You Be the Judge: A Drag Queen Knife Fight in Swinging London
The Pre-Woke Truth About Gays in the Movies 1960-1990
Night, After Night, After Night… (1969; Lindsay Shonteff)
The UKs Sexual Offenses Act of 1967 decriminalized private sex acts between adult men, creating what was probably a volatile situation between lawmakers and mental health professionals whose beliefs and values clashed. Released two years later, Night, After Night, After Night…, seems to address that volatility by bashing the judicial system as hypocritical and outmoded, while also suggesting mental illness is a trait of homosexuality—or at least that when a homo breaks down he does it in grand style.
A slasher killer claims female victims in swinging, promiscuous London. The suspects include a virile young lad whose success with the ladies makes him the unlikely, but main focus of investigation. The actual slime are a hypocrite judge who passes harsh sentences on youthful offenders and his creepy law clerk who compulsively reads smut magazines in the judge's chambers. Neither are shown capable of overcoming their own self-loathing sexual urges and for one of them that means murdering young women while dressed all in leather.
Night, After Night, After Night… is a standard slasher with the bonus of homosexual malfeasance. We are first meant to question the judge’s sexuality when he ignores his wife’s efforts to appeal to him. We are given more to ponder when he makes a quick decision to dress in drag to evade the police. We know his condition is slipping by the way he has applied his lipstick. And too bad for a gang of taunting men who happen upon the bewigged judge dressed in the feminine, but sensible ladies pant suit he chose to escape in. But for the viewer, let’s just say that five or six men against one unhinged knife wielding drag queen in polyester is no match. But the open air knife fight quickly leads to a very pitiful psychotic break that conveniently interconnects homosexuality to mental illness. Does the sight of a whimpering drag queen judge mock a system for its recent ruling or does it say that there’s nothing within the system that isn’t corrupted?
Sensible pantsuit lol 😂