Weird Science, the movie and tv show: three gay-subtext couples, two gay-vague guys, and a lot of bulges and butts. Plus Lee's dick.

Weird Science (1985) is a John Hughes brat pack comedy with a paranormal twist. Nerds Gary and Wyatt's (Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan-Mitchell Smith) are discouraged because the Girls of Their Dreams are dating a pair of belligerent, obnoxious preppies (Robert Downey Jr., Robert Rusler), and won't give them a chance (maybe they're not into three-ways?  Try asking them out separately).  So they use a computer to create their perfect dream girl, Lisa: she is not only hot but super-smart, plus she has magical powers.

I forget most of the plot after 40 years, but wikipedia has helpfully filled in the details, Instead of having sex with them, Lisa conjures them a car, gets them fake ids, and hosts a wild party, where she thwarts their adversaries and their bullying older brother, military-school graduate Chet (Bill Paxton, butt right).

She also summons a pack of rabid bikers to kidnap the Girls, so Gary and Wyatt can mount a daring rescue and win them.

It was cheesy stuff, and entirely heteronormative.  There was a scattering of the incessant homophobia that one sees in every John Hughes movie, but spewed by the evil Chet, not by one of the good guys.  That was a big win in the era.  

Plus some strong gay subtexts between Gary and Wyatt and the prettyboy preppies Ian and Max.  And quite a surprising amount of beefcake, including Ilan Mitchell-Smith's bulge and Bill Paxton's butt.

I wanted to do a "any gay roles/are they gay in real life" profile of one of the guys, but I can't find anything suitable.

Don't pay attention to the femme-half shirt and girly underwear.  Ilan-Mitchell Smith, now a history professor, is straight in real life.

Anthony Michael Hall, the darling of the Brat Pack, appeared in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Johnny B Goode, and as an adult The Dead Zone and Awkward.  Straight characters, with maybe one exception, and straight in real life.

Brat Packer Robert Downey Jr. appeared in Back to School, The Pick-Up Artist, Johnny B. Goode, became famous for Chaplin (playing the silent-era comedian), and went on to play Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes.  More straight characters, with maybe one exception, and....well, you get the idea.

At least we know that Robert Rusler (butt left) is a gay ally: he befriended his Nightmare on Elm Street 2 co-star Mark Patton, and took him to some of the gay bars in West Hollywood (no, we never met).  But his tv work, in The Outsiders, Babylon 5, Snoops, Murder She Wrote, Bones, Ray Donovan...as far as I can tell, all heteronormative.  And...straight in real life.

Let's try the Weird Science TV Series.

It aired on the USA Network from 1994 to 1998. I watched on occasion, usually while on the treadmill at the gym. Gary and Wyatt are now played by Michael Manasseri and John Mallory Asher. Lisa characterizes herself as a "magic genie," and Wyatt's parents are absent, leaving his older brother Chet (Lee Tergesen) to look after/bully them.  

The "winning the Girl of Our Dreams" plotline appeared in just the first two or three episodes; later Lisa turns the boys into girls, clones them,  turns them into rock stars, traps them in a horror movie, traps them in The Twilight Zone, transports them to the Old West, and brings a video game villain to life. 

More after the break

Hunter Revealed: Does Fred Dryer, the epitome of 1980s macho muscle, have gay photos in his past?

Hunter (1984-91) starred Fred Dryer as Rick Hunter, a "renegade cop who bends the rules and takes justice into his own hands" (that's like every cop on tv).  He is partnered with the "stunning"  Sgt. McCall (Stefanie Kramer) for cases involving serial killers, gangs, drug dealers, and guys who murder their wives.  Just the thing for the the 1980s, when the rhetoric changed from "let's rehabilitate them" to "lock'em up."  

We didn't watch in West Hollywood, of course.  After Moonlighting, Remington Steele, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Cheers, who wants to see yet another "will they or won't they?" straight-subtext couple? Besides, it aired on Saturday night, for old people moaning about how great life was in the old days, then on Monday opposite Murphy Brown and Designing Women.  Which would you watch?

But we knew about Fred Dryer: 6'6" (enough about the six foot, let's hear about the six inches), brawny, hirsute, with muscles that hardened on the street, not in some sissy gym.  

He grew up in Hawthorne, California, was a football star at Lawndale High and San Diego State, then played for the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams in a career that lasted for 13 years (1969-81) and won him 104 sacks, 1 pro-bowl, and 1 all-bowl.

Ok, we didn't know all of those details -- I don't even know what a sack is.

We may have seen Dryer when he switched from football to acting, guesting as hunks on Laverne and Shirley (1980),  Lou Grant (1981), CHIPS (1982), and  Hart to Hart (1984).

 Not to mention  four episodes of Chips (1982-87), playing focus character Sam Malone's former teammate on the Boston Red Sox, now a flashy, hetero-horny sports reporter.

We may even have tuned in to Hunter on occasion, or to Land's End (1995-96), about another renegade cop with a "stunning" partner, just to catch a glimps of Dryer's incredible bulge.

Dryer never played a gay character or expressed the tiniest feminine-coded interest, on screen or in real life.  He scowled and smirked through the world, never doubting for a moment that there were buddies to watch the game with and babes to kiss in the moonlight, that no man in human history had ever wanted to kiss a man.  

Until the nude photo appeared on some of the protypical 1990s nude celebrity websites.

It showed someone who looked like a young Dryer in an early 1960s haircut, showing off his physique and his dick.  Black and white, like  Physique Pictorial and other early gay-coded physique magazines, which just started publishing nudes in 1964. When Dryer was 18 years old.

We were entranced.  The icon of heteronormativity had a gay past.  Or a gay-for-pay past.  

Nitpickers pointed out that this guy doesn't look 18, and his hairstyle is appropriate for the 1950s, not the shaggy hippie 1960s, but tiny details couldn't get in the way of a good story: Fred Dryer was, or had been, one of us.

More after the break

"Mid Century Modern," Episode 1.6: "Golden Girls" with gay guys. Plus Bomer's butt, Adam's cock, and Tommy's bj

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ted Prior: Man-mountain hero of the macho 1980s, Chippendale dancer, Playgirl model. Any gay content?

 

N*de photos of this guy have been sitting in my "to profile" file since March, and since I have some free time today (and my pageviews are down by about 70%)," I'll give him a try.

His name is Ted Prior.  He was active primarily during the 1980s Reagan-Bush era  man-mountain craze, when Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and a dozen lesser lights -- Chuck Norris, Reb Brown, Steven Seagal, Michael Pare -- stormed into POW camps and drug lord lairs, got tortured while shirtless, single-handedly defeated entire armies, and won The Girl, thus demonstrating the "supremacy" of white heterosexual America.

Born in New Jersey in 1959 and raised in Baltimore, Ted originally planned to become a professional bodybuilder -- he states that he won Teenage Mr. Maryland and "ten other awards" before he turned 19.  He moved to Los Angeles, in fact, so he could train at Gold's Gym.

But he worked in theater, too, and once he hit L.A., a walk-on as a bodybuilder in an episode of The Incredible Hulk (1981) convinced him to try his hand at acting. His first starring roles were in  Sledgehammer (1983) and Killzone (1985), written and directed by his older brother David.

Most of Ted's work for the next twenty years would come from David's production company, Action International Pictures: Operation Warzone (1988), Jungle Assault (1989), The Final Sanction (1990), Raw Justice (1994).

Ted's most famous film, Deadly Prey (1987) is a sort of The Most Dangerous Game. People are being kidnapped and taken to a secret jungle enclave, where the evil Colonel Hogan (David Campbell) has his mercenaries hunt them down.  Vietnam Vet Mike (Ted) is grabbed while taking out the garbage, brought to the enclave, stripped, greased, gawked at, and forced to run naked through the jungle.  Uh-oh, they kidnapped the wrong guy.

He is shirtless throughout: a major draw of the film, as you can see from the VHS tape cover.

In November 2024, the Lyric Hyperion Theater in Silverlake, the second gay neighborhood in Los Angeles, held a "Deadly Prey" day, and promised Ted Prior "in the flesh," har har.

The only other Ted Prior movie that I reviewed was Lost at War (2007): five soldiers are trapped in a foxhole while mysterious creatures force them to re-live painful moments of their past.  It is heavy with gay subtexts.

During the 1980s, Ted worked as a Chippendale dancer.  This led to modeling gigs in the  October 1983 and March 1984 issues of Playgirl.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Zach Galligan: The "Gremlins" guy ruined my childhood, sort of. Plus his dick, Michelangelo's David, and Bubba's bulge

The spring of 1984 was dark and dismal, endless days and weeks and months of trying and failing.  A degree in English and Modern Languages with professors who said "You can do anything you want. Go into advertising, or public relations, or book publishing."  A hundred resumes sent to advertising agencies, public relations firms, and publishing houses all over the country, with no answer or "no openings."  By the end of May, my friends had all gone home for the summer or graduated, so I walked the streets of Bloomington alone, looking up at the cross on the tower of a distant church and wondering if there was anything ahead but dead ends.

On the evening of June 15th, I saw Gremlins,  starring 20-year old Zach Galligan as a teenager who accidentally feeds his mogwai after midnight, thus turning it into a rampaging monster.

 The movie itself was of minimal interest. Zach may have had a buddy-bonding friendship with fellow mogwai enthusiast Corey Feldman on the way to winning the Girl of His Dreams.

It was Zach's jaw-dropping handsomeness that convinced me that there was some good left in the world, leading to a job in Texas and eventually to West Hollywood.

During the next years and decades, I didn't learn much more about Zach.  I never saw him in any other movie or tv show, except maybe a 1998 episode of Star Trek: Voyager, where I didn't recognize him.

There was an occasional photo or reference on one of the gay celebrity websites that we had back in the days of America Online and Myspace.  They revealed that: 

1. Zach was tied up in a lot of his movies.  This shot appeared over and over.  

And:

2. He was gay in real life.  I never questioned this.

A few days ago, I noticed a run on my earlier profile of Zach Galligan, so I started researching him for a new profile.   

First, n*de photos.  

A butt pic was easy.

A frontal, a little harder to find.  I don't think this is him.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Stephen Geoffreys: The quirky queer teen from "Fright Night" and "976-Evil" bulks up and becomes a gay porn star

If you've seen Heaven Help Us (1985), about boys in a Catholic boarding school (on HBO Max) or found screenshots online, then you've seen Stephen Geoffreys' d*ck and backside.  He's the short guy standing just to the right of the priest.

Also in the line up: Andrew McCarthy, Kevin Dillon, and Patrick Dempsey.

Stephen was born in Cincinnati in 1964, attended a performing arts high school and New York University, and made his mark as a theatrical actor.  In 1984, he was nominated for a Tony for his performance in The Human Comedy, based on the William Saroyan novel.  

Then he humped...I mean jumped into movies:

After Heaven Help Us, Fraternity Vacation (1985): Two frat brothers (Tim Robbins, Cameron Dye) take their nerdy pledge Wendell (Stephen) to Palm Springs, where they compete over a bikini babe.  It got lousy reviews, even for a teen sex comedy, but at least Stephen showed us his bulge.

Fright Night (1985): Evil Eddie (Stephen), sidekick to high schooler Charlie (William Ragsdale), is heavily queer-coded; as heavily as you could be in 1985.  The Vampire (Chris Sarandon) seduces him like a potential boyfriend. Then eats him.

Queer-coded guys in horror movies!  Stephen had found his niche!  

During the next few years, he played queer-coded guys in episodes of Amazing Stories and The Twilight Zone, and in 976-EVIL (1988), his second most famous movie.  

Unfortunately, in the 1980s, queer-coded usually meant evil.  He found himself playing a nasty prison inmate in The Chair (1988), a nasty drug dealer in Moon 44 (1990), where he didn't even get to kiss Brian Thompson, and a nasty rent boy in Wild Blade (1991), reviewed as "a painfully awful piece of sludge."  

But he had performed Shakespeare and William Saroyan!  At this point Stephen gave up.  

On Hollywood, that is.  

He had developed a muscular physique, so why not find his new niche in gay porn? First as Larry Bert, then as Sam Ritter, Stephen appeared in 29 pornos over the next decade.  

More after the break. Caution: Extremely explicit

Gemstones Episode 4.5, Continued: Kelvin crashes, the Monkey fumes, and we find out who is bigger, Adam Devine or Joey Stefano

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Sylvester Stallone: Nude photos of Rocky, Rambo, Estelle Getty's son, Kurt Russel's boyfriend, and the Italian Stallion

 As Rocky and Rambo, Sylvester Stallone defined the gung-ho cowboy 1980s, singlehandedly defeating the Russian army and winning the Vietnam War.  

His grunting, snarling man-mountains didn't have a lot of sex scenes, but they did manage to get stripped out of their clothes by various cops, prison guards, and torturers.  Here Rambo is fumigated in prison in First Blood (1982).

Tortured in a loincloth in Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1985)

During the 1990s and 2000s, Stallone often got naked while playing grunting man-mountains or parodies of them, as in the cop buddy gay-subtext Tango and Cash (1989).  The guy on the left is his gay-subtext buddy, Kurt Russell.

Or Stop, or My Mom will Shoot (1992), with Estelle Getty as the Mom.  Imagine, Rambo and Dorothy of The Golden Girls as siblings.

But to see the Full Monte, we have to go back to 1970.  

Stallone dick after the break. Warning: it gets explicit.

Glenn Scarpelli: the star of "One Day at a Time" and "Jennifer Slept Here" grows up, comes out, and gets a husband

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Who is Bradley Cooper, and why is he "ultra-famous"? With his gay/sort of bi characters , backside, and d*ck

 

Danny McBride promised an ultra-famous guest star for Righteous Gemstones Episode 4.1, the Civil War prequel, but kept him a super secret, so his appearance would be a shocking reveal.  I watched the entire episode, wondering who the ultra-famous guest star was.  

Turns out that it was....BRADLEY COOPER!!!!!

Who the heck is that? 

It's such a generic name, it could belong to anyone.

The main Bradley Cooper has  75 acting credits on the IMDB. I've seen six:

Wet Hot American Summer (2001), watched to review.  Bradley plays Ben,  a gay guy at the summer camp who gets a boyfriend.  His peers are horrified: "Ben is a fag!" But they give him a wedding present anyway.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Avengers: Infinity Game, and Avengers: Endgame, where he voices the the sentient raccoon character.  

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves, where he plays a loveable rogue.

No wonder I didn't recognize him, or his name.

You can't really blame me. Who'd want to see Alias (2001-06), about a lady spy with a  "you're arrogant!" bickering partner?

Or Bending All the Rules (2002), about a woman juggling two boyfriends, David Gail and Bradley?  Even though he shows us his backside.

Or The A-Team (2010), a remake of a 1980s tv show that I never saw.  Even though it shows us Bradley's impressive physique.

Or Wedding Crashers, He's Just Not Into You, The Hangover, or The Hangover II?  They sound like nontstop heteronormative sleaze fests.

I might have gone to see Valentine's Day (2010), if I knew there was a gay plotline in the ensemble: Holden (Bradley) dumps his boyfriend, pro football player Sean (Eric Dane) because he's closeted, but after his career is over, the guy comes out, so Holden takes him back.

More after the break, including some c*ocks