Features > Old Dirty Movie Review

by Addison DeWitt

(posted March, 2007)

Nights in Black Leather

Starring: Peter Berlin, Rick Jedin, Al Joffery, Tom Webber, Jim Salen. Directed by: Richard Abel (billed as Ignatio Rutkowski).

1973, what a wonderful year, I remember it well. The Watergate scandal was heating up, Vietnam was winding down, and Mary Tyler Moore was showing us that a single gal could have it all, while Marvin Gaye was propositioning us all (through song) with, “Lets Get it On”.

Meanwhile, in the still, relatively new, world of gay porn, a star was born who went by the name of Peter Berlin.

With his Dutch-boy haircut, skin tight pants, and seemingly aloof persona, Berlin presented himself as tireless pursuer of gay sex, slinking about the streets of San Francisco in outrageous leather getups -- which is what he does a lot of in his film debut, Nights in Black Leather.

Owing much to Paul Morrissey’s film, Flesh, Nights... contains shot after shot of Berlin wandering about the City by the Bay similar to the way Joe Dallesandro cruised the seedier side of the Big Apple in Flesh.

True, his body was a work of art, and his accentuated bulge (of which the camera focuses on ad nauseam) is, beyond doubt, a sight to behold; Peter Berlin just comes across as a self indulgent, self absorbed bore (kind of like a leather clad Paris Hilton).

For the first fifteen minutes of the film, we are treated to seemingly endless shots of him sauntering through crowded streets (what some of the by-standers thought when they caught a glimpse of this guy is anyone’s guess), enter a bar, writing a letter in the park, and stroll down some more streets. All of this is accompanied by an irritating voice over by the film’s star in his thick Germanic accent, (“I love to valk the streets of dis city and look for the sex zat is everywhere…”).

Actually, the letter writing seems to be the hook here, it’s Berlin writing home to a friend, detailing the minutiae of his sex life while lounging in a park somewhere, hence the narration.

It takes almost fifteen minutes for the first sex scene to occur, and when it does it is a solo of Berlin jerking off while talking to some guy on the phone…well actually there is not much in the way conversing, basically the guy on the other end talks incessantly about what he wants to do, while our hero jerks off looking at himself in a mirror; though an unintentional laugh does come when Berlin points his cock at the phone receiver as if he were going to fuck the piece of plastic (now that would have been something!).

Thankfully, a half decent sex scene comes about next when Berlin meets a fellow street walker (a beautiful, tall, long-haired fellow who faintly resembled Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane), just before they hook up, the funniest bit of narration occurs when Berlin says “I felt my loins become tense ven I vatched him crossing da street” -- now I ask you, where was the Oscar for that bit of dialogue?

But I digress.

Soon Berlin and the hippie dude are in the woods, and when the boys get naked and go at each other, it’s actually kind of hot, especially when the hippie puts his big cock into Berlin’s mouth (anything to stop the damn voice-over!). Unfortunately, there is not much consistency here. One minute they are molesting each other, the next minute frolicking in the grass like a Summer’s Eve commercial full of soft lighting and slow motion, and then, like magic, they are in a tent…where thankfully, some fucking occurs; and here I’ll give Peter Berlin his due, when he mounts the hippie and rides him, it is electrifying. Berlin’s body moves gracefully like a wave over the body of his lover and the cumshots on both ends are pretty impressive. What’s even more impressive is the scene’s coda as the two of them are talking to each other. It all seems unrehearsed and natural. There is even a sweet moment when Berlin lets his guard down after the hippie seems confused about something Berlin has said to him, (Berlin is describing his tight pants and tells the hippie that the pants have a “punch” in them, this causes the hippie to ask what he means…finally he realizes that Berlin means a “pouch”). The hippie guy literally falls over in laughter while Berlin smiles sheepishly and says, “What, my English is not that bad.”

Now we are back on the streets for more shots of the walking dude and more voice-over (note that Berlin mentions having once had sex with a Nazi fetishist in Germany at this point, and even makes a joke out of it saying, “I vonder vhat he vould have said if he knew I voted for da Socialist party in da last election”).

From this we follow our hero to what looks like an abandoned school where he finds a young man in the bathroom and proceeds to make him his sex slave.

The greasy-haired kid is obviously into role playing and offers Pete a boot shine, via his tongue. After the kid has burnished up Berlin’s boots, they repair to a Freddy Kruger- style boiler room, where a bed is waiting for the two of them.

Here is where the movie should have gone on full boil; Berlin whips his partner’s ass with a belt, smacks him around, and verbally taunts him…so why does it all seem to fall flat? Well, while the young guy is very much into the scene, it appears that Berlin is just going through the motions -- even while he professes to enjoy S&M (or so he claims in the narration), he looks bored and miles away; it doesn’t help that his voice is flat and seems to have no inflection to it at all. Frankly, this scene goes on much too long for its own good, keep the remote ready and prepare to fast-forward.

Next up is a cocktail party that Berlin attends in a very crowded apartment living room.
From a historical perspective, this has to be the best thing in the movie; check out the men with their mutton-chop sideburns, the causal passing of joints amongst the guests, and if you listen closely, you will hear Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy” playing in the background.

Seated amongst the guests are two drag queens, (one who resembles actress Sally Kirkland, and the other seemingly done up like a very dowdy Queen Elizabeth). Trust me, you won’t be able to take your eyes off these two, they pretty much steal the scene (especially when the guests all begin dancing, and Berlin starts stripping, but the queens get right in front of him and start boogying; they want their camera time, damn it, and will not be denied!).

Happily, the next scene is actually a very hot orgy of Berlin and three other guys. Of note is a tall muscular dark haired man with the face of a fashion model. He dominates the activities and outshines the film’s star in every way.

Set to a frenetic Middle-Eastern-like-soundtrack, the orgy is a series of shadowed shots and jump cuts all coordinated to the ever increasing pulse of the music.

At one point, the tall muscular dark haired man, while fucking his partner in the missionary position, lifts him half way up off the sofa and starts punching his partner’s six-pack abs with so much ferocity that you understand that this was probably not scripted. It’s a strangely erotic bit with S&M overtones.

As the orgy progress, you lose sight as to who is doing what to whom, and the viewer is hit with random shots of body parts, fluids and faces until finally a messy cumshot occurs and the music ends, as the scene does, with the crash of a cymbal…and we are back with Berlin who is still writing that damn letter in the park.

Just as he finishes the note, the hippie dude from earlier shows up walking a dog and he and Pete walk off into the sunset while the letter remains on the grass in the park, forgotten…I can only imagine what the person who came across that epistle might have thought.

If you’re looking for a film to get your juices flowing, you might want to skip, Nights in Black Leather, or at the very least, fast forward to the orgy scene; however if you’re looking for a curio piece, a strange film that while admittedly a porn flick, is also something of an odd document of a certain time and place, then by all means, seek it out.

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Peter Berlin only made one other full length film. It was called, That Boy.

He more or less vanished from public view after these two films, making money by selling snaps of himself (like any good narcissist, Berlin, an accomplished photographer, was most enamored of one subject; himself). Recently a documentary was made entitled, That Man: Peter Berlin where we discover a now 60-something-year-old Peter Berlin, still dressed in skin-tight outfits, living in a small apartment surrounded by hundreds of photos of himself; much like Norma Desmond of Sunset Blvd.

When I saw the documentary all I could think was, “How could he breathe in that house full of Peter Berlins? Around every corner, Peter Berlins...more Peter Berlins...and still more Peter Berlins?”

And then I realized that a narcissist needs to be reminded of his glory days, it’s like oxygen for that type.

 

Comments, suggestions, compliments, criticism? You can write to Addison at support@cruisingforsex.com.

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