This Movie did not work for me!!

There's also a line somewhere when someone remarks, without any shred of irony: "Well, if he [Tom] prefers the company of woman, that's his problem."

I think the film does a pretty good job of portraying how twisted and distorted the 1950s idea of masculinity actually was. In the original play, there's a really tense scene in which Laura confronts Bill about his latent homosexuality. Obviously that scene never made it on screen. The Film International writer Christopher Sharret gets it right, I think:

The men of Chilton have difficulties even associating with women, despite braggadocio. The beach party scene is most instructive, as Bill smirks that it’s okay for Tom to stay on the other side (“if he prefers the company of women, that’s his problem”). The idea of asserting masculinity, of showing skills at sports and the like, is associated with contempt for the female. A bunch of the “regular guys” (a term that recurs in the film) crowd into Tom’s room to get a glimpse of women passing by the residence. We don’t see them, but the point is clear: women are a subject for voyeurism, for bragging and belittlement, but not for interaction. As the boys shove their way into the room, Tom is pushed onto his bed and punched about, one boy (Tom McLaughlin, the obnoxious actor of Billy Jack fame) squirting shaving cream onto a photo of Tom’s “old man” (the moment is complicated—the act of minor vandalism is also an assault on the patriarch via an ejaculatory gesture, and an ejaculation as one boy faces another).


The concept of “regular guys” is repeated often, reminding one that these guys are hardly regular, according to the standards they accept. The phrase recurs in the language of Tom’s father Herb, played by Edward Andrews, notable in film history for his snotty, vaguely sinister and effete qualities that typecast him as a nosey fake (he played, for example, George Babbitt in Elmer Gantry). While he is not one of Hollywood’s “evil *beep* he conveyed a sense of the feminine in domesticated males; this sense in turn produces an aspect of roiling resentment, something central to Herb’s relationship to Tom and former classmate Bill. Herb is upset that Tom isn’t aggressive on the tennis court, that his fans are a small group of “fairies,” and, amazingly (to our eyes today) that Tom’s hair is too long. Since the rise of the 50s rock stars, long hair on men became an obsession of the American middle class, with its connotation of femininity, “white trash,” and a general refusal to conform. Herb wants Tom to get a “crew cut,” that military-style hairdo of the postwar years that enjoyed a long run (and has, sadly, returned). This haircut would make Tom one of the “regular guys.” Tom avoids the haircut, and other helpful hints from his father, most of which point to Herb’s defensiveness. When Herb runs into his old pal Bill Reynolds, the two engage in some joshing over the good old days at Chilton. Although the men share a laugh about Herb’s paunch vs. Bill’s hard-body, overcompensated physique, the joke barely masks an aura of tension. It is clear that Herb wants Tom to be his ego ideal, a recreation of himself minus his own defensive, self-conscious qualities (masking that which he is afraid to express) which he projects onto Tom, and the topic nervously shunts aside the bonhomie enjoyed by Bill and Herb. As Bill tells Herb that his son is an “off horse,” Laura listens from the kitchen. In one of many remarkable compositions, we see the two men through the kitchen window as Laura stands in the foreground, the yellow curtains on the window extending the yellow of her dress. The visuals complement the drama: Laura tries to temper the men, even as she is overwhelmed by them.