Starring Stan Richards as the goatee sporting drifter, Charles Mandell, and the undisputed king of Golden Age Gay Porn, Jack Wrangler as the love struck Broadway actor, Phil Jordan; Killing Me Softly weaves a tale of murder, desperation and self sacrifice in New York City during the tale end of the heady disco era.
Charles Mandell (as a narrator tells us) is coming into the Big Apple from the Bahamas for a vacation, or so it might seem. But why no luggage, no change of clothes? Could it be that the demonically handsome drifter has something else on his mind? Our first hint that something is amiss is a newspaper headline about a group of gay men murdered in the Bahamas … ah, death takes a holiday?
It does not take long for Charles to meet up with the blond haired beauty, Phil Jordan, who is strolling the docks shirtless. Instantly the men notice each other and cupid’s arrow seems to strike, and for a few moments, the happy duo walk arm in arm, shot in a gauzy haze while syrupy music plays for a soundtrack – it’s all rather like a commercial for some, as yet unheard of, gay dating service.
Be that as it may; before too long, the boys go back to Phil’s place and as soon as Wrangler releases his legendary tool, they get down to business.
You’ve heard me mention before that no body, but nobody, did on-screen-sex as good as Jack Wrangler, and once more we get to see the master in all his glory. Jack’s Phil looks to be in heaven as he is being serviced by his new buddy, and when Stan’s Charles mounts him, it looks like Wrangler might be having a moment of pure mind blowing gratification. To be sure, Stan Richards power fucks like nobody’s business. But as the guys are busy getting busy, the camera slowly pans over to a coffee table strewn with magazines and a newspaper with a headline that screams, POLICE BAFFLED OVER GAY MURDERS.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in town, a Gay pride celebration is in full swing and for the next five minutes or so, one gets to see what these celebrations looked like back in the day. The eagle eyed viewer will, no doubt, catch a glimpse of a young man holding up a sign in the shape of an orange that reads, Anita Bryant Sucks (and for those of you who have no idea what that is all about, do a Google search). In any case, into the crowd strolls Phil and Charles looking happy, and for a few brief moments, everything seems right with the world… until the camera pans down to a discarded newspaper on the sidewalk with another headline about the gay murders.
In the next scene we find Charles and another guy walking into an abandoned building. At first we assume it is Phil, but when the camera reveals his face, it is actually a stranger. Before long, they are making out and soon retreat to a bathroom to finish the deed. And here is where Charles shows his true stripes; as soon as he shoots his load into his anonymous partner’s mouth, he reaches for a jock strap that is in his back pocket and chokes his trick to death with it. In a gruesome coda to this moment, the camera lingers on the young man’s face as semen dribbles from his lips while he lay dead on the floor. Yeah, it’s a pretty disgusting shot.
At this point, a voice over narrator explains that Charles can only achieve sexual satisfaction by killing his sex partners. However, he is conflicted as he truly is falling in love with Phil, and does not want to hurt him.
Aw gee, what’s a poor psychopath to do?
Luckily for our killing antihero, he is in the naked city and there are victims a-plenty.
Charles next dupe is a hunky construction worker who invites him up to his apartment, and sure as hell, after he puts him through the paces by throwing another monster fuck into the guy, he chokes him to death, leaving another naked and dead body behind.
The very next scene in Killing Me Softly is one that might quite literally blow your mind when you consider what it took to set it up. Basically we find Charles waiting on the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. He is looking out on the Manhattan skyline and seems to be considering jumping, to end his murderous ways – but just then he spies a jogger coming his way, and without so much as a tip of the hat or a proper introduction, he nabs the running man, rips his shorts off him and has his way with him. Now, keep in mind, this is two men fucking upright, on the Brooklyn Bridge, in broad daylight with cars whizzing by below them and bikers and joggers zipping by them just a few feet away (one biker actually glides right past the two of them – in frame!). How they did this without getting arrested is beyond me. This is a startling piece of cinematography, one that proves that MTV’s Jackass still has a long way to go.
If the location were not enough, the sex between the two men is formidable. At this point, Richards is beginning to actually look crazed (his eyebrows arched, smiling insanely), and the guy he’s screwing seems to be screaming bloody murder (though he is tugging on his own rod the entire time, so make of that what you will). Of course we know where this is going, and once more, another strangling occurs and a dead body is left bare assed on the bridge’s walkway (though I thought it would have been more cinematic had the body been tossed off the bridge, but I doubt anyone had any kind of budget to afford effects like that).
So where has Phil been during all of this?
Out of town in a show it seems, though he comes back in time to discover that the police have linked his boyfriend to the murders according to the headline in the paper.
Horrified over what he now knows, Phil waits at home until Charles shows up. He tells him that he knows, and the he will not call the police. Why? Because he loves him.
Ah, isn’t that sweet. Err; no actually, it’s kind of sick.
None the less, Phil proposes that they have sex “one last time”, and just before they go at it, he goes and pours his mentally unstable boyfriend a drink (which he spikes with a couple of pills) and the men draw into each other’s arms while the haunting strains of Dvořák's Humoresque plays.
The final sex scene is both, tender and horrifying, exciting as well as disturbing. Once more Wrangler and Richards exhibit such passion that it’s kind of scary, they look like they might eat each other alive. When Richards begins fucking Wrangler, you can actually see the sofa they are on moving and shaking. Finally after they both reach an orgasm, Phil hands Charles the jock strap and say’s “Do it”. And he does. He chokes him to death and then shortly after this, the drugs that were given him kick in and he passes out on the chest of his lover and the camera goes in for a slow close up of the two of them – looking for all the world like they are just asleep, and as the final strains of Humoresque plays, we fade to black.
At the end of this film, I sort of felt like someone had dropped an anvil on my head. While admittedly the plot line has holes so big in it you can drive a truck through them, why, oh why, was the story so damn compelling? The theme of the doomed lovers is an old one, but usually one of the lovers in question is not a sociopath. I don’t know why, but this morbid little movie is extremely effective.
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Speaking of morbid; here’s a bit of gruesome trivia concerning the director of Killing Me Softly. Frances Ellie, whose real name was Michael Findlay not only directed gay porn and straight porn, he also directed a lot of low budget horror films. He was also an inventor who had created a camera that had true 3-D capabilities. In May of 1977, Findlay was taking a helicopter from New York to the airport to catch a plane to France to show his invention to possible investors when the chopper he was in crashed on to the roof of the Pan Am building decapitating him and killing four other people.
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