmut seems aroused by the fact that the Blind Boy must be dependent on him. As Helmut concludes at the end of the film regarding his new relationship: “I think I really found a friend. Someone I can talk to. Someone that can talk to me. Someone I can give protection to. Someone who, in return, can provide warmth and understanding when warmth and understanding are needed. Someone who will talk to me without fear and will listen in return. Someone who will share my fantasies and dreams without making demands while accepting help. I think of his fantasies…his dreams…and enjoy being with him. His mind is so much different…so much purer than the rest…he’s willing to understand and to listen…because there’s a joy in knowing no matter what events may occur, he will always hold me in his memory as I am now…as I was for him in these fine days.” Indeed, being the harmless pathological narcissist that he is, Helmut is most intrigued by the fact that the Blind Boy—being unable to see and all—will always remember him as the immaculate Aryan twink that, in terms of sod sexual magnetism, dominated the entire modern Sodom that is San Francisco.  Notably, in real-life, Berlin's longtime lover had a deformed leg, thus the sex icon's fetishism for the handsome yet crippled is completely genuine and not something he incorporated in the film to make him seem like some morally righteous queer who was altruistic enough to give handicapped homos sympathy fucks.

Unquestionably, aside from the strange scenarios of seeing a masochistic man lick beer off Peter Berlin’s crotch while being whipped by a biker, a tiny muscular negro twink working out in a gym naked, and other fiercely foul examples of retrograde fetishistic faggotry, That Boy is a mighty awkward yet hysterically humorous experience simply due to the fact that it is full of so much pseudo-sensually narrated bad poetry. For example, Herr Berlin somberly narrates regarding the Blind Boy: “What a shame the boy can no longer see the color of the streets he dreams about” and “if only he could see.” When the credits roll, the hilarity still does not end, as the film gives “Special Thanks” to what I assume are hippie fellows as demonstrated by their names ‘Cardinal Mahdi Mahatma’ and ‘Crown Prince Jesus Christ Satan.’ Admittedly, for a directorial debut, Berlin’s work holds up, albeit for all the wrong reasons, as a virtual celluloid catalog of outmoded fag fashion and fetishes.  I think John ‘The Pope of Trash’ Waters probably said it best when he described Berlin as a sort of walking and talking sex organ.

When it comes down to it, it is not Berlin but his uncut kraut cock, which gets all the great close-ups in the film, especially when he is walking down the street in his signature “saran” wrapped white pants (in fact, Berlin was given the nickname ‘Saran’ due to his perverse proclivity towards walking around town with his cock bulging out of his white pants). Notably, in the rather worthwhile documentary That Man: Peter Berlin (2005) directed by Jim Tushinski (I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole), Berlin reveals that he derived the greatest sexual gratification from luring guys in the street and then blowing them off right before they thought they would have the opportunity to blow him. Indeed, instead of being gay, it seems that Berlin was more in love with himself and his own body as an innate narcissist who puts the men of James Bidgood’s classic cocksucker cult flick Pink Narcissus (1971) to shame in terms of self-worship and glorification. Indeed, even with their Cocteau-esque use of allegorical imagery involving mirrors and what not, Michael Zen’s classics, Falconhead (1976) and Falconhead Part II: The Maneaters (1984), cannot compare to the absolutely stupefying gay vanity of That Boy, which may be the most unflatteringly sincere yet paradoxically stereotypically gay film ever made. In that sense, it is probably for the better that Berlin never directed another feature, as it would have never been able to top his directorial debut, which probably said everything that the sex icon had to say about his life, philosophy, and personality in 80 minutes or so.

The spiritually prodigal son of a young Wehrmacht soldier whose Halstatt Nordic good looks and physique he passed on to his progeny before dying tragically in the Second World War while apparently saving a comrade in battle, Peter Berlin is, in many ways, a sort of symbol for the death of the Occident, as a man who, not unlike Fassbinder's Lebensborn-bred boy toy Armin Meier, would have gone on to do much greater things, like be a prestigious SS officer of an Aryan utopia covered in Berlin-esque Arno Breker statues, had World War II ended differently. Indeed, such is certainly a tragic fate for a man who was born with the name Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene and was probably destined to live in a castle, yet instead chose the suggestive porn name ‘Peter Berlin’ and preferred living in an American urban hippie gutter. In more than one way That Boy is a fitting title, as it depicts the striking mensch who was, psychologically speaking, a perennial boy whose narcissism, like many gay men, was comparable to that of an infant, thus hinting that he never got the proper maternal nourishment during his first critical years (after all, he was born during the middle of WWII in 1942, not much earlier before his father was killed). Like the first film the sex icon starred in, Nights in Black Leather (1973), That Boy demonstrates that fascistic aesthetics (which were partly inspired by Berlin's hero Tom of Finland's drawings) were quite chic among homos in the 1970s, thus symbolizing a certain sick irony of fate in Berlin's life as the spiritually fallen son of a Teutonic father and Fatherland.  Indeed, That Boy demonstrates that 1970s San Francisco—with its tranny homo hippies, lurking and lecherous leather-fags, and bellbottom-wearing power-bottoms—was a sort of Weimar 2.0, with Peter Berlin being its unofficial prince, thus, in a sense, he did live the life of the the born aristocrat that he was after all.

-Ty E