I think the worst mainstream gay film out there was that awful Al Pacino piece of garbage from the 1970s whose name escapes me.
That was "Cruising." I've never seen it, but I remember people telling me how negative it was.
I saw "Cruising" some while ago, on cable television, and do agree with the general consensus that it is disturbingly homophobic. This has less to do with the fact that the story involves a gay male serial killer than how Al Pacino's character evolves in the course of the tale. Pacino acts the role with conviction, but the characters' motivations are muddled and the specifically gay characters are depicted with little sympathy or understanding.
While on this topic, I wish to cite three other titles not yet mentioned here:
--"Der Tod der Maria Malibran" ("The Death of Maria Malibran"), a 1972 production for West German television, directed by Werner Schroeter and starring one of cinema's greatest actresses, Magdalena Montezuma, in the title role. This largely non-narrative experimental feature is ostensibly the story of the legendary opera singer Maria Malibran (1808-1836), but conveyed in such a refracted, fantastic way as to render any biographical verisimilitude inscrutable outside the specialist's purview. What Schroeter is really interested in here is evoking the world and aura of female performers, and specifically the special hold these ladies have long held over the imaginations of gay men. Although almost everyone in the film is a woman or a man playing a woman, this is one of the gayest films I have ever seen. It's also a masterpiece, and one of my favorite movies.
--"Loads" (1985), directed by Curt McDowell. This is the greatest film I have seen to date from the late McDowell, who was an independent filmmaker based in San Francisco. A powerful, experimental documentary of the artist as a sexual being, rawly exposing his hunger for physical intimacy with men. A masterwork of erotic film.
--"Beau travail" (1999), directed by Claire Denis. A loose adaptation of Herman Melville's novella 'Billy Budd', with the action transposed to the modern French Foreign Legion and Djibouti as the setting. This stands with "Brokeback Mountain" as one of the most hauntingly beautiful homoerotic films I have seen. The story shows how repressed homosexual desire can poison and destroy the lives of men. Denis Lavant, here playing the equivalent of Melville's Claggart, delivers a superb performance, and contributes unforgettably to making the film's closing moments both harrowing and enthralling at once.
Best regards,
Scott