"The Boys in the Band" DVD Review

Let's face it: There's very little to be said about the 1970 film adaptation of Mart Crowley's groundbreaking play The Boys in the Band that hasn't been said already.

It's a landmark of gay representation in American motion pictures.

It's a biting character study of self-loathing urban gay men at the brink of mainstream acceptance.

It's an unparalleled bitchfest with more quotable lines than Auntie Mame, Mommie Dearest, and Baby Jane combined.

Mart Crowley and the cast

Embraced, reviled, and celebrated by gay audiences (both in turn and simultaneously) since its release nearly 40 years ago, the film is all of these things and more. It's a fascinating character study of a group of friends who use intimacy as a weapon. It's a snapshot of a time in gay history when men were struggling with their own liberation, which tugged against years of conditioning, shame and self-hatred.

And, on the occasion of its first DVD release (which is itself rather remarkable), it's simply an essential part of gay entertainment history, and one that demands to be revisited both for what it contributed to gay visibility and as a measure of how far we've come since.

The Boys in the Band is a slice-of-life in the slightest sense; in its 119 minutes, it invites us to spend an uninterrupted evening with a group of gay friends on the occasion of one of their birthdays. Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is the host and the film's main character, a blithely shallow man who lives in a gorgeous apartment filled with things he hasn't paid for and whose impossibly clever barbs are more often than not aimed back at himself.

Kenneth Nelson as Michael

Joining Michael first is Donald (Frederick Combs), a good friend and former lover whose measured quiet and even temper play nicely against Michael's fussiness. Also joining are the hissingly camp Emory (Cliff Gorman), the squabbling butch couple Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) and Larry (Keith Prentice) and African-American bookseller Bernard (Reuben Greene).

Oh, and the hunky Cowboy (Robert La Tourneaux) has arrived ... as a gift from Emory to the birthday boy, Harold.

Pockmarked, acid-tongued Harold (Leonard Frey) is the last to arrive, and his character is the film's most memorable as he engages in a head-to-head confrontation with Michael. These guys were doing the whole "Upper East Side frenemies" thing long before the backstabbing bitches of Gossip Girl were even born.

When Michael receives a surprise phone call (and later, a visit) from his former Harvard roommate Alan (Peter White), what might have been an uncomfortable but painless evening among a group of strong personalities turns decidedly darker.