CinemaDude1 I guess they spent all the money on buying the 35mm film stock because they sure didn't spend any money on lighting equipment or time on the sound dubbing stage. The thing looks and sounds like a sorry attempt at filmmaking 101 out of a high school freshman film class. You can find MUCH better, all-around, well-constructed home-made attempts at gay-themed videos on Youtube.Here you have a terrible script, terrible editing, worse than terrible lighting, and "direction," such as it is, which meanders all over the place, never knowing where its focus is or what it wants to be at any giving moment. And this level of directorial incompetence is really not surprising since the director is one David Buckly whose only claim to fame is that he dabbled in the sexploitation/porn business with the pop porn culture film DEBBIE DOES DALLAS. Evidently he had a lot more success with heterosexual porn than with its homosexual counterpart. Saturday NIGHT AT THE BATHS doesn't even rise to that level of trash. To be honest, I attend many film festivals at which I've have to endure some pretty poor attempts at film-making; this is a good example of the worst -- the ones that make you think the selection committee had to have been on crack to have let it in.There are long stretches of scenes where the director never was savvy enough to yell "cut" or the editor having the smarts to use his splicer; actors more often than not seem to be lost for the next line...or thought. Then there's the drag show sequences in the bath house that go on and on to the point where you might be thinking you've mistakenly gotten tricked into seeing a bad musical starring some VERY ugly women. These long, full song renditions by drag queens don't have the slightest reason for being there and don't move the story forward not an inch. Same complaint for the painfully long dance floor sequences with bad music and guys jumping around supposedly there to look like they are having fun (oh look, liberated gays can be happy) but those particular sequences are so badly lit that you can barely see anyone anyway. This Lighting Director evidently never heard of key light and side fill.The only bright spot in this whole mess is actor Don Scotti, an impish, delightful lad with beautiful eyes, whose acting style is so natural and unaffected that even with the often laughable dialog, he manages to remain credible; he is quite magnetic on screen and steals every scene he is in. As for the other actors, all I can say is, given the material and lack of any semblance of direction, they do a passable job, although the least effective and least sexually alluring of all is the female lead (was she cast intentionally so the audience could more easily believe that her boyfriend might indeed look elsewhere for erotic passion?)-- her overbite is frightening and throughout the whole hodgepodge, after about the first 10 minutes, her presence starts getting REALLY annoying. Our male "straight" lead who is uncertain of many things, not the least of which is what his next line, is asked to bring machismo with an undercurrent of homosexual tension to his character -- a very complex emotional mix to achieve and make believable, even for a seasoned actor under a top-tier director; this guy, Robert Anderson, doesn't have the acting chops nor, quite frankly, the masculine good looks to come even close to what is needed; a Jake Gyllenhaal or Heath Ledger he is not. One poster commented, "Rent it, don't buy it." I would say, do neither and don't waste your time on it even if you can find it for free. Wait, I take that back -- if you happen to be a film teacher, you can always use this title in your class when you are teaching the chapter "All the Things That Can Go Wrong When Making a Film."

Brent Skuba (brentskuba) When I saw this film in Washington DC in 1976 - at the tender age of 16! - I was flabbergasted by the finale, where the two male leads get onto a bed, kissing, completely naked. Fast forward three decades later - when I saw this was available for rental, I sat through the whole thing, and remembered bits and pieces of it. While the very handsome male lead (the bi guy) does get shown nude with his wife, the last scene with the two guys naked got replaced by a scene of them, fully clothed, on the roof of a building talking and kissing. Kind of a letdown! Still it was pretty cool to relive that amazing moment from the seventies when I witnessed gay film-making for the first time.

plum-blossom While watching this I was faced with conflicting thoughts. I was a young man in NYC in the 70's, and had discovered the fabled Continental Baths a year previous to when this was released. The Continental was a ground-breaking establishment - up until then the majority of the bathhouses were Mafia-run, filthy, run-down and unsafe, and then Steve Ostrow took over the decayed health club in the basement of the Hotel Ansonia and turned it into a true pleasure palace - with original art (I remember a series of wicked Tomi Ungerer drawings and some early Plexiglass sculptures), great lighting, music, a juice bar - and a private elevator up to the roof sun deck. For me, just coming out, it was an exhilarating and liberating space to be in, where I could freely express my sexuality and begin to meet the rest of the community (that I'd barely knew existed).So to see the few interior shots, and the shots of Greenwich Village as it looked in the 1970's was a treat - as was seeing a bunch of skinny men with so-so bodies and remembering that we didn't have to face the Gym Facists back then - it was enough of a wonder to just be young and queer.On the other hand, the film is a shapeless mess, with a thin plot and an abrupt ending that I found infuriatingly simplistic and weak. Some of the acting's decent, (there's also an eerie Judy Garland turn by Caleb Stone and an all too brief glimpse of Jane Olivor performing), but the film feels partly like a pitch for the Continental (no surprise, as Steve Ostrow is listed as a producer and appears in a few scenes as well).

paulweeks I would LOVE to see this movie again. I saw it as a double bill with "Something for Everyone" with Michael York in 1975. It was incredible. I went home and shaved off my beard. The movie was entertaining and, beyond that, sincere and optimistic - like the spirit of the late 60's and early 70's. If I ever had the chance to see this film again, within about a 300 mile radius, I'd be there. It was transformative. It lives as a legend in my memory.