Jail Bait (1954)

Jailbait—The Movie

After Steve Reeves won the 1947 Mr. America contest—Cecil B. De Mille, the famous director of screen epics, needed somebody to play the Biblical hero Samson in his next Hollywood extravaganza.

Victor Mature got the part—but I still can’t sleep at nights just thinking about Hedy Lamarr getting it on with Reeves instead of Mature. Or even more troubling—Russ Tamblyn in love with vagabond outlaw on-the-run Samson out there in those lonely desert oasis nights. Beneath the date trees—squeezing figs and pomegranate juice. Outta Reeves—instead of Mature. How Tamblyn pouted and threw a fit—when Samson went for the dame instead of him!!!!

Later Steve’s first film—made for television. Kimbar of the Jungle (1949)—originally called “Lion Boy of Tanganyika.” Only one of 13 episodes were filmed—because of funding problems.

Later making guest appearances on the Dinah Shore Show (1949), the Ralph Edwards Show (1952-1953), Topper (1953), Jimmy Durante Show (1953), Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (1953), Kismet on Broadway (1954) and Athena (1954) with Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds.

Then came Jail Bait (1954) aka The Hidden Face, as Lieutenant Lawrence—directed by the infamous Ed Wood. Followed by The Vamp (1956) with Reeves as Samson opposite Carol Channing, Hercules (1957) aka Le Fatiche di Ercole, Hercules Unchained (1958) aka Recole e regina di Lidia and all the cheesy rest of Muscle Heaven and Joy.

Although that’s what it was back then—my life a hopeless cheesy infatuation with sword and sandal movies that lightened up my dreary dingy chicken existence back then. And they still do it today—they make me feel so gay.

Especially those campy historical / hysterical romances—like Riccardo Freda’s The White Warrior (1959) based on a dizzy version of a Tolstoy novel. That kinky bondage scene—with Reeves spread-eagled on a Victorian bed. His arms and legs tied to the bedposts—a nice pillow behind his lovely curly head. Seduced by the Czar and Czarina—luridly, garishly filmed by Mario Bava. Tortured into love—struggling against it every muscular inch…

But before sword and sandals became his oeuvre of choice—there was Ed Woods’ skanky queer noir version of Steve Reeves. Recently discovered snippets from Jail Bait—having been mysteriously hidden all these years—reveal the true depths of just what jail bait romance was really like back then!!! Oh Lordy!!! Move over Hercules—make room for some LA shameless chicken cinema!!!

I saw Jail Bait in dreary Riverside—in a dumpy Bijou theater I’d rather forget. I knew the projectionist—or rather he knew me. He knew me—and he knew what I liked. His Midnight Shows were for the cognoscenti—Venice Beach has-beens and Sunset Boulevard chicken queens.

Long before Arnold became governor—Steve Reeves was the Emperor of the Bijou Underworld. The Last Days of Pompeii (1960)—happened every Saturday night in the darkness of the closed-down movie house. Literary queen that I was—I’d already read Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton’s Victorian pot-boiler smash bestseller from 1834. That’s how kinky I was for Steve Reeves—all his historical / hysterical filmscripts. I got a real sense of the novel’s theatrical potential—when young Reeves’ muscle-bound gladiatorial groin loomed down at me from that silver screen.

Even the most amusingly awkward performances didn’t bore me—nor the worst dubbed Italian dialog drifting down the aisles. Nothing trivialized, defused or deflated—my cinematic desires for Hercules chained or unchained.

More than Alan Steel, Roland Carey, Reg Lewis or Peter Lupus—the sword and sandal splendor of Steve Reeves frazzled my nerves with secret frisson and midnight desires.

Perhaps, at least now anyway, it’s more like a True Detective kind of schmaltzy story—the kind of teenage blithering bildungsroman kind of story that just doesn’t quit. You know, the kind of fantasy young males have sometimes—when confronted with some lurid sword and sandal Technicolor Italian movie like Hercules Unchained (1959)?




Steve Reeves

Jail Bait (The Dirt)

I have this confession to make… I know it sounds lewd, uncouth, naïve—and perhaps even gauche and overly-familiar. But I can’t help myself—when I get in the True Confession mood. I get worse than Miss Proust—except it isn’t tea, toast & marmalade that turns me on.

Even before Steve Reeves—slipped on his sword and sandals. Even before he became—Hercules Unchained. Even before he ended up The White Warrior—tied-up and spread-eagled nude in the Czarina’s bed. Before all that—he was Ed Wood young protégé.

Ed Wood Jr. was the first cineaste to get his hands on young Steve Reeves. Ed Wood Jr. was into juvenile delinquents and jail bait romance—that’s why Steve Reeves caught Wood’s eye right away. When Reeves first showed up in Hollywood—crusing Sunset Boulevard—everybody immediately noticed something strange.

There was an air of ancient Greece and decadent Rome—hovering constantly over the kid’s body. Especially when Reeves was nude—or working out at Gold’s Gym. Young Reeves’ athletic prowess inspired a national physical fitness craze—to say nothing of hushed heavy breathing and gushing Bijou balcony lust across the country coast to coast.

How many groveling demigod protégés—pumping iron at local dumpy gyms—gazed at themselves in the mirrors. Just to feel the rush of bulging biceps—pretending they were Steve Reeves.

How many quivering thighs couldn’t sleep at night—just thinking of pools of forgetfulness and special missions to Thebes? All to emulate young Hercules worship once again—the ancient déjà vu wetdream come back again?

“Whooo is heee!?!” breathed all the Hollywood aging queens—languishing and swooning over the kid’s brawny endowments. Cute chicken Montana muscle-boy—suddenly all of LA groveling at his feet. Swooped up by Miss Wood—at the Greyhound bus station?

Please don’t tell anybody—this confidential little story I’m going to share with you. What I’m telling you—is top secret. None of the scandal sheets—know what really happened between Steve Reeves and Ed Wood Jr. I know it sounds kind of cheesy—and unbelievable. Maybe it should be called Ripley’s Believe or Not—rather than a True Confession Magazine ‘50s style of pulp fiction reportage.

But I don’t care—after A Million Little Pieces everybody knows how to stretch Autobiography as far as they want. Millions of dollars later & millions of copies across the land—everybody knows a lying biography tells the truth.

All it takes is a little bit of imagination—and a desire to believe in just about anything. Nonfiction novels like In Cold Blood are cheesy—the cheesier the better. Capote didn’t tell half the story—and neither does Ed Woods’ Jail Bait.




Jail Bait (Unexpurgated)

Director: Ed D. Wood Jr.

Genre: Queer Crime / Homo / Fag Noir

Tagline: He’s a Nice Boy… To Leave Alone!!!

Plot: Lyle Talbot plays Inspector Johns. Steve Reeves plays Lt. Bob Lawrence, Talbot’s young handsome protégé. Reeves spends a lot of time in Talbot’s office. Talbot is Reeve’s sugar daddy—gets him all sorts of juicy cases to investigate. While Talbot spends most of his time—investigating Reeves’ shorts and sleek revolver. The fag noir part of Jail Bait got filmed in a dumpy office building in beautiful downtown Burbank. Delores Fuller plays Marilyn Gregor—she’s Wood’s lucky wife. Obviously she’s got the hots for Reeves too. Delores and Lyle are always in a bitch fight—quibbling over handsome Reeves’ attention. Herbert Rawlinson plays Dr. Boris Gregor the plastic surgeon—he’s got the hots for Steve Reeves too. So does Clancy Malone the skanky hoodlum—and Timothy Farrell as Vic Brady the local drag queen. Theodora Thurman plays Loretta—and she gets a lotta too. Even Bud Osborne the Night Watchman—has the hots for Steve Reeves. Especially Steve’s exquisite damp armpits—those infernal furnaces of fuming male pheromones driving everybody up the walls with mad jail bait yearnings. Reeves was always bathing himself in Lyle Talbot’s bathroom—cleaning himself up after a hard difficult case. Wood got it all on film—recently unearthed in the RKO vaults hidden by Howard Hughes for some inexplicable reason. It’s worse than Andy Warhol’s Empire State Building movie. Twenty-four hours of what is was like—all day long and into the night there in Lyle Talbot’s office. Everything from Reeves lifting weights and pumping iron—to X-rated shameless sex.