Deviate Act Wears Thin

By EMERSON BATDORFF A person's enjoyment of "The Gay Deceivers” will largely depend on how funny he finds the antics of men who walk with a lilt.

'The Gay Deceivers'

A comedy that depends for its laughs largely on how funny you think it is for men to wear women's clothes. Adults. 90 minutes.

Directed by Bruce Kessler. Script by Jerome Wish, Produced by Joe Solomon. Fanfare Films. Donny

Karen

The "gay" of the title refers to homosexuals. The story is of two straight youths who con the Army into believing they are homoMalcolm ............ sexuals and thus evade the draft.

THEY FEEL the Army watching them so they have to put on elaborate queer pretenses to allay official suspicion. Meanwhile their girl friends are confused and the family of one is baffled.

It is a good. small idea but in order to flesh it out to

90 minutes nearly all the old homosexual standard ploys have to be acted out with men mincing around in tight pants and making limp wristed gestures and pursing their lips until I grew

weary.

IN FACT, I grew weary before they ran through their whole repertoire.

The performers do very well, particularly Kevin Coughlin and Larry Casey as the two young men. They play it broadly but perhaps not too broadly considering the fact that this is a comedy in spite of brief gestures toward the tragedy of the situation.

The young men turn out to be marked for life because no one believes them when they eventually level. After all, they had lived together in a mauve bedroom with a round bed in a community in which honosexuals pre-

Elliot Leslie

Craig Dixon

.Kevin Coughlin Brooke Bundy .......Larry Casey Jo Ann Harris. Michael Greer

....................................................Sebastian Brook Jock Starrett

found them unfit. They were dominated. The Army had stuck with the stigma.

The ending is artificial and tacked on merely to bring in a final leer and guffaw. Boxoffice history proves it is unwise to end a broad comedy on a solemn note, such as this was head-

ed for. But the writer in his

desperation forced a P. Henry ending. That's one step beyond an O. Henry ending.