DVD Review: Joe Gage’s “Arcade on Route 9”

If God made gay porn movies, they'd probably look a lot like the ones by Joe Gage. Exquisitely shot, excruciatingly paced, Gage is one of the few porn auteurs who understand that the spaces between money shots are the sexiest part of smut: the smoky glances, the lingering pauses, all the moments most directors (and many viewers) fast forward through to get to the fucking as quickly as possible. Which is one reason why his latest clocks in at over 3 1/2 hours exclusive of bonus material. Think of it as a peep booth version of "Berlin Alexanderpiss".

Read more about Titan's "Arcade on Route 9" after the jump. (Or just skip straight to the end where we tell you it's one of our favorite porn movies ever. There, now you know.)

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Even God probably wouldn't have come up with the premise of "Arcade on Route 9", though, which involves proud papa Alex Brawley taking his son (the suitably puppydog-ish if unfortunately named Matthew Matters) to the titular roadside establishment for his 18th birthday. (And here we were content to go to TGIFriday's with fake I.D.s and order frozen margaritas to celebrate ours.)

While the plot gives Gage plenty of opportunities to indulge his taste for intergenerational pairings—though none, alas for incest fantasy fans, between father and son, or at least not any unmediated by several yards of a third party's digestive tract—there's plenty of twink-on-twink and he-man orgy action going on behind those plywood dividers too. And it's all interspersed with the kind of archetypal dirty talk that is another one of Gage's trademarks. It's not every director who can make a line like "Yeah buddy, sperm it!" sound hot and not like ... uh, something out of a bad porn movie.

In addition to the dialogue and hot daddy/boy fantasy action, "Arcade" has all the usual things we've come to expect to see in a Joe Gage film ever since we loaded purloined copies of his seminal (sorry) movies like "Kansas City Trucking Co." (1976) and "Closed Set" (1980) into our Betamax machines way back when: blue-collar guys, group sex, truck stops, public urinals, locker rooms, glory holes, and—most especially—water sports, though you'll have to pick up the special Director's Extended Cut (is any other version available?) to see those in all their splashy glory. Think piss play isn't your thing? Watch the scene with hung college dude Cam Kurtz and beefy trucker Josh West and see if it doesn't change your mind; the way Gage films those golden streams endlessly hosing down Kurtz's cherubic face in deliciously looped slow motion has to be seen to be appreciated. One might be able to niche an idol in Kurtz' adorably dimpled chin, but it makes a mighty pretty piss sluice too. This isn't your run-of-the-mill fetish smut, people: it's art.

In a perfect world there would be no chapter menu on a Joe Gage DVD so everyone would have to pay attention to the way things unfold; it's as close as porn gets to real time. Then again, there'd be no way to skip right to our favorite scenes (= Kurtz/West and the classic j/o buddy setup with Ken Mack and Fleshbot crush object Cole Ryan, in case you're wondering.) With over 270 minutes of action spread across a two disk set, you're likely to find at least one scene or two you'll want to skip right to as well. Maybe even several.

Either way, "Arcade on Route 9" is one of the best Joe Gage releases from Titan so far, and tops our list of favorite porn films of the year—if not, like, ever. We can't recommend it more strongly than that.

· "Arcade on Route 9" (DVD info @ titanmen.com; register for hardcore preview)
· Joe Gage (joegage.com)