Threadbare early Mother Goose production is of primary interest today for its surprising nihilism and sexual angst. Threadbare plot finds the twinky son of a millionaire kidnapped and held for ransom by a pair of thugs. Of course, since this is gay porn, rape is also on the menu. When the boy's father sends out a couple private dicks (heh) to come searching for his son, he turns a bad situation worse as the two guys manage to track the boy down and, finding him naked and tied to a folding bed in the living room, help themselves to the goods too. When the two kidnappers come back, it's a veritable sexual free-for-all, with pretty much everyone forgetting his role as authority figure or outlaw and diving headfirst into the action. But our intrepid protagonist has a nasty surprise waiting once his captors fall asleep...
Taking place almost entirely in a single room (aside from a few non-sex inserts like the kidnapping and the detectives out on the street) MANTRAP is basically an all-sex production, with a weird strain of nihilism and sexual anxiety occupying the margins. Of course, the film places the audience firmly in the shoes of its young, virginal protagonist, who is kidnapped by a couple of older men and forced into coercive sex (he never specifies whether or not he's otherwise interested in sex with men, just that he loathes it here). The twist with the detectives is even bleaker, particularly in the nonchalance with which it's presented, as it seems no man in the movie is capable of keeping his hands off this poor kid. (The actor's fresh look is, admittedly, rather appealing). The film also takes pains to underline the coercive elements of its story (in contrast to a lot of hostage-taking pornos), with the boy remarking multiple times in his narration (which comprises the entirety of the film's dialogue) on the pain he's experiencing during anal sex and the betrayal he feels as his body starts to become aroused (admittedly a real-life experience of many rape victims, though the movie clearly presents these details to provoke an erotic charge). A jaw-dropping, up-to-the-elbow fisting late in the movie further cements its undercurrent of near-Cronenbergian body horror, particularly as the filmmakers overly it with a weird, scream-filled cover of "Night on Bald Mountain."
(Spoiler?)
The real kicker comes in the film's finale, however, as the boy, escaping once his captors (cops and criminals alike) fall asleep, grabs a can of gasoline, soaks the place, runs out the door and tosses in a lighted match! It's a shockingly bleak and sadistic ending for a porno, even in light of the protagonist's sexual violation, and it flies in the face of the genre's general M.O. of unrealistically resolving these types of conflicts through coitus (i.e., captive victim merely needs to be initiated in the ways of sex, whereupon the discovery of sexual pleasure will be enough to "redeem" the previous act of coercion). I suppose it's refreshing to see the subject of sexual assault treated with enough gravity in a porn film to merit a brutal quadruple homicide, though one can't help but feel that, given the film's sole depiction of gay sex as an act of violence visited by a world of deviants (four characters of four) upon a conflicted innocent, the filmmakers probably had some issues of their own to work out too.
Taking place almost entirely in a single room (aside from a few non-sex inserts like the kidnapping and the detectives out on the street) MANTRAP is basically an all-sex production, with a weird strain of nihilism and sexual anxiety occupying the margins. Of course, the film places the audience firmly in the shoes of its young, virginal protagonist, who is kidnapped by a couple of older men and forced into coercive sex (he never specifies whether or not he's otherwise interested in sex with men, just that he loathes it here). The twist with the detectives is even bleaker, particularly in the nonchalance with which it's presented, as it seems no man in the movie is capable of keeping his hands off this poor kid. (The actor's fresh look is, admittedly, rather appealing). The film also takes pains to underline the coercive elements of its story (in contrast to a lot of hostage-taking pornos), with the boy remarking multiple times in his narration (which comprises the entirety of the film's dialogue) on the pain he's experiencing during anal sex and the betrayal he feels as his body starts to become aroused (admittedly a real-life experience of many rape victims, though the movie clearly presents these details to provoke an erotic charge). A jaw-dropping, up-to-the-elbow fisting late in the movie further cements its undercurrent of near-Cronenbergian body horror, particularly as the filmmakers overly it with a weird, scream-filled cover of "Night on Bald Mountain."
(Spoiler?)
The real kicker comes in the film's finale, however, as the boy, escaping once his captors (cops and criminals alike) fall asleep, grabs a can of gasoline, soaks the place, runs out the door and tosses in a lighted match! It's a shockingly bleak and sadistic ending for a porno, even in light of the protagonist's sexual violation, and it flies in the face of the genre's general M.O. of unrealistically resolving these types of conflicts through coitus (i.e., captive victim merely needs to be initiated in the ways of sex, whereupon the discovery of sexual pleasure will be enough to "redeem" the previous act of coercion). I suppose it's refreshing to see the subject of sexual assault treated with enough gravity in a porn film to merit a brutal quadruple homicide, though one can't help but feel that, given the film's sole depiction of gay sex as an act of violence visited by a world of deviants (four characters of four) upon a conflicted innocent, the filmmakers probably had some issues of their own to work out too.