Unspeakable Horror!

Boys Beware (1961) is a short film that features explicit anti-gay messages.  Although I would categorize the short film as a piece of propaganda, Boys Beware serves as an interesting representative example for applying the interpretive strategy that I was writing about in the previous posting. 

It might be a stretch to place this film in the Queer Horror sub-genre, but it certainly suggests Gacy-esque horror and violence that occurs entirely off-screen.  The film presents one long narrative, followed by a trio of brief vignettes. 

In the previous post I mentioned intentionality, and I stated that a filmmaker's intention for the message is ultimately irrelevant; the important thing is whether or not the viewer's interpretation of the message is well-supported or not (as opposed to being right or wrong).  In the case of this short film, the intention of filmmaker Sid Davis seems obvious: to portray homosexual men as a dangerous threat to young boys.  There is no subtlety on the part of the narrator, a police detective; he explicitly explains in the voiceover that homosexuality is a mental illness and many homosexuals are violent in their demands for sex.  On the surface, this appears to be a despicable piece of homophobic propaganda.  However, a number of elements in the film seem to undermine the filmmaker's explicit message and make the short film a piece of campy absurdity (and as a result, disturbingly entertaining to watch). 

Of course, one reason for this is the fact that the film was made almost 50 years ago.  As a child, my favorite television show was Leave it to Beaver, an old-school '60s sitcom in constant rotation on cable television after school, and Boys Beware appears to me like a nightmarish episode of Leave it to Beaver with a cheesy film-noir narrator.  In addition, the narrator's claims about homosexual men are so extreme and paranoid that they sound absurdly funny to me as I watch today in 2009.  Also, there is a profound disconnect between the story that is actually portrayed on the screen and the narrator's paranoid claims, which is also very interesting (more about that later).  But finally, the soundtrack is completely ridiculous, and that also increases the sense of camp.  Clearly, the filmmaker did not intend for the short film to be campy, absurd, and entertaining to a gay man fifty years in the future.  Similarly I don't think the filmmaker intended to convey contradictory messages which also undermine the explicit intention of the film. 

The first story in the short film features Jimmy and Ralph.  Despite the deadpan film-noir narrator's claims about Ralph's sickness, depravity, and ulterior motives concerning lovely young Jimmy, what is actually portrayed on the screen is a very nice story of a friendship--possibly even a nice little romance (a very taboo suggestion, I know).  Ralph gives Jimmy rides home from the park, listens to Jimmy attentively, takes him out for a drive-in burger; Ralph takes Jimmy miniature golfing, fishing, and hunting.  If you watch the images without listening to the narrator's voiceover, it appears that Ralph is a positive and nurturing mentor to the boy.  Jimmy is clearly enjoying the friendship in every scene (even the narrator says that Jimmy has developed a fondness for Ralph, which is supported by what is shown on-screen).  Interestingly enough, when the narrator is insinuating that Ralph has contrived this friendship for the sole purpose of demanding sex from Jimmy, the image on the screen is Jimmy leading the way up the stairs to Ralph's apartment.  Ralph places his hand on Jimmy's shoulder, but it doesn't look like Ralph is coercing Jimmy at all.  At this point in the film, the narrator has proven to be such an unreliable and paranoid homophobe, I don't even believe the narrator's interpretation of what is happening in the scene.  Then there is a very strange cut, and we see Jimmy's parents leading Jimmy out of the courthouse.  According to the narrator, Ralph has been arrested, and Jimmy has been given probation, which is also very strange.  If Jimmy is Ralph's underage victim, then why does Jimmy get probation? 

From there, the film gets increasingly absurd, and the narrator's voiceover becomes increasingly paranoid.  There are three short vignettes following the Jimmy and Ralph story.  The first vignette shows a man playing basketball with a boy in the park and then giving him a ride.  The narrator claims the man is a violent homosexual and insinuates that he murders the boy off-screen.  The second vignette is the most confusing: a man uses a ruse to get a very young paperboy into his car, but it's not clear what happens next, or even if the boy escapes, but it ends with a didactic message about always writing down the license plate number if you see someone drive off with a little boy.  For the final vignette, the narrator claims that homosexuals hang out near public toilets (this film is so excessively insulting and ridiculous that it becomes darkly humorous), and it shows the shadowy homosexual following a boy under a pier, but the boy changes his mind and takes a different route home at the last minute (the soundtrack is very dramatic here); this "Little Red" scenario of the wolfish homosexual following the boy under the pier is made even more bizarre and ridiculous by the fact that the director of the short film actually plays the homosexual (as noted in the wikipedia entry on the film--we'll assume that it's true), which also strangely seems to undermine the demonizing portrayal of the sinister homosexual. 

Boys Beware serves as an excellent example of how a creator's intentions can be undermined by a deconstructive "reader response."  In many cases, including movies and books, a clear didactic message is not present (because you don't have a droning narrator feeding you the intention), even when that overt message is contradicted by what is actually shown.  This short film also exemplifies the power of camp through reader response.  There is something about laughing at the absurd portrayals in the film that strip them of their power to harm.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this homophobic masterpiece: