 |
Saturday Night at the Baths by David Buckley
List Price: $29.95Our Price: $17.00You Save: $12.95 (43%)Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: DVD See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
DVD detailsActor: Robert Aberdeen; Don Scotti; Ellen Sheppard Director: David Buckley DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Original Language) Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full length, Letterboxed, NTSC, Restored Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 86 minutes DVD Release Date: 2006-03-21 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: Water Bearer Films
DVD Reviews of Saturday Night at the BathsDVD Review: Two stars for a glimpse at the Continental Baths Summary: 2 Starsother than that this movie is quite awful. The lead actor, in particular, creeped me out. His grilfriend here looks like a buck-toothed Mia Farrow and was just too liberal and giggly. Not much to the story and really dull as well. Cool to get a glimpse of the Continental, but turn the sound off and FF as much as possible.
DVD Review: You Had To Be There to Know It All Happened Then. Summary: 4 StarsWhen I was living is Sydney, Australia, I met my friend Steve Ostrow, who once told me all about his life in NYC and of the Continental Baths he ran, the famous celebrities who had their beginnings there and of the scandals that took place in the good ol' bad ol' days of sex in the 70's.
At the time I heard his stories, I was young and I found them hard to imagine. It all seemed like a good pitch for the play and movie "The Ritz", which he told me was actually based on the Continental Baths.
Two decades later, with the advent of the internet, Amazon.com and DVDs, I now have the pleasure of actually watching this movie and seeing it as it all happened so long ago.
I was thrilled to relive those heady, Bohemian, sexy, free, Studio 54 days, filled with fashion, perfume, sex, drugs and Disco, when big cities were populated with the jetset, the young, hip and the beautiful.
Younger, modern audiences may not be able to fully appreciate the nuances of this wonderfully nostalgic memoir, but older audiences who lived through the 70's will appreciate this moment in our social history.
I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed 'The Ritz', '54', 'The last Days of Disco' and films set in that era.
Relive your youth!
DVD Review: Conflicting Thoughts Summary: 4 Stars"Saturday Night at the Baths"
Conflicting Thoughts
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
"Saturday Night at the Baths" (WaterBearer Films) is entertaining, sincere and uplifting in the spirit of the late 60's and early 70's when bathhouses were the vogue. It is not, by any means, a great movie, but it was, when it was made (1975) a step forward for American movies. I remember the Continental Baths of the 70's and it was an amazing establishment. It was a pleasure palace with great lighting juice bar and coffee shop. An elevator, an indoor pool and sex, sex, sex. Bette Midler got her start there as did many young gay men. It was liberating and a place where sexuality could be expressed openly. The movie, however, does not capture the spirit of the bathhouse but it does catch the spirit of the time.
The plot of the film is thin but who needs a plot in a bathhouse? The ending, for the time it was made, is shocking. Two men, completely naked get into bed and kiss and this is something not seen in American cinema.
I have read several serious criticisms of this movie--that the editing is poor, that the acting and the script is bad. This is an independent film made at a time when Indies were few and far between. No major American studio would have made a movie on the subject of gay bathhouses back then so we should be glad we have this. It is an accurate look at gay life of the period and it is both gentle and hard. It shows the sordidness of the times and does so with wit and honesty. The realism of the characters shows a certain dignity. They were all looking for love wherever they could find it.
"Saturday Night" lets the audience know how we lived before AIDS decimated our numbers and this makes it important.
Now that bathhouses are barely existent, it is good that we have a record of them. They were once an integral part of gay life and cannot be ignored.
DVD Review: View the movie with an open mind Summary: 5 StarsFirst off, let me say that the people who criticize the movie's shoddy editing, acting and writing are being bad sports. It's very much an independent movie but that's part of its charm. Did they really expect a Hollywood studio to sink a ton of money into the production of a New York City bathhouse movie?!? Circa 1975?!?
I have often said (after a few too many drinks at a piano bar) that the 1970s were self-destructive and completely out of control -- and I desperately wish I had been a part of it!
From what I can tell, the movie is an extremely accurate depiction of the 1970s gay bathhouse scene. What it also has is a liberating sort of gentleness, a "delicate hardness", as someone once described Vergil's bucolic poetry. The movie doesn't shy away from the screaming queens and the overall sordid quality of that world. Rather, its brutal realism enlarges the dignity of its characters, all of whom are looking for love in whatever way they can find it, heterosexual or homosexual.
As I said, view the movie with an open mind. It may make you a better person!
DVD Review: Terrible.......................... Summary: 1 StarsThe acting was horrible,the men were ugly the plot thers is none .There is not really much more to say about this movie other than it sucks.........Avoid by all means.
Description of Saturday Night at the BathsStudio: Water Bearer Films Release Date: 03/21/2006 Run time: 86 minutes Rating: Nr
|
 |