Fortune and Men’s Eyes

Dir. Harvey Hart

Canada 1971 | Colour | 102 mins | Drama | Hollywood Classics

Cast: Wendell Burton, Michael Greer, Zooey Hall, Danny Freedman

Made the year after Friedkin’s Boys in the Band, Fortune is a wrist-slasher of a prison drama about the power struggles of a group of gay men – and straight men wanting gay sex. Bleak, and at times shockingly explicit (gang rape, suicide, more gang rape), this deserves to be reappraised as an intriguing social document of its time. Worth seeing for Michael Greer’s performance alone – his ‘Queenie’ could easily be the bastard child of Rupert Everett and Coronation Street’s Raquel. What would Ronnie Barker have thought?

Available on: 35mm