The Living End **** (1992, Mike Dytri, Craig Gilmore) – Classic Movie Review 1527

Writer-director Gregg Araki’s 1992 drama takes its stance by describing itself as ‘an irresponsible film’. The Living End is a visually startling, highly emotionally charged micro-budget ($22,000) look at the desperate lives of an HIV-positive young gay couple (Mike Dytri, Craig Gilmore) in California, who set off on the road and on the run together.

Gilmore’s character Jon is a film critic whose life is changed for ever the day a doctor tells him he’s got the AIDS-related HIV virus in his blood. He picks up a handsome young stud, gay hustler Luke (Dytri), and they have a series of ever more desperate sexual and social encounters while discussing their lives on the edge. Their motto on their hedonistic, dangerous journey is ‘fuck the world’.

A cornerstone of the new wave gay movies from the early 90s aggressive New Queer Cinema, The Living End is perhaps more alienating and in some ways less extraordinary than either Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992) or Todd Haynes’s Poison (1991). But it is still an extremely remarkable movie, full of anger, rage, passion and intelligence, and it even finds space for some fun too.

The ends credits read: ‘Dedicated to Craig Lee (1954-1991) and the hundreds of thousands who’ve died and the hundreds of thousands more who will die because of a big White House full of Republican fuckheads.’

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1527

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Craig Gilmore plays Jon.