The warrior: a tribute
By Camper English

LONG BEFORE THE future homosexual begins, in his adolescence, to understand his wires have been crossed, the inklings of his orientation manifest themselves in the strangest ways. He may spend his time redecorating, rather than racing, his Tonka trucks. He may have the hots for Batgirl's fabulous purple-and-yellow outfit, as opposed to Batgirl herself. He may excel at Ms. Pac-Man while feeling that her male counterpart is cold and standoffish and bears an unpleasant resemblance to his father. He may spend his summer afternoons inside – forgoing frolicsome pursuits like playing "smear the queer" with the neighbor children and opting instead to watch endless hours of television. And if the year happens to be 1980 or thereabouts, he may find himself wishing he could escape into the fantasy realm of the warrior movies he so enjoys.

Only now, after growing up and coming out, can he finally understand the thoughts percolating in his little proto-homo mind all those years spent curled up alone with the cable. Only now can he retrace those thoughts and, with educated hindsight and a grown man's hormones, write this tribute to the homoerotic warrior movies of the early '80s.

Flash Gordon (1980) How many other movies are so packed with pumped studs that you could be blind and they'd still make you horny? To start with, there was all-American Flash Gordon, dark, mysterious, and studly Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin, and bitchy daddy Ming the Merciless. Then there was the horde of flying hawk men – basically bears with wings who ran around kicking ass (unlike gay bears in modern-day San Francisco, who are more likely to run your I.T. department and do something else entirely to your ass). We were treated to Flash in hot pants, a macho challenge that involved fisting holes in a rock to see who came out clean, and more outfit changes than in Barbarella. And the whole show was accompanied by a melodramatic soundtrack courtesy of Queen – so basically, even if you weren't gay when the opening credits came on, you were by the time Ming got penetrated by a giant rocket ship near the end of the film.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) Mel Gibson was actually cute in this movie, though he's been getting steadily uglier ever since. But that's not what made this film such a turn-on. (Nor was it the blond couple who wore all white and were clearly the inspiration for Pokémon's Team Rocket.) What made this desert-set movie so red hot were the two lead bad barbarians. One wore a metal hockey mask, a leather harness, and studded underpants. The other sported a red Mohawk, football shoulder pads, platform boots, and assless leather chaps. They were so mean and sexy you wanted them to tie up Gibson and give him the spanking he so rightly deserved. This couple was last seen at the Folsom Street Fair holding hands and dancing to country-and-western music.

The Beastmaster (1982) Marc "If you can see what I hear" Singer starred in this one as the man who talked to animals and saved humanity from evil, or kept a child from getting sacrificed, or got revenge for the death of his parents, or something like that. Seriously, whatever, because the Beastmaster had a body the circuit boys would kill for and preferred to wear only a loincloth. They were all, "Blah blah blah," and then the Beastmaster would run around and be sexy. The movie played on HBO about once every three hours, and 1982 passed very, very quickly.

Krull (1983) Gone unappreciated for 20 years, this film will soon be rediscovered because body hair is back in style. Bearded, fuzzy-chested Ken Marshall played a guy forced into an arranged marriage whose bride got kidnapped about 10 seconds after the nuptials. Rather than keep the gifts and continue to live the bachelor lifestyle, as some less-scrupulous people might have, he set out on a great quest to find the Black Fortress, save the world, and preserve the sanctity of marriage by rescuing his bride. He accomplished all this while wearing some pre-Spandex tights and sometimes taking off his shirt. He also used a magical giant throwing star as a weapon that, when re-created at home using your mother's silverware, will not spin around like a boomerang and come back to you when you throw it into the woods behind your house.

Conan the Destroyer (1984) It was so not about governor-to-be Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also starred in The Terminator the same year. It was about Amazon-like warrior Grace Jones wearing sexy-but-weird outfits, getting down on all fours, freaking the fuck out, and kicking the ass of anyone who came near her – a scenario that, rumor has it, she re-created on the dance floor of the Endup in the early '90s. A decade earlier, a confused boy might have thought he wanted to date her, only to realize at a certain point that he just wanted to be that glam and hang out in discos. Sometimes fantasies do come true.