Movie Details
| Title: | Cruising | |
| Director: | William Friedkin | |
| Year: | 1980 | |
| Genre: | Thriller | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.14.25 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (3)
- Bug
- Killer Joe
- Sorcerer
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.14.25 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2025 Things are getting a little naughty with tonight's main double feature starting with this Al Pacino undercover cop movie where a serial killer is preying on gay men in the NYC leather bar scene. This movie is pretty notorious for the clapback it received by the gay community at the time, i think it's a little more arguable these days where the line between exploitation and friedkin using that scene as a rich tapestry falls but it's undeniably a shockingly mainstream big studio take on this super underground scene for its time. I also recently read an excellent book called Love Saves the Day which is a history of NYC dance music during the 70s. It covers disco but also the birth of DJ and club culture in the states and briefly touches upon this movie and the various clubs it was allowed to shoot in, most were not dance clubs but some were. That was actually my favorite scene where Pacino's cornered into dancing and huffs a little amyl nitrate from a handkerchief and starts going off. Not exactly the Paradise Garage but still pretty funny to see tightly-wound Pacino try to let loose. Anyway, from my perspective in 2025, this movie is most valuable as a cultural artifact of gay sexuality and expression at its height, which is to say post stonewall, pre AIDS. The Deuce had a single scene that was somewhat similar to this but there's a ton of panning tableau shots of all these leather daddies dancing and making out and... uhh... more... I can totally see how your average gay guy who preferred men could see the guy greasing his arm in crisco up to his elbow cut to a guy suspended in stirrups moaning and groaning would be appalled at what the rest of about-to-elect-Reagan America must think about the community as a whole (no pun intended), but I was raised on HBO and the Internet so I feel like gay fisting's no big whup. These shots, presumably featuring real patrons of the bars Friedkin's shooting at, show a time where an oppressed minority could congregate and feel at ease, which ended like right after this movie came out, so good for these guys. Get it. My problems with the movie are more with the plot. Specifically the bullshit last shot ending. Friedkin does a thing where he uses multiple actors to portray the serial killer, which I thought was a nice trick to not let the audience get ahead of Pacino in rooting out the real killer. It's a move David Fincher would expertly use in Zodiac. But you see too much of the actors, so it gets confusing when the guy you thought was the killer is now the victim. But that's all relatively minor and it makes a nice vague ending where the presumed killer does not confess and there's another murder so maybe there were multiple killers? but then goddamn Pacino has to look at the camera and, what, he's a killer? The gay urge turns him from a cop to a killer? He looked into the darkness of gay bdsm subculture too long and the darkness looked back at him? Ugh, give me a break. Also, minor spoilers here, but the scene where Pacino lures his suspect into a short-term hotel room that's wired and we stay with the radio unit and their difficulty hearing what's going on so a bunch of cops storm the hotel then arrest them both, Pacino's tied up naked on the bed and we kinda sorta hear him tell the suspect that he want's to be tied up even though the suspect isn't into it. How, the fuck, was Pacino gonna not get stabbed if that was the real killer? Why is he urging the dude to tie him up? At first I thought it was a real telling scene showing how confused Pacino's become and he's now enjoying this s&m stuff, but what the hell dude. You're stil a cop right? You took him there because you thought he was gonna stab you? So maybe don't get hogtied? There's infamously about 40 minutes cut from the film. So much so that James Franco made a movie with his made-up interpretation of what might be included. Lots of trivia tidbits about it being hardcore pornography specifically put in to game the MPAA into letting Friedkin keep what he really wanted. I wonder if there's any more explicit stuff with Pacino in that cut footage because I feel like the real crisis of his character is that... he's doing this gay stuff right? He's going off with some of these guys. He's trying hard to hold onto his hetero side by railing Karen Allen but... he can't be too embedded in that scene and not, like, do stuff right? Oh, and why after Powers Boothe specifically tells you that the yellow handkerchief means you're into golden showers would you specifically pick that one? And what a great name for that supporting role: Water Sport. The cut up body parts never come back into it. Joe Spinell and Mike Starr as the absolute skeeziest late 70s patrol cops you can imagine never really come back into it. All the disco music's replaced with punk music which wasn't a thing yet in that scene (yes, I know The Germs recorded like 5 songs for the movie but they only used one), and we clearly see that the killer in the end uses a different knife than from the restaurant. Intentional or mistake? who knows... So... I guess yay for the glimpse of the NYC lower west side late 70s gay scene. Nay to the questionable undercover police murder mystery plot. Let's flip the record and take a look across town next. |
