CYBERSPACE — The 1991 all-male sex flick “Head Bangers” is the subject of a deep dive on the HomoMania blog written and maintained by amateur porn producers Andy Fair and Chris Koloff.
Richard Lawrence directed the “hair metal porn flick” for gay label YMAC, which earned Best Sex Comedy honors from the 1992 Gay Video Guide Awards. It starred, among others, Robby Fox, Kip Kelly, Scott Martin and Rick Pantera with Billy Houston and Tommy Wilde.
It is the latter pair’s involvement that receives closer scrutiny from Fair and Koloff; Wilde died in a car accident in 1994, while Houston, some fifteen years later, turned to a life of crime and is currently serving a life sentence for committing a double-homicide.
The blog prefers to focus on “low-rent gay porn,” Fair said. “Virile young men running naked along a beautiful beach and tumbling to the sand? We hate that!”
“HomoMania doesn’t try to elevate gay erotica as some sort of legitimate art form to validate its consumption,” he said. “Instead, we feature the kind of base, visceral filth that the internet was originally built upon.”
Koloff describes himself and Fair as “porn outcasts” who dreamed up the idea for the blog at an industry awards show. “We seek to showcase the underdogs of porn, sites and scenes that aren’t choreographed and who can’t afford a makeup artist to cover that rash. Got a twink with crossed eyes and one leg? Let us showcase him. As long as your stuff is legal, creative and queer, we’ll give you the spotlight for 15 minutes.”
“Head Bangers” is “about a group of boys who have all moved to Hollywood to make rock ‘n’ roll music,” the bloggers note. “Many of them go to the Academy of Rock. One of whom is a rock star and hosts naked jam sessions, naked skateboarding, circle jerks and sexy orgies in his large production studio and playpen for his crew and roadies.”
“ ‘Head Bangers’ didn’t just go after rock music. It went further into sub-genres: hair metal, glam rock. And everyone is after rocker Nikki Steele.”
HomoMania makes the case that “Head Bangers” should be known for its “story craft” and not the tragic future that lay ahead for several of its headliners.
“If it was not for the rocker hair, this barebacking hipster hamburger fest, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, would only be simply amazing,” they write. “It is a 70-minute-long homage to breaking gay porn tropes of dominant tops and submissive bottoms... ‘Head Bangers’ could have easily made its way into cult status if straight people weren’t prudes. It’s a rarity to feel uplifted after the end of a porn film, but this movie does it.”
In addition to sex and porn, HomoMania also puts a queer, anarchic spin on politics and other stories of the day. Read their blog entry on “Head Bangers” here. Find their Twitter handle here.