Gee !  Two Heads Really Are Better Than One !

John Travis was already an estimable gay porn film-making force before anyone even knew his name, shooting uncredited loops for companies like Trophy and Brentwood in the very early '80s  along with his back then equally anonymous buddy Matt Sterling  which were repackaged for the video age in thematically linked compilations like TRUCK STOP and DON'T FIGHT IT, KID. It wasn't until 1986's phenomenally popular Jeff Stryker vehicle POWERTOOL (a huge sales and rental hit for over 2 decades now and regarded by many genre critics as the hottest homo hardcore epic of all time) that he began receiving the proper accolades for his years of toiling in the trenches. While both would go their separate ways with great success, Travis and Sterling would occasionally pop up in a production capacity on each other's projects and actually collaborated as creators of the unsung gem that is the provocatively titled TWO HANDFULS, based on allegedly true life experiences from the letters page of First Hand magazine.

Coverboy Brian Maxon had just made a splash in Sterling's athletics-themed SIZING UP and was carving a niche for himself as an aggressively "straight" performer in what was unfortunately to become a disheartening habit of the genre as it was about to enter the HIV+ era with the (erroneous) message to be read between the lines was that diminished sexual involvement equaled reduced chance of infection. When his girlfriend (starlet Melissa Melendez, "Barbara, the Lobster Woman" from Alex De Renzy's DR. PENETRATION, proclaiming none too convincingly that "she's not that kind of girl") refuses to put out, horny Brian turns to the boy next door (delectable Tom Littlewolf from Mark Reynolds' BEST FRIENDS) for a bit of oral relief, trading him in for pliant pool boy Jerry Dunne when he won't give up his back-door cherry. Superstar in the making Mike Henson (who was to hit a career high playing Joey Stefano's Prince Charming in Jerry Douglas' splendid MORE OF A MAN) proves a far more sympathetic screen presence, engaging in a scalding porn theater threesome with underrated slut puppy Kevin Wiles (from the legendary Chad Douglas massage sequence in Bill Higgins' classic BIG GUNS) and blonde hunk Steve Wright (also in Sterling's INCH BY INCH). Established crowd pleaser Michael Gere (most memorable in Higgins' near perfect PIZZA BOY), his face permanently fixed in some sort of pouting sneer (sneering pout ?), works the video arcade, tempting out of town cowboy Bill Bix  whose face we never really see due to a carefully positioned Stetson  with a none too subtle display of his fleshy wares. More obscured faces during the next segment when a reader describes his attempts at getting various jocks to strip and stroke off for his viewing delight. All these performers are properly credited (I guess the co-creators would be sticklers for this sort of thing by now) but Nordic hunk Doug Jensen and the massive ejaculation of "Matt Ramsey" a/k/a Peter North are hard to miss. Maxon returns to soften his image somewhat by making love to the wonderfully accommodating Henson, spending a surprising amount of time licking Mike's meat through his briefs ! Not such a straight arrow, after all ! Image problems aside (and was there ever a more image-conscious decade than the '80s ?), this joint venture stands as one of the hottest as well as most carefully crafted concoc(k)tions of the period. It's also a virtual who's who of then gay porn alumni on both sides of the camera with people like John Summers, Tim Lowe and Paul Norman contributing to the overall smoothness of the production. Set-ups may seem hackneyed by now (the buddy in need when his girl won't put out ? the pool boy ? the porno palace ? puh-leeze !) but this film provides ample proof that even the most tired of jokes can still get audiences roaring when told by a skilled comedian.

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Two Handfuls

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