I love this movie format. I recommend to see, it is relevant in our time. I found myself in Michael. His emotional background and attitude to the wardrobe. I really liked Emory. My type of men Hank, they excite me. Juste like Cowboy Tex. This film an excellent choice for the evening.

I do not believe one must be a "fan of gay films" to enjoy this movie. This is a movie for anyone smart enough to get it. The setting, the script, the acting - superb. I do not feel, in any way, that this film portrays gay men negatively. I think it portrays gay men in 1970...each with their own personality - men who are gay, but are more importantly friends. This film addressed some heavy issues in 1970 and as far as I am concerned, it was a grand slam. Yes, some characters are funny, brutal, flamboyant, intelligent, reserved, critical, lonely, happy, sad, fun loving, caring, angry...again, these men are individuals who happen to be gay. This is still (after 40 years) a thought provoking film, full to the brim with details - the set, the characters, the "language"...this is a special film.

Mart Crowley's landmark, groundbreaking Off-Broadway play is brought to the screen nearly 100% intact. The entire original stage cast is here, and the only thing missing is part of a monologue by Michael (Kenneth Nelson) at the beginning of the film that would have rendered the scene something of an anachronism in light of the Stonewall riots of 1969 (the play opened in 1968).The cut is a small one, however, and what Crowley and stage director Robert Moore gave us in 1968 is pretty much what Friedkin gives us here.I think by now most people know the bare bones of the plot: eight gay men gather for a birthday party at the Greenwich Village apartment of one of them. Before the party gets really under way, a ninth man shows up unexpectedly: Michael's old college roommate, now a lawyer and married with children, who arrives hoping to cry on Michael's shoulder about something, but the party makes him shut down.By the end, veneers are stripped away, revelations are made, tears are shed, and amidst the bitchiness and hostility a lot of laughs and true affection emerge. And the college roommate may be a closet case; the play chooses to leave this question open, and the film wisely follows suit.The performances are magnificent. This is one of those rare instances of a stage-to-film adaptation in which a single claustrophobic set is actually an asset. Trapped together in the apartment for the evening, drinking far too much, the men lower their guards and reveal the human beings underneath the carefully constructed veneers.Kenneth Nelson plays Michael as a slowly gathering storm; his hostility builds with every drink he tosses back, until the final explosion.Frederick Combs is Donald, Michael's closest friend and probably lover (though for some reason they deny this). Bernard (Reuben Greene), the only African-American in the cast, could easily have been a token, but he is a real person, not a symbol. And Cliff Gorman nearly steals the film as the unapologetic screaming queen, Emory.Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) and Larry (Keith Prentice), the only couple in the group, are in some ways the most well-adjusted, with one hitch: Larry wants total freedom, including the freedom to sleep around occasionally, while Hank, a *bisexual* finally facing the truth about himself, is comfortable about being gay but is the jealous type.Oddly, at the time the play opened, Larry's manifesto of total sexual freedom was something of a rallying cry for the burgeoning Gay Liberation movement. Today, in the aftermath of the AIDS pandemic, with many of us now old enough and wise enough to appreciate the benefits of monogamy, it is Larry who appears the most anachronistic.The birthday boy is Harold (Leonard Frey), a self-described "thirty-two-year-old, ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy;" he arrives late and stoned, and he and Michael begin the verbal sparring that seems to define their friendship and propels the second half of the film.Also on hand is Cowboy Tex (Robert La Tourneaux), a rather dim-witted hustler Emory has purchased for the night as a birthday present for Harold. La Tourneaux provides a good deal of the play's rich comedy while at the same time exhibiting a sweetness underneath the surface of the cheap hustler.And then there is Alan (Peter White), in Harold's words "the famous college chum," who may be gay and in the closet. Certainly Michael thinks so. But if he is, by the end of the play he seems to have decided to stay there.It is fashionable among gay film buffs today to sniff at this film as an example of "how things used to be," usually pointing out that "we are not like that anymore." But I don't think that's true. With the "ex-gay" movement preying on young gay people like a nest of vipers, teaching them to loathe themselves, I wouldn't be so complacent about the progress we've made. At any rate, this is an amazing accomplishment and should be required viewing for every young gay kid out there. And though it is about men, Lesbians should be able to relate to some of it too.One sad footnote: Kenneth Nelson (Michael), Frederick Combs (Donald), Leonard Frey (Harold), and Robert La Tourneaux (Tex) all eventually died of AIDS.

There seems to be a common theme in reviews of this film. Are the characters true to life or not? Are they cliché or not? Well, they're both. Let's not forget: clichés are clichés for a reason! My problem with this film is not whether or not I will be tripping over Michaels at the local gay bar or should I live in fear that I may bump into a Harold (because having just watched the film, I have to tell you I'd rather eat dirt than have to sit five minutes with that insufferable turd) in the 'gaybourhood' but rather that the whole thing seemed forced. The actors did a splendid job with what they were given but the dialogue is overly melodramatic. The direction is heavy-handed. These things companied with the maudlin 'telephone game' that is the second half of the film force the whole project to collapse under its own weight. I appreciate that the film stood for something in it's day and it doesn't fall into the two worst pitfalls of gay cinema (see my review of Poster Boy) although that's mostly due to the era; however, the film borderlines on the ludicrous in the last half. The beginning- not so bad.