L.A. Tool & Die (1979) User Reviews

They sure don't make em like they used to...

[cubearcub · 10/10 · 8 September 2005]

I watched this movie not too long ago. First off I'd have to say that most porn, to me is a joke unless it has a good story line. I know it's silly, but the story line and the situations have to be good to get me aroused. This movie did just that. The situations, the stories, yeah were a little silly, but not as bad as the current porn out there today. Plus they used real guys, not pretty muscle boys. I really enjoyed this movie and hope to see more of Joe Gage's work.

This should be good classic material for people who study porn or are interested in the porn business. All I have to say is that this was one great film and I'm ready for more of Gage's work.

Locke in Love

[Nodriesrespect · 10/10 · 5 January 2008]

Closing Tim Kincaid's genre-defining "trucking trilogy", picking up where KANSAS CITY TRUCKING CO. and EL PASO WRECKING CORP. left off, L.A. TOOL & DIE - clearly the most densely plotted of the lot - tracks the last stop on truck driver Hank's journey towards personal growth as he encounters true love and all its attendant pitfalls.

This time starting rather than culminating with another typically scorching "Joe Gage" orgy, the narrative finds our hero (again portrayed by the phenomenal Richard Locke, who sadly passed away from AIDS in 1996) grappling with advanced age and there's a lovely little touch when Hank skittishly glances around before putting on much-needed glasses to read the land deed he has invested all of his hard-earned cash in, subject matter rarely touched upon in the wish fulfillment world of porn. A sudden attraction to hopeless romantic Will Seagers (who had already tussled with Locke in the Mitchell Bros. produced CRUISIN' THE CASTRO) proves mutual yet sends them both scurrying off in opposite directions for radically different reasons.

While Hank balks at the very idea of settling down which would require him to face up to maturity and responsibility, the traumatized Seagers is still reeling from losing the love of his life on the battlefields of Vietnam. Cue tearful flashback to their last gasp farewell, complete with Will's promise to love again ! Holy Handbag, Batman ! Only the all male side of the XXX industry ever dares to get this schmaltzy and manages to do so with such disarming honesty that only hardened cynics will feel compelled to mock rather than root for them two lovebirds to wind up together. When they do, Locke's land naturally turns out to be a worthless piece of dry desert until they accidentally hit water and it comes spurting out sky high - ooh, very suggestive ! - in a hilarious yet heartfelt tribute to the Loretta Young vehicle COME TO THE STABLE !

Before we get to our handsome heroes' well-deserved sunset however, there are some splendidly scalding sex scenes on display. Most people undoubtedly remember cult king Casey Donovan (star of Wakefield Poole's BOYS IN THE SAND) tied to a tree, after having his car stolen in the middle of the night, with Good Samaritan Derrick Stanton (the Bill Higgins discovery from BOYS OF VENICE, face unseen) taking back door liberties rather than setting the poor chap free. John Travolta's tabloid nightmare and current uniform fetish filmmaker Paul Barresi provides Kincaid's by now customary straight schtupp with minor league starlet Becky Savage (showcased in Lawrence T. Cole's CHALLENGE OF DESIRE), deliberately tossing his spent condom towards fruitlessly trying to hide peeping tom Shaun Victors from Higgins' CLASS OF '84. Hunky Johnny Falconberg, who has the hot roadside gas station glory hole encounter with Locke, never made another movie. This also marks the final appearance of blonde, bewhiskered Bob Blount whose career goes all the way back to Fred Halsted's 1972 masterpiece L.A. PLAYS ITSELF - how's that for an eerie coincidence ? - and who died in a motorcycle accident a couple of weeks after shooting had finished.

The first two parts of the trilogy's nearly avant garde associative editing and expressionist cinematography (DoP Nick Elliot was replaced with Richard Youngblood on this outing) have been abandoned for a more conventional, plot-driven approach appropriate to Hank's grinding down to a halt, taking time to smell the roses. Suffice it to say that these three crowning achievements to Kincaid's as of yet still largely uncharted career go a long way in redeeming porn from either side of the fence as a genre to be reckoned with from both a critical and sociological point of view. Plus, on top of that, they just happen to be really hot fornication flicks !

The closing chapter of Joe Gage's "Working Man" Trilogy

[cchase · 9 February 2002]

The last part of Joe Gage's "Working Man" Trilogy features a more romantic storyline, as its rough-hewn characters try to balance their love of the open road and sexual freedom with the impulse to finally find that "man of their dreams" and settle down to a more responsible and stable way of life. Deep for a gay porn movie, no? That's the kind of filmmaker Joe Gage was...with the emphasis on FILM. He had very few peers at the time, and it still holds true today, when the industry is more about box covers, buffed bods and public appearances than product that both transforms AND titillates.

The Trilogy is still a must-have/must-see for the serious collector or completist.

Surprising: a real movie with Gay hardcore content

[lor_ · 28 July 2015]

I knew Joe Gage (and his wife Cynthia DePaula, at the time president of NY Women in Film) in the '80s during the "hetero" segment of his film career, as Tim Kincaid, director of cheap action & sci-fi movies. I never saw his gay porn, though he memorably gave me a tour (circa 1984) of his downtown studio for shooting same in NYC.

A recent DVD reissue reveals that Tim's true calling was probably the porn, as L.A. TOOL & DIE plays like a real movie, and is far superior to any of his R-rated mainstream efforts. If distribution (and exhibition, in older days) and audience tastes didn't dictate strict pigeonholing of product, this film could be treated as a regular movie, just with XXX scenes interspersed with the action.

To overdo the issue, which is of great interest to me, many mainstream films today are "real films" in which the particular audience-beloved fetish has taken over the content to such an extent that they are analogous to porn-driven features. Many mindless action and CGI special effects pictures de-emphasize the story and characters just like a porn director does -the audience is impatient to get to the next gore scene, fight scene or explosion set-piece, just as the porn hound is assumed to be only interested in the sex.

But stripping away the sex, L.A. TOOL & DIE is a classic road movie, both in structure and mood. Tim uses this structure to knit together the sex vignettes (which commercially are the only reason for the film to exist) into a loose storyline.

Will Seagers is Wylie, a mustachioed young man who we first see at a bar in El Paso, turning down an offer (for sex) by burly hero Richard Locke as Hank. Seagers is headed to L.A. to take a job at the title company, and his (as well Hank's) adventures make up the narrative. Locke also starred in Tim's two preceding companion films to TOOL & DIE.

Immediately unusual, and proof that Tim was consciously trying to expand the form of gay porn beyond its wall-to-wall sex constrictions, is the presence of two important female characters. Terri Hannon plays Raven, a sexy girl that guest star Casey Donovan picks up on the road in New Mexico, only to be waylaid by her accomplice, a guy who handcuffs Donovan to a tree and sodomizes him. This turns out to be a case of role-playing by the trio, and an interesting diversion.

Even more significant is beautiful porn star Becky Savage, who is humped by a guy at a rest stop where Wylie has previously been. This hetero sex scene is watched by a young peeping tom, who after the couple leaves, retrieves the used rubber and uses it as a fetish when he masturbates. But the boy/girl scene in a Gay porno movie was unique (as far as I'm concerned).

There are other sexual liaisons, and Tim keeps up a clever use of the radio where we hear nut-case right wing preachers saying weird things I thought only Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination uttered -it's probably real though an end credit assigns the lingo to "Reverend Spoonball".

Wylie arrives at his destination, and in several brief scenes and montages Kincaid beautifully extols the beauty of hard labor -almost a PSA for labor unions back in the day when unions were on the ascent, but in context a vibrant paean to manly men. Film climaxes with some elaborate sex scenes after Hank arrives to reunite with Wylie and consummate their remote love affair.

The film's many subplots are all quite interesting, including an almost requisite Vietnam War tie-in, as Wylie keeps suffering from flashbacks (he's without mustache in the service scenes) cradling a dying buddy who says: "Don't forget me man; just love somebody else someday, promise me!".

End credits are interesting, not only listing Joe Gage among "The Gage Men" (so I would presume Tim took part personally in the sex scenes), and thanking peers Wakefield Poole and Tom DiSimone. I find Gage's creative storytelling approach infinitely more effective than Poole's overrated male sex fantasies, most of which have been revived recently on DVD.

IMDb lists this as a 1982 film, but it dates from 1979 (even displaying that year as copyright); apparently this mistake is due to an ill-advised revision by the website whereby it relies on known foreign release dates to substitute for unverified or estimated domestic dates; fortunately I printed out the old listings from five years back before the wholesale change and errors were blessed.