“A tragicomic story about the impossibility of a couple’s life….neither a pornographic film, nor a sociological exposé, nor a moral lesson.” — Frank Ripploh on Taxi Zum Klo.
HE to Ripploh: Okay, yeah but not really. It’s really about dickdickdickdickdickdickdickdickdickdickdickdickdickdick…about a gay school teacher who loves cruising around West Berlin during that brief window of limitless sexual opportunity that gay men enjoyed in the mid to late ’70s before AIDS came along and brought all kinds of devastation.
The fact that Manhatan’s only theatrical boooking of the 4K restoration or Taxi Zum Klo is at the Metrograph…that should tell you something. If you’re not familiar with hardcore gay cinema, perhaps you should think twice.
I saw Taxi Zum Kmlo 44 years ago at the N.Y. Film Festival, and all I could say back then was “well, it’s certainly amiable and good humored, and it’s definitely a groundbreaker in terms of watching guys do each other…later.”
Apparently there actually is an outfit called Anus Films (the logo is obviously a riff on the one for Janus Films), and apparently it really does have something to do with Taxi Zum Klo, though I know not what. Okay, maybe it’s a put-on but it had me fooled.
Posted on 8.31.09: “As long as we’re talking no-nos and ‘thanks but no thanks’, I don’t really want to see guys in whatever kind of shape doing each other. I know that all modern cineastes are obliged to politely sit through gay sex scenes, but doing so requires a certain amount of grimming up. Sorry, but this stuff (Salo, Taxi Zum Klo) makes me squirm in my seat. And I’m allowed to feel and say this without anyone calling me this, that or the other thing. I know the p.c. things I’m supposed to say. I know how to play the game and blah-blah my way through a discussion of films of this type. But if you can’t man up and say, ‘Well, this is how I really feel about this,’ then what good are you, Jimmy Dick?”
