Our neighbors loaned us "The Working Man Trilogy" a set of three porno's from the 70's. "Kansas City Trucking Co." "El Paso Wrecking Co." and "LA Tool and Die." All three center on a man named Hank who moves from job to job and has lots of sex.

Our neighbor insist that these porono's are generation defining works of art. They were all made pre-HIV. He also says they were the first gay porn's that depicted gay men as men and not as effeminate.

The Trilogy is well filmed and directed-- which in many ways works against it. The mark of a good porno is that you pay attention to the sex. When I watched the trilogy, I kept looking at the director's style-- his use of low key lighting, fondness for saturated monotone colors his love of a JO crotch shot.

The director also extensivly shot on location and in the outdoors. There are many extras in the film which makes me wonder how many of them knew they were going to be in porn, and how many were filmed on the sly.

There are also women in the trilogy. Not for sex, but for ambiance. I think the directory was trying to create the impression that this porn was for straight men who played around on the side.

The trilogy contains much plot, at least for porno. For all the wrong reasons I will remember the plot more than the sex. The acting is bad. The actors speak unconvincing lines that serve no purpose than setting up the sex scenes. On top of that, the non-sex scenes are not small. It's not five seconds of chit-chat and then sex. Minutes will go by with dialog and establishing shots.

The sex scenes are homogeneous enough that they form a blurry back ground. Similar to an action flick that has too much action. To some extent, that's expected because, hey, it's porn and porn is full of sex. But, the non-sex scenes and dialog stick out relative to the sex, which is not a good thing for porno.

For example, what do I recall about these films? I remember the girl friend nagging her boy friend "Come on Joe! You'll be late for work Joe!" I don't fully remember who Joe was or how he was showing off his naked body at the time. I remember the music. It's fairly good. Some original tunes and much country. Very different from modern "Bad Porno Music" I remember Hank saying "Let's Eat." in an overly masculine tone. I don't remember the sex Hank had before or after he went to the restaurant. If parrot the line "Let's Eat." to RO. He breaks out gigling.

If you like gay porn, these films are worth watching. Even if you like old art-house film, they may be worth a peek. These aren't great, but they are fun to watch. They are pre-bad-porno-music, pre-video and pre-HIV. Seeing the differences between then and now is interesting. Gay culture has changed a lot since the 70's. The working man trilogy show cases the difference.