This an early '90s film that presents gay sexuality as completely acceptable, even something to be celebrated, one that places monogamy, open relationships and anonymous sex on equal ground.Ĭhoosing Coil to soundtrack it was a canny move. There's something gut-wrenchingly emotional about Gay Men's Guide To Safer Sex, particularly for any gay kid who grew up under hectoring morality and judgmental sex education. This music is mighty impressive on its own, but watching the film really completes it. Both are trips down a rabbit hole of bobbing beats and far-away melodies. Another version, "Omlagus Garfungiloops," features a matronly voice asking, "Have you been exploding frogs again?" The bongo-driven "Nasa-Arab 2" is a shorter, looser version of an 11-minute live performance also reissued here. "Exploding Frogs" is a slow, lurking groove that sounds like a recording from some smoky jazz club, complete with meandering saxophone. The other songs have an even more lascivious mood, appropriate for scenes involving leather and restraints. With Johnson's wailing voice and gorgeous synth melodies, "Theme From Gay Men's Guide To Safer Sex" predicts the sound of Moby's massive Play, the kind of slippery smooth downtempo house track that might have been a mainstream hit if it were released in a different context. The vocal moans and tunneling bassline add a seedy undercurrent-this is Coil, after all-while the longer version has a striking Robert Johnson sample playing throughout that only heightens the drama. With its sinuous groove and damp textures, it's somewhere between New Age-y porn soundtrack and the kind of psychedelic dance music groups like Orbital and Primal Scream were releasing at the time. "Theme From Gay Men's Guide To Safer Sex" feels like a lost anthem. The music happens to be some of the best in Coil's vast catalogue. But where Blue is tragic, Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex is sensual, alluring, even hopeful. Around this time they also composed the music for Derek Jarman's Blue, which chronicled the director's decline into blindness and declining health from AIDS. They had just released their best album, 1991's Love's Secret Domain, which combined their love of the occult and gay subculture with a newfound taste for UK acid house and ambient techno.
But maybe the most curious detail about Gay Men's Guide To Safer Sex is that it was soundtracked by Coil.Ĭoil, at this point comprising John Balance and Peter Christopherson, were working at peak performance in 1992.
Somewhere between pornography and public service announcement, it was an important movie that became one of the first concrete resources about effective HIV treatment when it was re-cut, with fewer sex scenes, in 1997. Slang terms are used without hesitation, fetish play is encouraged and all kinds of safe sex acts are shown in graphic detail. The film itself is striking and unusually steamy for an educational effort.
The idea was noble and nearly unprecedented: to speak to gay men about sexual health and HIV in a respectful way, teaching them how to have safer sex without demonizing sex or promiscuity.
Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex is a 1992 educational film produced by the AIDS charity Terrence Higgins Trust.