Review

  REVIEW 1:
Vintage director Joe Gage emerges from his cryogenic vault to serve up a heaping dose of man-smut. Tulsa County Line proves that 25 years after Gage’s heyday, he still has a few dirty tricks up his jock.

In the first scene, Carrington walks in on Branch as he’s taking a leak at a rest stop bathroom. Branch turns around, revealing a sexy grin and an even sexier stiffie. Branch sashays by without giving it up, but Carrington can’t shake the image of Branch’s manstaff.

Carrington ends up yanking his doodle in a stall, as images of Branch’s cock dance through his head. In the meantime, an unexpected visitor arrives - it’s Donovan, a monstrously hung gent who ends up joining Carrington in a double jerk-off extravaganza.

In the next scene, Sizemore and Bacci receive a special delivery from the delectable Logan Reed (there are two Reeds in the film). The delivery is a video camera, which is put to good use as the boys coerce Reed into stripping down and displaying his eye-popping body and gargantuan noodle. Bacci, who has been leering seductively at Reed throughout the scene, comes over and takes an oral swipe at Reed’s reed. Sizemore joins the party, and before you know it, it’s a three-way masturbation hootenanny. After Reed provides a brief topping for Bacci, Sizemore and Bacci drop their slop on Reed’s manly-man chest.

Next up is a white-hot doctor/patient fantasy starring Cooper (vintage looks, incredible six-pack, top of the Pops) and Mark Reed (rugged to a fault, burly beyond reason, Mediterranean/Semitic looks). Cooper gives Reed a super-thorough exam, including a prolonged anal probing that turns into a five-minute prostate massage. By this point, Reed has been whipped into a sexual froth. Cooper continues his rather unconventional exam by making sure that Reed is truly healthy by doing the “cock-in-the-mouth” test. A drippy fellatio session ensues. Being the good patient that he is, Reed obeys the doctor’s orders and mouth-dunks Cooper’s putz before allowing Cooper to do a more thorough rectal exam - with his dick!

Reed moans and bleats like the prized ewe at a West Virginia bachelor party.

Next, Gage proves that he’s “down with technology” by presenting a true cyber-sex hoedown. Owen (crimson tresses, inked, bad boy) logs on for some virtual naughtiness with fellow Web-slut Frost (brunette, nice hang-low). The boys tease each other by stroking their rods over the webcam. Frost is soon joined a real-life buddy, the rather handsome Rocky (not the Philadelphia boxer). As Owen watches (and gets jerked by a mysterious hand), Frost and Rocky suck and masturbate to climax.

Gage ventures into unknown twink territory with the next vignette, which features a trio of post-pubescent smoothies. Jordan, Richards and Mills are stroking their young, taut manmeat when mule-dicked uber-Dad Johnson strolls in. Before you can say “Shove it in me pooper!” Johnson is eating dick and ass like there’s an impending embargo on dick and ass in the works. Jordan settles down on Johnson’s johnson for a brief though genitally arousing ride. Johnson ends up on his back so that the young lads can unload their viscous cargo on his chest.

Next up is a brief hookup between Branch and Armstrong (a dead ringer for Rob Lowe). A bit of slurping, a smidgen of yanking and a whole lot of jism are what you’ll see.

In the film’s cock-laden finale, Branch and Armstrong arrive at a house party featuring a veritable who’s-who of porn biggies. Williams, Tucker, Real, Ryan and others are all there pulling their puds. Branch and Armstrong decide to add a bit of spice to this jack-off jamboree by doing the oral thing on a few select organs. Ryan ends up giving up his heiney to Branch, who shtups him like a real man.

 -- T.J. Maxxwell

  REVIEW 2: An opposing viewpoint
Younger gay men need to understand the importance Joe Gage had on his generation. Stonewall had occurred only seven years earlier, and gay men were still trying to figure out who they were when Kansas City Trucking Co. came out. The media didn’t help, what with Anita Bryant on the news and Billy Crystal on TV's Soap. What Joe Gage gave us in his films (and they were “films”) was a new model of masculinity tailored for the new gay man. The “Gage Man” became an icon, and Joe Gage became a hero.

So let me state right now that no one wanted to love this video more than I did. But I don’t. Let me also state that I love T.J. Maxxwell’s writing. But I don’t agree with him at all. And T.J.’s praise is mild compared to the effusive raves Tulsa has received elsewhere. Someone commented that one review “reads like the guy was hoping to get laid by one of the stars.” So let me emphatically state that no one wants to get laid by Jason Branch more than I do. Yet his performance (like almost everyone else's here) was a dud, as was - it pains me to say - this video. A dud.

Branch’s performance (or non-performance) is emblematic of the problems with Tulsa. As with virtually the entire cast, he is woefully misused, or rather, dis-used. He looks miserable - no, he looks gorgeous. What he looks is frustrated. He looks like he’s waiting for the chance to do something, and he never gets it. In the entire video, Jason Branch – the Jason Branch – sucks only two cocks and fucks only one ass, for a total screen time of just under two minutes (yes, I timed it). And his acting (which is often pretty good elsewhere) isn’t any better. There is no sexual tension between him and his co-star at all, and we have no real idea why they’re driving around this very bleak landscape.

Then there’s the so-called threeway between Matt Sizemore, Logan Reed and Nino Bacci - all first-rate, top of the line porn stars. First of all, the set-up of a UPS guy delivering a camera and being seduced by the owner was a cliché when Gage first made porn, and its staleness doesn’t change just because the camera is digital instead of 8-millimeter.

And yet the camera has more life to it than the sex. The stripping of Reed has the sexual tension of Mama Rose going down the catwalk at the end of Gypsy. Bacci just sits there as if to say “I’m waiting for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” Only in Bacci’s case, the close-up would be of his asshole - which we never actually see. His on-camera fuck by Reed (yes, I timed it) lasts less than 60 seconds. And Matt Sizemore just watches. Imagine: super-stud Logan Reed takes forever to strip, mega-top Matt Sizemore never fucks, and hyper-bottom Nino Bacci barely gets it up the ass. Huh?

Even the two hard-core scenes that do generate heat have problems. The sex between Clint Cooper and Mark Reed is sizzling hot, if you can keep your eyes away from absolutely the worst hair cut in porn history on Cooper– half razor-cut, half comb-over. The fuck Chad Johnson throws Jeremy Jordan is thrillingly furious and brutally vivid (and given their apparent age difference, a bit unsettling unless you’re really into intergenerational sex). Even then, the two other guys look on as if they were watching #42 of VH1’s "100 Most Average Videos". They have zero energy and consequently suck the life out of the scene.

If you want to talk about dis-use of cast, why would anyone waste the marvelous cocks of Chad Donovan and Alex Carrington on a rest-room jerk-off quickie? And the so-called “cyber-sex” scene is nothing more than a three-man jerk-off session, not counting that damn mystery arm that inexplicably appears from nowhere to help out Christian Owen. Again, huh?

I could forgive all of this if the video had any real mood or development of character, as Gage has said he was most trying to get. That, even more than the sex, was his specialty. Richard Locke, Will Seagers, and the other Gage stars didn’t become every gay man’s wet dream just because they were hunks, but because Gage captured an aura about them. Something changed in those men as they went out on the road; their journeys were more than just sex, and they became our journeys.

In Tulsa, there’s no such development, especially in the younger Jake Armstrong. The classic orgies involving the "Gage Men" didn’t have any more sucking and fucking than Tulsa does (which is almost none), but they did have an element of danger, excitement and - yes - liberation. These guys look like they’re jerking off only because they’re bored with the TV.

Maybe it’s the use of video rather than film, which flattens everything out. Maybe it’s the soundtrack, which is lethargic until the almost cartoonish climaxes. Maybe it’s because Gage has been away from a camera for so long, and the next one will be better - if there is a next one. I don’t know what I’m missing that other people see in Tulsa County Line.

 -- Jameson Rodgers