Boys Beware + Passion in a Seaside Slum + Discovery + Hold Me While I’m Naked

George Kuchar began his career in pictures early, making brilliant dime-store approximations of Hollywood spectaculars with his brother Mike while still a teenager in the Bronx. Hold Me While I’m Naked, a stone-cold classic of underground cinema about a filmmaker who finds himself in a crisis when his lead actress quits, was his first solo outing, a candy-colored treatise on the humor and pathos of sexual hunger. Just as funny is Passion in a Seaside Slum, an 8mm rarity featuring the swishy clowning of Taylor Mead, in which he courts some rough trade on a Venice pier. The cruising is a bit more covert in Pat Rocco’s Discovery, an encounter between two men shot on the sly at the theme park of the title, though no less charming. Starting things off is Boys Beware, a cautionary educational film about the dangers of predatory gay men, shown here for maximum camp appeal. Boys Beware courtesy of the Prelinger Archives; Passion in a Seaside Slum preserved by Anthology Film Archives and Los Angeles Filmforum through the Avant-Garde Masters grant program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation; Discovery digital transfer courtesy of the Outfest UCLA Legacy Collection.

Boys Beware
Sid Davis, USA, 1961, 10m

Passion in a Seaside Slum
Robert Wade Chatterton, USA, 1962, 16mm, 32m

Discovery
Pat Rocco, USA, 1969, 12m

Hold Me While I’m Naked
George Kuchar, USA, 1966, 16mm, 17m