Saturday Night at the Baths

There are two versions of this movie on DVD, both released by Water Bearer Films, but they are very different. Get the SECOND version! Amazon in its bizarre drive toward consolidation lumps together reviews for the two DVDs. To be absolutely sure:*BUY* THIS DVD: Saturday Night at the Baths-Director's Cut! It has a guy's torso in a white towel on the cover, with the title like a blue bumper sticker over his crotch.*DO NOT BUY* THIS DVD: Saturday Night at the Baths! It has a murky, black and pink cover with facing profiles and the title between them in the center.The first was a chopped-up version released without the director's participation in 2006. Later an uncut version of the movie was found in the director's files and released as "director's cut" on a new DVD in 2008. The second DVD not only is a cleaner copy with better video and audio, but it includes several minutes of footage missing from the first DVD.Most important **BY FAR** is a five-minute love scene between Scotti and Michael that not only balances the earlier scene between Michael and Tracey but blows it clean out of the water. The scene with Tracey is a sex scene; the scene with Scotti is a love scene, infinitely more sensual, passionate, romantic and erotic than the mechanical humping with Tracey. The gay love scene alone kills forever the criticism that this movie is worth watching only for its documenting of a life and a world long gone. It qualifies this as a very good movie in its own right and one of the sexiest gay moves of that or any era.The new DVD also includes an extensive, fantastic making-of interview with the director David Buckley and a wide-ranging interview with Steve Ostrow, owner of the Baths - both filmed recently - which were not on the first DVD; and a few extra seconds of the magical Jane Olivor performance of "Pretty Girl" and of the fabulous Judy impersonator lost from the first DVD.Don't bother renting and certainly don't buy the butchered 2006 DVD with two pink profiles on a black cover; BUY the 2008 director's cut DVD with the guy in the towel. You won't regret it.

This is by no means a good movie. The acting is mostly poor, the dialogue is often corny and the music scoring is just plain bad. However, it IS a look back at a brief moment in history when LGBT awareness and "gay liberation" were just beginning. When a night at the baths meant crowded halls, good fun and no diseases a shot of penicillin couldn't cure.

great movie? ... no ... but a piece of gay history and for that it's worth a watch. Considering the time this came out - there wasn't much out there in the way of positive gay themed movies and this one was one of the few that offered a view of the gay lifestyle from that era. It's a part of our history and for that alone it's worth a watch. Pre AIDS.

When I was living is Sydney, Australia, I met my friend Steve Ostrow, who once told me all about his life in NYC and of the Continental Baths he ran, the famous celebrities who had their beginnings there and of the scandals that took place in the good ol' bad ol' days of sex in the 70's.At the time I heard his stories, I was young and I found them hard to imagine. It all seemed like a good pitch for the play and movie "The Ritz", which he told me was actually based on the Continental Baths.Two decades later, with the advent of the internet, Amazon.com and DVDs, I now have the pleasure of actually watching this movie and seeing it as it all happened so long ago.I was thrilled to relive those heady, Bohemian, sexy, free, Studio 54 days, filled with fashion, perfume, sex, drugs and Disco, when big cities were populated with the jetset, the young, hip and the beautiful.Younger, modern audiences may not be able to fully appreciate the nuances of this wonderfully nostalgic memoir, but older audiences who lived through the 70's will appreciate this moment in our social history.I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed 'The Ritz', '54', 'The last Days of Disco' and films set in that era.Relive your youth!

Good movie

I was truly disappointed with the totally unbelievable ending of this movie. I wish that they would have explored the relationship between the two male characters more. I guess I have to remember that this was made in the 1970's, which was a time that homosexuality was rarely displayed on the movie screen.

The Blu-ray is awesome. Plus, it’s the full length version. Purchased a version of this film years ago that was all chopped (edited) up and spoiled the experience. Good story, good sense of nostalgia, and good quality Blu-ray. Worth every penny paid for.

I guess the best thing you can say about this film is that it gives the audience a sense of what gay life must have been like prior to the aids epedemic.The acting is not very good, the editing is terrible, the film quality is poor and the sound is bad.The best aspect of the film is the feature debut of Jane Olivor who sings a great rendition of "Pretty Girl" It is great to see her in performance from her early days in the business. Sometimes, however, the movement of her mouth and the sound of the film do not match.I also enjoyed the drag show with Diana Ross and Judy Garland.All in all, not a great movie, but its less than 90 minutes long so its worth a viewing....