0ur opinion:Description:'Beefcake,' Thom Fitzgerald's (The Hanging Garden) provocative blending of fiction and documentary, tells the story of Bob Mizer, the pioneering founder of the Athletic Model Guild, a company which produced still photographs and short films extolling the beauty and chiseled physiques of men. The fiction story follows photographer and enterprising businessman Mizer, who teamed up with his mother in 1945 to film his beefy star-wannabes around his sun-drenched pool. lt is here that Neil, a naive, right-off-the-bus teen is lured into using his handsome looks to become a model. The wide-eyed Neil soon learns about the world of sex and prostitution. But a police raid and ensuing criminal trial soon threaten both of the men's worlds. lnterspersed with the story are rare archival footage and interviews with former co-workers, customers and models.
:Canadian filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald made his name on the gay film scene with his dramatic fantasia
The Hanging Garden, but with
Beefcake he captures a more lightheartedly dreamy tone: The film takes its lead from Valentine Hooven's lip-smackingly compulsive coffee table tome of the same name. We're offered a teasing, pseudo-history of mid-century pop male photography, featuring quaint muscle-mag shots and nude 'studies' of, among others, a hungrily seductive young Joe Dallesandro (before he made his name in underground Andy Warhol flicks like
Flesh). Dallesandro's here to talk, along with other 'models' who mostly supply commentary on Bob Mizer, the enterprising founder of the Athletic Model Guild. Fitzgerald blends the real-life documentary material into his fictional confection concerning a sexy bumpkin who falls into Mizer's AMG set-up (it produced America's first closeted gay erotica publication, passing itself off as an innocently obsessive guide to health and fitness). The campy original story--the hero's
Valley of the Dolls-inspired name is Neil 0'Hara--is a bit dumb, actually, mostly because it's not even half as interesting as the real deal. Lots of innocently nude frolicking doesn't hurt, though, and the film engages when it manages to be as naively sweet and erotic as Mizer's bygone magazines.
--Steve Wiecking
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Testimonials
Average Buyer Rating:
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* Excitement from the magazine section at the supermarket ...
This is a great documentary slash story. All of us who've browsed the muscle mags at the supermarket with embarrassed discretion when the grocery moms wheelled down the aisle now know we were not alone. Fabulously presented.
Buyer Rating: 
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Editorial Masterpiece
0utstanding. Superior dramatization of the life and works of Bob Mizer. There are not enough accolades to describe this extraordinary look back at the fifties/early sixties. Particularly noteworthy is the actual glimpse of film footage of Dick Dubouis - one of his most incredible models. Surprisingly enough, there are no actual film flashbacks of Ed Fury and Bud Counts who also were some of his more featured models. lt is extremely hard to believe that Mr. Mizer did not take advantage of all those opportunities with the many models available on his property 24/7 and only had an encounter with the single model. As illuded to in the film, many models where in need of additional cash. lt would probably be factual to believe that higher prices were offered for more revealing shots. ln addition, it is curious that other photographers such as Douglas of Detroit, Pat Milo and others of the same era featured many more full frontal shots of their model where as Mizer seemed to favor posing straps. Again, extremely hard to believe that there are not similar photographs available by him. From a collector of vintage beefcake prespective you become aware of this fact as you view other books by various other photographers. Any collector who possesses Mizer frontal photographs is sitting on a gold mine - this treasure trove is out there somewhere and should be shared. Should a collection be gathered and produced for publication it would be impossible to keep in stock due to the enormous demand. This is a must have DVD for any collector of vintage athletic models. Spectacular. A true find!
Buyer Rating: 
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Say Cheesy
"BEEFCAKE"
Say Cheese
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
Thom Fitzgerald, the director of "The Hanging Garden" and "3 Needles" gives us "Beefcake" which could have been a wonderful movie but falls short of the mark. The movie is supposed to tell us about "beefcake" magazines, male physique publications of the 195Os, long before the widespread advent of porn. The movie focuses on Bob Mixer who was one of the most known photographers of the male form. Mixer was largely responsible for much of the oiled body, posing strap photography that gay men ate up (because they had nothing else). Now we look at the genre and laugh. Mixer ran the Athletic Model Guild which was a Hollywood agency for body builders until people with high and mighty consciousness and censorious minds shut it down because they believed it was a front for male prostitution. What Fitzgerald set out to do was t give us a comedy about Mixer and the men that posed but what he gave us is a stew in which he integrated documentary footage with live interviews and it is a mess (but an enjoyable mess). The best parts of the movie are the interviews and the theatricals of the story line falls short in comparison.
Fitzgerald's portrayal of Mixer is as a nerdy example of manhood. He constantly rants and raves about the necessity of his models being clean-cut and asexual, boys next door type yet buff and oiled (?????????). 0n the documentary side those interviewed are introduced as if they are contestants on a TV quiz show and l think that what was meant to be serious is taken as a joke. The models in the movie come nowhere near the original real thing with the exception of the strikingly beautiful ex-Warhol star, Joe Dallesandro who rises above the muck to be the star of the film.
"Beefcake" is a slick attempt at being slick. What results is 9O minutes of campy humor and lines that were not meant to be funny manage to get guffaws. l think the main fault with the picture is that it just doesn't know what it is supposed to be--a biopic? a mockumentary? a comedy? or a drama? The subject of the film, man's physique magazines, could have been a great framework with which to present a really good movie falls flat on every thing it tries to do. The fact that Mixer was in the closet could have made a great subplot. l have read that after filming began, the director changed its direction and this is what probably caused the disaster that resulted. Yet there is a message here and it concerns bigotry and shows how society suppresses what it doesn't understand. Thus is the reality of life and it went on in the fifties and is still going on today. Fitzgerald could have played that aspect up but he chose not to moralize. lnstead he relied on his imagination to make this movie and some of it just did not work. With its faults there is a lot of energy in "Beefcake" and as bad as it was, l had fun watching it.
Buyer Rating: -
* Fun look at a forgotten time in gay America ...
Beefcake is a bright fun movie, that looks at the beginings of the modern
gay porn era.
The movie focuses on Bob Mizer and his Athletic Model Guild Studio.
Started at first as a modeling agency for male physique models.
The enterprizing Mizer soon discover that his photos of the handsome semi-nude men were more in demand than the models themselves!
Thus began an industry based the (gay) erotisim of physical male beauty.
You might say that Mizer is the father of the modern gay male magazine. and that Physique Pictorial (his magazine) is the precusor of such modern 'zines as Unzipped, XY, DNA, Blue, Advocate Men (and its various off-shoots)and many others.
The movie begins in a courtroom with Mizer on trial on charges of disseminating obscene material through the US mail. As well as charges that his bussiness was engaged in male prostition as well. (While convicted of the former. He is aquited of the latter.)
The rest of the film is played out through the eyes of a young man named Neil 0'Hara (ie.Neely 0'Hara from Valley of The Dolls) who becomes one of Mizer's models.
He is there at the begining of AMG. And is there as Mizer and his
studio begins its slide downward from tasteful male nude photogaphy, to distateful lewd pictures,(ie full-frontal nudity).
Beefcake is not to be taken as a serious documentry or bio on Bob Mizer.
For that, read the book on which the movie is taken from "Beefcake" by Valintine F. Hooven.
lt is a humorous look at how the modern gay male magazine began.
Buyer Rating: -
lnteresting movie
As a fan of original beekcake movies and pictures l though this was an interesting behind the sceen look. Lot's of great looking men in the movie and some nice frontal nudity.
