“Ooh yeah baby, you look so sexy with that piece of leather on.” This hook line, from the cheeky 80s-style theme song of Leather Jacket Love Story, establishes the tacky tone of the film. Shot in grainy black and white, Leather Jacket Love Story begins with nude boys hanging around a swimming pool, while a voice-over recites bad poetry – “I open my heart, from the noble mountains to the churning oceans, love does not appear” – a homoerotic scene very reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boys “Being Boring” music video directed by Bruce Weber. Yet don’t be fooled. The tackiness of the scene is acknowledged by the voice-over: “I’m bored and as you can hear, my poetry is going nowhere.” What subsequently evolves is actually a very entertaining and convincing romantic comedy, a kind of gay, self-aware Pretty Woman. But this time it’s not the rich businessman Richard Gere who takes his hooker Julia Roberts to the opera, but a hunky carpenter who lets his sensitive teenage poet boyfriend get his nipple pierced at a leather party.

Kyle (Sean Tataryn) is an eighteen-year-old gay guy “out since puberty” who is bored by the gay life style of West Hollywood. To fulfill his poetic aspirations, he decides to move to the gay-rustic Silver Lake district in hope to find inspiration. As he leaves, his mom gives her last advice: “Don’t let those tops push you around… eh unless you want them to,” to which his grandma adds: “And be sure to use those condoms.” But Kyle is no longer looking for cheap sex. He longs for true love, an experience he hopes will spark some great new poetry. He finds the Silver Lake Café, frequented by pretentious poets, their even more pretentious lovers, and a group of drag queens who dream about becoming more famous than “that trashy slut” Madonna. In comes Mike (Christopher Bradley), a macho thirty-something carpenter who immediately sees in Kyle an appetizing “chicken special” and seduces him. After a night of hot sex, both Kyle and Mike realize that they mean more to each other than just a one-night-stand good fuck. Their dilemmas trigger the film’s main plot. Can a love between a macho biker and a sensitive poet really last? Will Kyle be able to convert Mike to monogamy? And most significantly, will Mike prove to be the true love, the muse that will inspire Kyle to write a great poem?

Such a romantic love story is not typical for director David DeCoteau, who is best known for his large oeuvre of low budget horror movies with titles like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Curse of the Puppet Master, and Voodoo Academy. With Leather Jacket Love Story, he has made a more personal (and perhaps more honest) film, yet without losing the B-movie quality of his other work. Although the plot follows the predictable conventions of the Hollywood romantic comedy, DeCoteau presents his gay fairytale with a queer independent tongue in cheek. Romantic scenes alternate with hilarious over-the-top scenes such as the Silver Lake drag queens beating up a group of gay bashers, an old doctor explaining the risks of nipple piercing, and Kyle having group sex at a seedy night club. This continuously shifting from campy comedy to escapist romance makes it almost impossible to figure out what we are actually watching: a cheesy B-movie gay romance or its very clever and funny parody? Leather Jacket Love Story successfully works in both ways, enabling us to get sucked into gay romance, while simultaneously reminding us that we are being duped.

This doubleness also comes forward in the rather explicit sex scenes that are used to show Kyle and Mike’s blossoming romance. Their first night of sex is presented in a very funny montage sequence, accompanied by a soundtrack that seems to come straight out of Disney’s Herbie Goes Bananas. In this way, the scene emphasizes the rituals of a one-night-stand rather than exposing gay lust. The second time they have sex, Mike wants to handcuff Kyle, as he believes that conventional sex is boring. Kyle refuses, wondering out loud how Mike can be bored already as they only had sex once before. Subsequently, Kyle seduces Mike into a long slow fuck. This time, the scene is shot in real time, without rapid montage and music, and slowly dissolves into the morning after, introduced by the sounds of a romantic piano. The radically opposing ways in which these two sex scenes are presented effectively shows that Kyle and Mike are no longer just having sex… they are making love. Yet, the parodic way in which lust and romance are opposed, with literally so much tongue in cheek, puts the quotation marks around “making love” – we know it is just as clichéd as Kyle’s poetry, yet we fall for it anyway.

In the end, Leather Jacket Love Story really is a self-aware secret indulgence. David DeCoteau has succeeded in making a gay parody of the Hollywood romantic comedy without losing the manipulating quality that make romantic comedies such feel-good experiences. And if there is to be a queer equivalent to the escapist Hollywood romance, a gay love story that can make you believe that true romance is not a fleeting affair but something that can bring everlasting happiness, even though you know better, then Leather Jacket Love Story is as good as it gets.