TOUGH GUYS is a stunner.

Narrated by, and starring a young and very buff Eric Ryan, he takes us on an underground tour of Manhattan; the kind I don't think you can find in the local tourist guides.

The first 'leg' of the tour is a janitor named Ray, who just happens to walk in on a "suit" in one of the offices he's cleaning. The businessman is busy with a nasty J/O buddy on the other end of the line for a little after-work, one-handed quickie. In the style that Gage is now renown for, the mystery manhandler's low, breathy dirty talk becomes the aural backdrop for a desktop dick-tation between the suit and the sweeper. The phone buddies end up getting their nut and then some, but the hunky janitor is left out.

Cut to a ritzy uptown condo, decked out in the latest Tom of Finland-style artwork, as Eric Ryan muses about what it must be like to live in one of these places. He fantasizes he's the young manservant of a studly daddy type. The anal and oral work in this segment are outstanding, and it's too shabby in the rest of the film. In Tough Guys, you can see the unique way that Joe Gage gets into shooting man-to-man sex as kind of the ultimate communion between two men; the ultimate expression of mutual masculine admiration, affection and worship. He lovingly lenses every drop of sweat and every glob of jizz with a fascination that crosses the border into flat-out obsession. You just GOTTA see this video!

A little jumpy in places, a little faded, and with obviously appropriated music. But Tough Guys can still run rings around some of the releases just put out the day before yesterday. I don't know if all the old movies that Gage did for Pm Productions will hold up this well, but I've got my fingers crossed and my pump primed hoping that the answer is an absolute "FUCK, yeah!"

DVD Extras: remastered DVD