I have just bought Raymond Murray’s compendium ‘Images in the Dark’: An Encyclopaedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video, and I am thoroughly enjoying page after glorious page of it. (Some nice pics too!)
This weighty tome is a sort of Lesbian & Gay Halliwell containing (according to the cover) “More than 3,000 films and videos, over 400 photos, fully indexed and cross-referenced by titles, directors, stars and themes.” It lives up to all these claims.
The extensive cross-references include a 7-page index headed “ThemeSeand Countries”. Under the heading “Ireland” you will find a single word – “Pigs”.
Before you fly off the handle, assuming Murray is doing a Princess Margaret on us inhabitants of the Emerald Isle, you should check the main listings, where you will learn that PIGS is, in fact, a 79-minute film produced in 1984 by Cathal Black in Ireland, about a group of outcasts squatting in an abandoned mansion in inner-city Dublin. Jimmy Brennan, who wrote the screenplay, plays the “sweetly hopeless” gay man who is the main organiser in making this dump a “home” for all the other exotic characters.
At the back, it has 6 pages of titles available from TLA Video, Philadelphia, the vast majority of which I have never yet seen – but would certainly love to. What say we set up a Lesbian & Gay Video Club, to give regular screenings of videos and films of lesbian and gay interest? If you think this is a good idea ( and especially if you would be prepared to support a venture), please let us know through the blog.
The only disappointment for me with the book was that it had no nice revealing photos of my old heart-throb, Tab Hunter!
[P A Mag Lochlainn
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