Forty Deuce (1982) User Reviews (7)

Interesting but a failure

[preppy-3 · 5/10 · 13 April 2005]

Adaptation of a play.

A pre-stardom Kevin Bacon plays a sleazy, grimy, gay prostitute. He offers an older trick (Orson Bean) a young gay man. The problem is the kid dies and Bean is on the way. What to do?

I never saw the play but it can't be as dull as this. The acting here is good--Bacon looks terrible (as he should) and Bean tears the scenery, and the plot is interesting...but this is just boring! People just stand around and talk, talk, talk endlessly. I looked at my watch more than once. And seeing the nude, dead body of a young kid constantly during the second act is disturbing.

Director Paul Morrissey does try different things to liven this up. There's a break in between where the two acts took place on stage (the screen stayed black for a minute or two) and the last section is shot in split screen. It's interesting but Morrissey doesn't seem to know how to USE split screen (like Brian DePalma does) and it ends up not adding anything to the movie. However there is one very funny sequence when the hustlers argue on how to use the NYC subway.

It's too bad the script didn't match up with the acting. Worth seeing to see Bacon play a totally amoral, sleazy hustler.

Also Esai Morales (!!!) is the cast. This is probably his first film.

The Early 1980's Artistic Masterpiece That Never Was

[project717-629-119383 · 1/10 · 6 October 2021]

This is a particularly painful viewing experience, but not for the reasons you may think. Alan Bowne, who passed away from AIDS, was one of the most astonishingly gifted and promising young playwrights at the dawn of the 1980's, a far more dangerous and important theatrical voice than either Tony Kushner ("Angels In America") or Jonathan Larson ("Rent"). As a stage play, this became an overnight sensation Off-Off Broadway in 1981 at The Perry Street Theatre, directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael Cristofer ("The Shadow Box") with a much more compelling and powerfully charismatic cast of actors, causing stunned audiences to reel from what they were seeing. Less about junkie teenage gay male hustlers and their Times Square pimp, and more about the unconscious desperation for any momentary or authentic recognition of sentient human feeling under the relentless oppression of free enterprise, The New York Times raved about the play and the production, describing the highly stylized dialogue as "profanity so potently over-the-top as to border on a kind of heightened and epic Shakespearean poetry". Celebrities and producers started flocking to the sold-out SRO performances; the word-of-mouth was so intense that a media frenzy started to build and the show was on it's way to Off-Broadway, and then hopefully a full-scale Broadway production along the lines of Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths". It was about to set the New York theatre world on fire, with standing ovations happening every night. Instead, it's legacy became this: a deservedly ignored and horrid little film, a medium that it didn't fit into or need, arranged by disgustingly idiotic and greedy backers that had no business going anywhere near something so special; it demanded only the very greatest and most insightful of talents involved, which never came to pass due to individuals who had no grasp of it's finer sociological implications and had no understanding of it's dark and prescient political power. It remains to this day one of the saddest examples of a potential theatrical masterpiece turned into forgettable Z-grade movie trash by dim-witted philistines only interested in catering to the basest voyeurism and titillation.

Sleazy nostalgia

[Falconeer · 7/10 · 2 January 2014]

No film captures New York's grimy 42nd street of the 1980's quite as effectively as Paul Morrisey's "Forty Deuce." This is an hypnotically sleazy tale of New York street hustlers trying to make some cash off of the body of a dead 12 year old kid in a dismal motel room. Anyone who thinks actor Kevin Bacon could only play squeaky clean roles in the 80's, would really be shocked by his believable portrayal of a slimy, junkie male prostitute. He's got down the body language so perfectly, the twitching and scratching, the nodding out etc. This atmospheric film also features some of the dirtiest, raunchiest dialog I have ever heard. The main reason to seek this film out is, of course, for the rare footage of a New York that no longer exists. Prostitutes and drug dealers, lined up around the Port Authority Bus station, dark, seedy hustler bars, and the great nostalgia factor. I believe this is the first screen appearance of Kevin Bacon, and also a young Esai Morales, who later played Sean Penn's arch rival in the classic 'JD' film "Bad Boys." Morales is very believable as a Times Square street rat. This title is very rare and it will take a lot of effort to track it down. It was only released on VHS, and only in France! There has never been any other official release of this one. It's quite fascinating stuff though, this super low budget art-house film must have some cult status. Fans of Warhol director Paul Morrissey's films like "Trash," and "Mixed Blood" will love this crazy movie. He even uses his split screen technique that was so effective in "Chelsea Girls." "Forty Deuce" is one film that needs to be made available again. It serves as a time capsule, an historic record of New York's 'Golden Days' of porn theaters and boom boxes.

disappointing movie.. especially for a Kevin Bacon movie

[cdicenso · 27 July 2004]

This movie was the most boring movie I have ever seen, Kevin Bacon played his character very well, although this movie was not one that I would have thought he would have ever been in. This is not a typical Kevin Bacon movie and it is very poorly made, uses split screen shots and completely failed to capture my attention, I turned the movie off half way through and for a Bacon fan who owns EVERY movie he is in and loves him to death, that proves how crappy the movie really was. If I had to sum this movie up in one word, that word would be:BORING!

Half the time you can't understand what is being said by anyone in it, it is very boring and I would not recommend it to anyone. The only thing this movie is good for is holding up the end of your movie collection or a good cure for insomnia!

Wanna see the seedy part of NEW YORK?

[czar-10 · 8/10 · 12 October 2000]

Forty-Deuce is about street hustling, dope pushin, addicts that live in and around the notorious 42 st. Area in N.Y. during the early 80's when it was the most sleaziest. Anyone mourning the demise of the grimy 42nd st. will want to check out this ragged slice-of-lowlife directed by the one and only Paul Morrissey. This movie was based on the off broadway play by Alan Bowne. Kevin Bacon who was in the play, recreates his Obie winning role of Rickey, A greasy haired, dealer/junkie who enjoys passing out in the Port Authority mens room. When he's not nodding off, his mouth doesn't stop, with some of the raunchiest, racist dialogue imaginable. Events turn heavy when a naked 12 year old runaway turns up in a hotel room bed, and Rickey comes up with idiotic plan to make a few extra bucks. He convinces a wealthy john that he accidentally killed the kid (the john played magnificantly by Orson Bean). The second half of the Film is the most interesting when the screen splits in two to show the multiple action taking place in the cramped hotel room for the grand finale. This film contains several solid performances, colorful monologues, a believable stench of the city, and warholesque experimental shooting makes this one of Morrissey's memorable films ever.

Brilliant desperation amid sleaze and pregentrification.

[naphiah · 10/10 · 4 February 2020]

I can't say enough about this surprising movie. Oddly, my family stays at a hotel in New York more or less exactly where the action occurs.

Esai Morales, Kevin Bacon and Harris Laskawy are unbelievably in character, oh, Mr Orson Bean is so believable I forgot he was acting. Plus there are some other wonderful actors I wish I knew more of.

See this if you are a fan of great acting, great writing, New York City, avant garde, emotional inspiration or you just like being alive.