“Him”

It’s a movie that was made, shown and is now utterly lost. There are more of those than you’d imagine, though probably not as many as you’d like. Here’s the synopsis of its history:

The title character of this gay porn flick is none other than the Man from Galilee, whose interest in hanging out with the all-male disciples is supposedly more than mere fraternalism. Parallel to this is a contemporary story of a young gay male who finds new spiritualism by plumbing the gayer aspects of the Gospels for his own notion of loving thy neighbor (particularly if he’s a good looking hunky neighbor).

WHY IS IT LOST? The film would have probably been forgotten had it not been detailed in the 1980 book ‘The Golden Turkey Awards’ by the Medved Brothers. Despite an Internet debate that insists the film never existed, poster art from the movie’s original New York run has turned up to verify it did exist. The film itself, however, is believed to be lost (how the Medveds learned of the film is not clear, though the idea of Michael Medved watching gay porno for "research" is mind-boggling).

Not actually mind-boggling. Policing the culture can be cold and lonely work and someone’s got to do it.

[Update: Here’s an interesting summary of the debate about whether this movie ever existed or whether Michael Medved just made it up. Here’s an open question to Michael Medved. Was this your hoax? Can you tell us now? Did you watch this movie? Or did you make it up?]