Review from the New York Times by Stephen Holden (link requires free registration)

Ron Peck's "Strip Jack Naked" is an anomaly: an autobiographical film whose subject is visually absent except for an occasional fuzzy snapshot or group photo from a yearbook. Mr. Peck's physical remove from a project that includes many shots of other men, some of them naked, backhandedly underscores the themes of his film, which is a chronological narrative of growing up gay in England between 1962, when he was 14 years old, and 1990.

Until 1967, when homosexuality was decriminalized in England, being gay necessitated being invisible to the rest of society. Mr. Peck's physical absence pointedly suggests that his awakening to gay sexuality, culture and politics be taken as representing a collective experience shared by his generation.

Visually, "Strip Jack Naked" is a shadowy, impressionistic work that blends film clips, memorabilia and photographs (Dirk Bogarde's haunted face in "Victim," a film about homosexuality and blackmail, is one of the most memorable) into a moody chronicle that changes in tone from personal memoir into a generalized history of the gay movement. The film has its polemical moments. For Mr. Peck, Britain's war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982 symbolized a chilling of Britain's social climate, as an ethic of "make love not war" gave way to the reverse.

If "Strip Jack Naked" is a film about self-affirmation, it is also permeated with the sadness of the AIDS epidemic. An early sequence remembers a colleague who appeared in "Nighthawks" and who died in 1989. But even amid the catastrophe of AIDS, Mr. Peck finds solace in the gay movement's visibility and solidarity.


Review from Popcorn Q Movies by Mark Finch

Strip Jack Naked starts out as an account of the making of Ron Peck's earlier Nighthawks (one of the world's first widely distributed, gay-made and gay-themed features), and ends as a compelling look back at growing up gay in London. It's a farewell note to England's last three decades - linked with humour, politics, and a penchant for posing pouches.

In 1980, Nighthawks was the original homo promo - a daring, radical drama; today it seems too cautious, even downbeat and a little gloomy. In an engagingly modest voice-over, Peck explains why Nighthawks turned out the way it did. Inevitably, it has a lot to do with the conflicting demands of the gay community, and even more to do with Ron's own story. Some of the most gripping moments come when Peck rips away the fictional tissue from Nighthawks and replays scenes with himself as the film's tortured hero.

With shots of London's spooky suburban streets and a montage of teen lust objects, Peck describes following a senior boy home from school - for no clear reason - only to have the lad repudiate his innocent admirer in public. It's this unusual honesty that marks Strip Jack Naked as not just a lucid account of the responsibilities of a gay filmmaker, but as one of the most honest and abrasive British biographies ever made.


Review from The Onion AV Club by Scott Tobias:

Twelve years after Nighthawks was released and subsequently hailed as a landmark in gay cinema, Peck returned to direct a fascinating companion piece, 1990's Strip Jack Naked. Ostensibly a "making-of" documentary, this loose assembly of outtakes, photographs, sketches, film clips, and newsreel footage evolves into a far more ambitious and personal history of gay culture in England. Tracing back to his adolescence, Peck begins with a riveting account of his peculiar attraction to the same sex, well before homosexuality was decriminalized in 1967, and goes on to explain how the gay community continued to flourish, even in the grim moral climate of the Thatcher Era. Nighthawks was his snapshot of the movement; Strip Jack Naked shows the full album.