Lonesome Cowboys *** (1968, Viva, Tom Hompertz, Louis Waldon, Eric Emerson, Joe D’Allesandro) – Classic Movie Review 3138

Andy Warhol, Paul Morrisey and their Factory gay lonesome cowboys ride again in heated trashy flesh from the good old bad old days of 1968. Now an amiable-seeming period curio, it hasn’t worn well, but then maybe it wasn’t really very much good in the first place.

However, Warhol superstar Viva is fun as Ramona D’Alvarez, Tom Hompertz is pretty and vacant as the hero Julian, Francis Francine hilarious as the transvestite sheriff, and naturally some of the men are cute, especially Joe D’Allesandro (as Little Joe, of course) in his prime.

[Spoiler alert] Ramona and her stoned nurse (Taylor Mead) run into five gay cowboys, everybody desiring a handsome male drifter. The cowboys rape Ramona, who has sex with the drifter and then wants to form a suicide pact with him but he rides off into the sunset with another man.

It’s good that there’s plenty of provocative plot and outrageous characters, but Warhol’s script (if there was one) and Morrisey’s filming techniques are pretty pathetic. As a Western satire it never gets started, as a gay sex film it seems quaint and cack-handed. It was significant and liberating in its day, though, and might be seen as a minor icon of its era, spawning Flesh, Trash, Heat (with D’Allesandro promoted to star) and the rest.

Also in the cast are Eric Emerson, Louis Waldon, Allen Midgette and Julian Burroughs as Brother.

It was shot in January 1968 in Old Tucson and Rancho Linda Vista Dude Ranch in Oracle, Arizona, on a budget of $3,000.

It won the Best Film Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

The film was seized by police in Atlanta, Georgia, in August 1969 and the cinema staff arrested.

Warhol planned to call the film Fuck, then The Glory of the Fuck, but decided on Lonesome Cowboys while convalescing after the attempt on his life by Valerie Solanas and John Schlesinger was filming Midnight Cowboy (1969), which featured several members of the Warhol clan, including Viva and Ultra Violet.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3138

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com