Episode 17: Gorton Hall's ZOOMERANG! (1974)
Cruising the Movies · Ask Any Buddy
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Show Notes
This week on the podcast we're wrapping up a month of grand romance with Gorton Hall's 1974 epic, ZOOMERANG! The first film to be shot in the exciting screen process known as Ultravision, ZOOMERANG! tells the story of Gary and Jack, a middle-class gay couple living in domestic bliss. All that changes when Jack's old 'basically straight' tennis partner throws a wrench in the relationship by visiting on his way through town. Will the couple still be together by the time he leaves? Steeped in sumptuously photographed fantasies and flashbacks by producer/cinematgrapher Barry Knight, ZOOMERANG! is one of the glossiest male films of its era.
And yet, all is not what it seems on the surface of this lighthearted film. Over the course of the second half of the episode, we'll dive into the raids and obscenity cases it spawned, and how they led to the downfall of Jaguar Productions, the largest gay film studio on the West Coast.