DVD Review: The Erotic Films Of Peter De Rome

★★☆☆☆

The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome (1973) released by the BFI for the first time on DVD, defies categorisation.

Born in Britain, underground filmmaker Peter de Rome was making erotic, gay, Super 8 films in his adopted city of New York during much of the late 1960's and early 1970's. Mostly done for his, and his friends, own titillation, it wasn't until pioneering producer Jack Deveau saw one of the said films and persuaded de Rome to gather together eight of the movie shorts and blow them up to 16mm, that they were released them under the collective title The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome to instant critical and public acclaim.

Watching the films which make up what is now considered a gay cinema classic, you can't help but fall between two stools. On the one hand they can be viewed as mere home movies featuring nubile young men pleasuring themselves, and each other, in a collection of often bizarre situations. Alternatively they could be seen as beautifully surreal and imaginative snapshots, as much there to depict the exploration of the male body and identity as for any means of erotic arousal.

Shot in a variety of locations including Fire Island, New York and Kew Gardens, London, some of the films, such as the dreamlike Double Exposure (1969) which focuses on a young man's exploration of his body after he is enticed into a deserted beach house to watch a mirror image of himself taking pleasure in a series of erotic acts, could at a stretch be considered interesting experimental works. However such undeniably beautiful and voyeuristic trips are sullied by the equally pornographic base level of others like Prometheus (1972) with its gang rape finale. The overall feeling one is left with is that the films as a whole are, at best, mildly diverting examples of art house cinema, and at worst the dirty secrets of an old man's youth.

What saves the DVD from being just another collection of gay porn passing itself off as 'serious art', is the accompanying documentary Fragments: the incomplete Films of Peter de Rome (2011). This interview with de Rome, now in his 80's, in which he discusses how he became interested in cinema and involved in film making (specifically that of gay erotica) is fascinating, kept lively by a man who in the end comes over as much more fun than the films he made.

Reviewer: Cleaver Patterson
Rating: 18
Release Date: 26th March 2012
Director: Peter De Rome
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