Bijou – The Light From The Second Story Window

Video language: English

Based on the sleazy autobiography of the same name, The Light from the Second Story Window recounts the story of a naive youthful man (played by Dave Allen, famous for his performance in A Deep Kindness) who goes to Hollywood in search of "fame and fortune" but winds up working as a two-bit hustler. This movie delivers pre-condom sex at its finest … including an amazing shot of cum right in youthful David Allen’s muzzle!
"When The Light from the Second Story Window premiered theatrically in 1973, critics were rapid to heap praise upon the dramatic richness and epic scope of the production. In reality, it was ambitious, perhaps the most ambitious gay pornography film ever produced up to this time. The years, however, have not been kind to that cautionary tale of a Hollywood wannabe who becomes a slut before becoming a star. From the vantage point of the Nineties, what remains is (1) a gender-fucked wages-of-sin soap opera of the sort in which Kay Francis and Norma Shearer used to wallow so extravagantly during the Thirties, and (2), a vanity fabrication for David Allen, who wrote the screenplay (based on his novel), managed, and cast himself in the starring role, all too much often forgetting the category in which bloke had chosen to tell his tale – there isn’t 1 frame in the entire movie of him at erection.
The 1st thing one sees as the film opens is the Greyhound Bus Depot in West Hollywood, where a blonde naif (Allen) steps off the bus to be met by a black pimp (Winston Kramer) and a white drag queen (Richard Lindstrom). Soon lad is at the home of a male madam (Brad Preston), and offered the proposition that if fellow puts out for clients in private settings and for the camera in fucking flicks, chap will eventually be given a role in a mainstream video. There follows a mechanical sex episode in which an unattractive john and a disinterested boy gear go at it. Like almost any of such episodes in the movie, this one has a beginning (sliding in) and an ending (the money shot), but very little middle, and no sense of a complete hot experience. The episode serves as an eye-opener for Allen, who (after being plied with and some sort of ‘pill’) assents to bed down with the pimp, as sort of an audition. They kiss. Allen sucks and gets fucked (tho’ the anal performance appears to be simulated, and neither has an on-camera ejaculation).
The 3rd and fourth explicit episodes – of Allen with clients – are more successful on a purely prurient layer. The first, a threeway with a and poolside, includes Allen sucking, rimming, and another apparently simulated fucking. The another, starring Cassidy as a closeted film star, clearly shows why chap was one of the most popular early stars of the genre. The movie cam loved his chiseled features, gym-built physique, and sturdy erection, and buddy throws a definitely not-simulated fuck to the diminutive blond this culminates with a syrupy money shot all over Allen’s tongue. But Allen’s character is beginning to regret his life of ‘being constantly used.’
An ‘acting workshop’ for clients turns into a kaleidoscopically filmed orgy at which the cop on the take (Richard Lavette) selects Allen as his bonus of the day and subsequently puts him through a humiliatingly homophobic S&M exercise. This degradation prompts the onset of a nervous breakdown in which Allen tries to ape Orson Welles’ classic temper tantrum in Citizen Kane. That is followed in fast succession by Allen’s meeting a excellent, middle-aged gentleman (William Laskey) who raises snakes, intones the almost any polemic dialogue in the video (all ’bout love and longing), and eventually commits suicied; by Allen’s becoming an overnight success as a legit movie star; and by by a celebration at a cabaret where a drag queen (Felisha Farr) lip-syncs ‘Why Was I Born’ and Allen meets the love of his life, one greater amount wannabe, who is straight (Ray Todd).
The wages-of-sin theme shifts to the hollowness-of-fame theme, as Allen not quite just has sex with Todd (other sensation from the early days of porno); hires a hustler of his own (Joey Daniels) who turns out to be greater amount of a philosopher than a sexualist in a non-explicit episode; and at the last moment gets Todd into his bed for the the most sexy sex scene in the movie and an ambiguous ending in which the str8 guy is gradually coming around (‘Give me time… Don’t poke me… U can’t have everything.’) And the video ends with a stunning freeze frame of Allen in front of a giant kleig light at yet other premiere – rich, famous, and alone.
Why, then, after all these years, should one bother to view – or review – this film? Well, for all its flaws, The Light from the 2nd Story Window represents an earnest essay to explore and exhibit human sexuality within a dramatic narrative structure, something this was rarely being endeavoured in these days of furtive shoots in motel rooms. Clumsy as it may seem today, LIGHT paved the way for other filmmakers who believed this the explicit video and the narrative could be melded, and instantly and again, that 1 does rise above cliche

Format: Windows media
Duration: 1:56:30
Video: 640×480, Wm Film 9, 1870kbps
Audio: 125kbps

File size: 1.7 GB