“The Best Of Dean Monroe”
Starring Dean Monroe, Chad Hunt, Brad Patton, Arpad Miklos, Barrett Long, Matthew Rush
Falcon Anthology Series
2007

Dean Monroe became quite the fan favorite in his three years with Falcon Entertainment. There’s nothing prissy about this guy: He gets nasty right from the get-go, and that has made him the bottom boy that every top wants a piece of. This best-of collection teams Monroe with some of Falcon’s biggest (by which we mean “hung”) stars.

Several cuts on this disc are group affairs, which might seem odd for a single-model spotlight collection, but even in a crowd Monroe shines.

In fact, DM is actually absent from most of the orgy scene from “Kept”, which revolves instead around Chad Hunt’s mighty tool and the men who polish it. But once Monroe and a fifth model enter the shot, it’s all about who can get at his bum the quickest. Similarly, when teamed up with the aptly named Barrett Long and popular Teutonic top Brad Patton in a clip from “Bootstrap,” Monroe’s enthusiastic performance steals the show.

Bad-boy, dark good looks aside, DM’s appeal lies in that he’s simply enjoying himself more than his partners: He moans louder, talks dirtier, and his face is always expressing. (At moments, Monroe actually resembles Rob Morrow from the 1990s TV show “Northern Exposure.” Morrow’s character could never manage to hide his volatile reactions from his better-grounded Alaskan neighbors; Monroe deploys the same adorable, on-the-sleeve quality to keep drawing the camera back to himself.)

The first five scenes of the disc maintain a slam-slam-slam pace. Clips six and seven, both two-man segments, downshift a bit. A cowboy costume fantasy with Manuel Torres is rather tender, with the Latin stud washing DM from head to toe; and the pairing with Randy Gunz, the only African-American on the disc, is a slow, sensual burn. In all it makes for quite a satisfying collection.

“10:30 PM Monday”
Directed by Severin
Starring Jeff Sattler
Selo Films (rights now owned by Bijou Video)
1978

A young man loses himself in a bewildering maze of leather, fisting, toilet play and bondage in “10:30 PM,” one of the earliest and most influential experimental films in the gay hardcore genre.

A mysterious vintage Rolls Royce pulls into a driveway and whisks sandy blond, bearded hippie type Jeff Sattler away to an old stone mansion. Once inside Jeff stumbles from room to room marked with crudely painted wooden signs—“BAR,” “TOILET,” etc. The men he finds in these rooms are leather-clad and engaging in some truly raunchy play (remember this was the pre-AIDS era). Jeff stands apart from the action one minute, then is suddenly, inexplicably in the middle of it.

The film is mostly non-linear and there is no dialogue—scenes cut abruptly, characters appear and disappear, locales change without warning. Add a creepy a-melodic soundtrack, trippy, primitive effects and lots of Crisco-slathered sex into the mix and the result is an atmospheric, Warholian mind-screw of a porno that is as disturbing as it is arousing.

A cheesy radial whirl transition effect a la Twilight Zone is used whenever our hero finds himself in a different spot in the house. Depending on your point of view, the device, meant to illustrate Jeff’s delirium, is either an annoying distraction or a charming camp artifact.

Jeff finally emerges from his dark night of the soul into a whitewashed room marked “BEACH,” where he has a blissed-out encounter with an old flame. This final scene is an arty excess but it doesn’t really mar the impact of this engrossing movie.