Rock Hudson's Home Movies (1992)

People are voting emotionally.

Load of rubbish!!

best movie i've ever seen.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Writer-director Mark Rappaport and actor-narrator Eric Farr lead us through selected clips of actor Rock Hudson's movies from the 1950s, '60s and '70s, highlighting the subtext in the dialogue passages with gay conjecture. An amusing idea, but not enough research was done. For instance, there's far too much coverage of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day-Tony Randall comedies--what about 1965's "Strange Bedfellows", which had some dandy lines rife with innuendo? There's some amusing footage of an unnamed movie where Burl Ives (in a bath towel) acts like Hudson's jealous lover (it was 1962's "The Spiral Road"), and the film-ballet of scenes involving Hudson removing his shirt or putting on his pants (usually in front of other men) is funny. Unfortunately, the film clips appear to be third-generation, VHS-recorded sequences that look even worse when they're freeze-framed for emphasis, and Farr's wilted delivery doesn't bring out Rappaport's intended sting. *1/2 from ****

Rock Hudson's Home Movies (1992) ** (out of 4)Director Mark Rappaport has made some rather unique documentaries in his time. He basically takes a subject and twists and turns everything in order to fit whatever story he wants to tell. In this movie he plays the narrator, a person acting as if they're Rock Hudson, as the actor comes out and admits he's gay. There's no question that this documentary is going to upset many people and it's easy to see why. For starters, it's common knowledge now that Hudson died of AIDS and was gay. This documentary basically takes clips from all of Hudson's movies and twists the dialogue to make it seem that there were "clues" to this in all of his movies.I will admit that this is a rather well-made film and there's no question that the director is a talented filmmaker who knows how to edit and twist things in order to get what story he is going for. This film is a tad bit silly on one hand because it takes famous movies and takes things so out of context that it's hard to take it too serious. At the same time, twisting the movie's dialogue into fitting some other agenda is what's going to make people most upset.ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES isn't a complete success and as I said, I'm sure many will feel it cross the lines. What lines those are will be up to the viewer.

This amateurish documentary is a hodge podge of Rock Hudson's life and films cruelly twisting context and clips to suit the tedious narration. Some weird person pretends to be Rock Hudson speaking from the grave and then misuses the clips sought to prove whatever it is the narration has him speak. It is an awful documentary with creepy a host and a mean spiritedness about it all. The misuse of clips is particularly annoying. The terrible quality of the clips makes it worse. This doco is a disgrace. The truly galling thing one is left with is the shoddiness of the source materials and the overall tone of sleaziness is appalling.

"Rock Hudson's Home Movies" is a compilation of film clips by Mark Rappaport that shows many of the gay references and innuendos in Hudson's films. Rappaport is the voice of Rock. It's a snide narration; he doesn't sound like Hudson, and he beats us over the head with the obvious.The film clips are very enjoyable. In fact, however, you can go through the career of just about any actor and pull these sorts of clips. It's true that because people like Douglas Sirk and Ross Hunter knew about Hudson's sexuality, however, there are probably more in-jokes in Hudson's films.An actor's screen image and an actor's true personality and sexual proclivities are completely different things. Hudson projected the heroic looks and physique of a movie star, and what he got were movie star romantic leading man roles. If he'd looked like Wally Cox, the film clips would be quite different. Straight actors have played gay roles, and gay or bisexual actors have played straight roles for years. It's called acting. Hudson lived as he wanted in his private life, and by all accounts, enjoyed himself. The sad thing is that he had to go through a sham marriage and put forward something different than he was for the fan magazines. That was the price of fame when he was a star. He paid it.