Sometime during the days of Blockbuster Video, we rented Strange Behavior (1981), mainly because the cover blurb said something about Galesburg, Illinois, which is near the Quad Cities.
We weren't aware that it was written by a gay man (Bill Condon), it stars a gay man (Dan Shor), and it features something that would change movies forever.
It's got a silly plot about a crazed college professor named Dr. Le Sange (Dr. Blood), who mind-controls the town teenagers into blood-crazed monsters.
It's got a silly plot about a crazed college professor named Dr. Le Sange (Dr. Blood), who mind-controls the town teenagers into blood-crazed monsters.
No Galesburg sites are appear mentioned; Apparently they just picked a random town in the Midwest so there would be cornfields and stereotyped farm folk. It was actually filmed in New Zealand.
The focus character is named Pete Brady, which no doubt caused a lot of eye-rolls and derisive laughs in 1981: Viewers would instantly think of the kid from The Brady Bunch (Christopher Knight, who grew up into a muscle hunk.)
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This photo teases a gay-subtext buddy bond between focus character Pete Brady (har har) and Oliver (Marc McClure), but the movie is actually heteronormative, with boy-girl romance all the way down.
I'd rather date Marc McClure, loveable nerd Jimmy Olsen in Superman (1978).
And Dan Shor, the guy who plays Pete, is not handsome. He's got a long face, a Romanesque nose, and a lantern jaw.
But none of that is important.
What's important is a scene early in the movie where Pete Brady (har har) and his father (not Mike Brady, darn it) have just gotten up in the morning. Pete approaches him to discuss something. Naked. He then moves toward the shower. We get an extended shot of his butt.
It wasn't the first nude butt on film, but it was the first extended butt shot that wasn't for a comedic purpose.
There is no other nudity, male or female, in the film, not even a shirtless shot. What was the directorial decision to film Dan Shor nude?
In an interview, Dan said that it was a political act, an acknowledgement of gay potential in the homophobic 1980s. It disrupted the heterosexual male gaze and paved the way for movies to present images of male beauty.
"And it sealed my popularity in West Hollywood," Dan joked. Or maybe he wasn't joking.
Enoch Emery in an adaption of Flannery O'Conner's Wise Blood (1979).
Eric in the After-School Special The Boy Who Drank Too Much (1980), starring Scott Baio as an alcoholic teenager named Buff Saunders (Buff?).
More after the break
After Strange Behavior, Dan showed his bulge in Tron (1982), about guys forced to fight gladiator battles in cyberspace. His Ram (ram, har har) buddy-bonds with Flynn (Jeff Bridges) before he is killed. Flynn goes on to a hetero-romance, of course.
Left: Jeff Bridges' butt.
Dan never showed his dick or butt on screen again. The only shirtless shot I could find is in the blurry music video for the Kansas song "Fight Fire with Fire" (1983): he escapes from evil guys in a dystopian foundry and wakes up to the nurturing of an attractive woman, but she's out to kill him, too.
Nor are there a lot of gay characters -- or any gay characters -- among the 52 acting roles listed on the IMDB. Many are hetero-sleazy: Strangers Kiss, This Girl for Hire. My Mother's Secret Life. He appears in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager as Dr. Arridor, a lecherous Ferengi physician surrounded by scantily-clad ladies.
Other than Strange Behavior, Tron, and Star Trek, Dan is best known for his Billy the Kid, one of the historic characters encountered by the dimwitted time-travelers in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). He partners with Socrates to rescue the guys and their girlfriends and help them return to the present.
Dan's only significant tv role is in the buddy-cop series Cagney and Lacey: Detective Jonah Newman, a "boyish ingenue with an elevated sense of himself" appears in 20 episodes in Season 5, positions for a promotion, gets a crush on one of the ladies, and is killed.
In 2003, Dan moved to the Northern Mariana Islands (near Guam), where he produced documentaries about the islands and taught acting at Northern Marianas College.
I thought I read in an interview that Dan is gay, but maybe not -- he has no gay roles, some references mention a wife (notice the wedding ring in the photo below), and the Northern Mariana Islands Territory doesn't sound like a gay mecca.
Unless you like South Pacific guys.
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Now in his late 60s, Dan hasn't changed much: the long face and lantern jaw are still turn-offs. I'd rather date writer/director Eric Norcross (right). Unless, of course, Dan wants to display the Butt that Changed the World.
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