When William Friedkin died in 2023, aged 87, the obituaries talked of the director of The Exorcist and the man who gave us The French Connection. The Boys in the Band, his groundbreaking film from 1970, which took dramas about gay men into the mainstream, got some bandwidth, as did Sorceror, his remake of Clouzot’s 1953 classic The Wages of Fear, which has gained in reputation ever since it was released in 1977.

Cruising not so much. Or if it was mentioned it was usually in passing, as the controversial film that ended Friedkin’s time at the top.

In fact Sorceror had already done that. The title had confused people thinking they were getting another Exorcist. And its story about truckers driving explosives across a Central American jungle was a bad fit for a zeitgeist primed for more Star Wars, Close Encounters or Saturday Night Fever – it wasn’t pop culture enough.

Cruising, which came out three years later in 1980, only confirmed Friedkin’s fall from grace. A drama about a straight cop undercover on the gay/S&M scene, the film drew huge criticism from gay activists, who disrupted its shooting and then tried to disrupt its reception too, with demonstrations outside movie theatres, and so on.

Complex, fascinating, brilliantly made, remarkably acted, with a soundtrack that’s unsettling and lighting that grows increasingly majestic and dramatic as it goes on, this is a good film on the most basic of technical levels, and from all these decades later it looks simultaneously very bold and a little tame. Friedkin’s conflation of the gay and S&M scenes also looks a little weird, though that’s what Friedkin saw when he went into clubs like the Hellfire, which stands in for Mineshaft (who wouldn’t let him film there, though he used many of its members as extras). “I was the ugliest guy in the room. Nobody ever hit on me,” Friedkin later recalled – he was always a good raconteur.

Also from all these decades later, it looks much more like a standard police procedural than it did at the time, albeit a superior one, full of angularity and angst. A straight cop, played by Al Pacino, is recruited to infiltrate the underground gay S&M scene where a serial killer appears to be stabbing his way into the record books. He looks like the murderer’s type, his boss (Paul Sorvino, perfectly cast as a meat and potatoes kind of guy) tells him, that’s why they’re asking him to do it.

Most undercover movies rely on the plot development that pushes the character to do something they ordinarily wouldn’t do – most often it’s a cop doing something hugely illegal. Cruising does that too, in its depiction of the straight guy who needs to indulge in at least some gay sexual acts to keep his undercover identity valid. Friedkin never shows Pacino unzipping or getting too friendly with any of the characters he meets either in the club or out on various secluded byways, but Pacino’s performance suggests that by the end Steve has at least a working knowledge of the territory.

The film implicitly wonders whether heterosexual Steve Burns (Pacino) enjoys any of this gay sex. Has it turned him in any way? Friedkin’s direction stays neutral, but Pacino here contributes a flicker of something in his eyes, particularly in scenes he shares with Karen Allen as his girlfriend, who has no idea what job Steve is working on, when Steve is either being too emphatically heterosexual, or can’t quite be emphatically heterosexual enough. There’s also a slightly gnomic look on Pacino’s face in the film’s closing moments that is suggestive. Even so, the whole question is moot enough for the issue to remain as a criticism, of Friedkin not Pacino. The girlfriend’s name, incidentally, is Nancy – a Friedkin joke?

Friedkin wanted Richard Gere for the role. And Gere wanted to play it. But in the end it went to Pacino, though Friedkin often said later how much better it would have been if it had been Gere, who he said had the right “ambiguous quality”. I’m not sure. Pacino is pretty damn good, there’s not a trace of the Pacino panto stuff, and he often looks terrified as he slides around a bar full of guys in leather chaps, bare bottoms jiggling, with fisting, sucking and fucking all going on around him – suggested though never shown.

With two Godfathers, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon under his belt at this point, Pacino did not have to do this movie. Who else of his starriness would have taken on that role – can you imagine De Niro as Steve?

It’s a better film than is often credited, and from these decades on the furore looks at least 50 per cent undeserved. Friedkin does not demonise the gay community, and some of the objections – though no one would have said it at the time for political reasons – probably came from those who didn’t want gay life explored or exposed. They wanted the subculture to remain a subculture and not become public property (see also the great Todd Stephens movie Swan Song, starring Udo Kier, which writes the book on this).

Coming out two years after the Village People song YMCA, Cruising in fact marks a crucial moment in gay life. When a scene gets seen, in important ways it starts to die.

Cruising – Watch it/buy it at Amazon







I am an Amazon affiliate





© Steve Morrissey 2025

When William Friedkin died in 2023, aged 87, the obituaries talked of the director of The Exorcist and the man who gave us The French Connection. The Boys in the Band, his groundbreaking film from 1970, which took dramas about gay men into the mainstream, got some bandwidth, as did Sorceror, his remake of Clouzot’s 1953 classic The Wages of Fear, which has gained in reputation ever since it was released in 1977.

Cruising not so much. Or if it was mentioned it was usually in passing, as the controversial film that ended Friedkin’s time at the top.

In fact Sorceror had already done that. The title had confused people thinking they were getting another Exorcist. And its story about truckers driving explosives across a Central American jungle was a bad fit for a zeitgeist primed for more Star Wars, Close Encounters or Saturday Night Fever – it wasn’t pop culture enough.

Cruising, which came out three years later in 1980, only confirmed Friedkin’s fall from grace. A drama about a straight cop undercover on the gay/S&M scene, the film drew huge criticism from gay activists, who disrupted its shooting and then tried to disrupt its reception too, with demonstrations outside movie theatres, and so on.

Complex, fascinating, brilliantly made, remarkably acted, with a soundtrack that’s unsettling and lighting that grows increasingly majestic and dramatic as it goes on, this is a good film on the most basic of technical levels, and from all these decades later it looks simultaneously very bold and a little tame. Friedkin’s conflation of the gay and S&M scenes also looks a little weird, though that’s what Friedkin saw when he went into clubs like the Hellfire, which stands in for Mineshaft (who wouldn’t let him film there, though he used many of its members as extras). “I was the ugliest guy in the room. Nobody ever hit on me,” Friedkin later recalled – he was always a good raconteur.

Also from all these decades later, it looks much more like a standard police procedural than it did at the time, albeit a superior one, full of angularity and angst. A straight cop, played by Al Pacino, is recruited to infiltrate the underground gay S&M scene where a serial killer appears to be stabbing his way into the record books. He looks like the murderer’s type, his boss (Paul Sorvino, perfectly cast as a meat and potatoes kind of guy) tells him, that’s why they’re asking him to do it.

Most undercover movies rely on the plot development that pushes the character to do something they ordinarily wouldn’t do – most often it’s a cop doing something hugely illegal. Cruising does that too, in its depiction of the straight guy who needs to indulge in at least some gay sexual acts to keep his undercover identity valid. Friedkin never shows Pacino unzipping or getting too friendly with any of the characters he meets either in the club or out on various secluded byways, but Pacino’s performance suggests that by the end Steve has at least a working knowledge of the territory.

The film implicitly wonders whether heterosexual Steve Burns (Pacino) enjoys any of this gay sex. Has it turned him in any way? Friedkin’s direction stays neutral, but Pacino here contributes a flicker of something in his eyes, particularly in scenes he shares with Karen Allen as his girlfriend, who has no idea what job Steve is working on, when Steve is either being too emphatically heterosexual, or can’t quite be emphatically heterosexual enough. There’s also a slightly gnomic look on Pacino’s face in the film’s closing moments that is suggestive. Even so, the whole question is moot enough for the issue to remain as a criticism, of Friedkin not Pacino. The girlfriend’s name, incidentally, is Nancy – a Friedkin joke?

Friedkin wanted Richard Gere for the role. And Gere wanted to play it. But in the end it went to Pacino, though Friedkin often said later how much better it would have been if it had been Gere, who he said had the right “ambiguous quality”. I’m not sure. Pacino is pretty damn good, there’s not a trace of the Pacino panto stuff, and he often looks terrified as he slides around a bar full of guys in leather chaps, bare bottoms jiggling, with fisting, sucking and fucking all going on around him – suggested though never shown.

With two Godfathers, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon under his belt at this point, Pacino did not have to do this movie. Who else of his starriness would have taken on that role – can you imagine De Niro as Steve?

It’s a better film than is often credited, and from these decades on the furore looks at least 50 per cent undeserved. Friedkin does not demonise the gay community, and some of the objections – though no one would have said it at the time for political reasons – probably came from those who didn’t want gay life explored or exposed. They wanted the subculture to remain a subculture and not become public property (see also the great Todd Stephens movie Swan Song, starring Udo Kier, which writes the book on this).

Coming out two years after the Village People song YMCA, Cruising in fact marks a crucial moment in gay life. When a scene gets seen, in important ways it starts to die.

Cruising – Watch it/buy it at Amazon







I am an Amazon affiliate





© Steve Morrissey 2025

When William Friedkin died in 2023, aged 87, the obituaries talked of the director of The Exorcist and the man who gave us The French Connection. The Boys in the Band, his groundbreaking film from 1970, which took dramas about gay men into the mainstream, got some bandwidth, as did Sorceror, his remake of Clouzot’s 1953 classic The Wages of Fear, which has gained in reputation ever since it was released in 1977.

Cruising not so much. Or if it was mentioned it was usually in passing, as the controversial film that ended Friedkin’s time at the top.

In fact Sorceror had already done that. The title had confused people thinking they were getting another Exorcist. And its story about truckers driving explosives across a Central American jungle was a bad fit for a zeitgeist primed for more Star Wars, Close Encounters or Saturday Night Fever – it wasn’t pop culture enough.

Cruising, which came out three years later in 1980, only confirmed Friedkin’s fall from grace. A drama about a straight cop undercover on the gay/S&M scene, the film drew huge criticism from gay activists, who disrupted its shooting and then tried to disrupt its reception too, with demonstrations outside movie theatres, and so on.

Complex, fascinating, brilliantly made, remarkably acted, with a soundtrack that’s unsettling and lighting that grows increasingly majestic and dramatic as it goes on, this is a good film on the most basic of technical levels, and from all these decades later it looks simultaneously very bold and a little tame. Friedkin’s conflation of the gay and S&M scenes also looks a little weird, though that’s what Friedkin saw when he went into clubs like the Hellfire, which stands in for Mineshaft (who wouldn’t let him film there, though he used many of its members as extras). “I was the ugliest guy in the room. Nobody ever hit on me,” Friedkin later recalled – he was always a good raconteur.

Also from all these decades later, it looks much more like a standard police procedural than it did at the time, albeit a superior one, full of angularity and angst. A straight cop, played by Al Pacino, is recruited to infiltrate the underground gay S&M scene where a serial killer appears to be stabbing his way into the record books. He looks like the murderer’s type, his boss (Paul Sorvino, perfectly cast as a meat and potatoes kind of guy) tells him, that’s why they’re asking him to do it.

Most undercover movies rely on the plot development that pushes the character to do something they ordinarily wouldn’t do – most often it’s a cop doing something hugely illegal. Cruising does that too, in its depiction of the straight guy who needs to indulge in at least some gay sexual acts to keep his undercover identity valid. Friedkin never shows Pacino unzipping or getting too friendly with any of the characters he meets either in the club or out on various secluded byways, but Pacino’s performance suggests that by the end Steve has at least a working knowledge of the territory.

The film implicitly wonders whether heterosexual Steve Burns (Pacino) enjoys any of this gay sex. Has it turned him in any way? Friedkin’s direction stays neutral, but Pacino here contributes a flicker of something in his eyes, particularly in scenes he shares with Karen Allen as his girlfriend, who has no idea what job Steve is working on, when Steve is either being too emphatically heterosexual, or can’t quite be emphatically heterosexual enough. There’s also a slightly gnomic look on Pacino’s face in the film’s closing moments that is suggestive. Even so, the whole question is moot enough for the issue to remain as a criticism, of Friedkin not Pacino. The girlfriend’s name, incidentally, is Nancy – a Friedkin joke?

Friedkin wanted Richard Gere for the role. And Gere wanted to play it. But in the end it went to Pacino, though Friedkin often said later how much better it would have been if it had been Gere, who he said had the right “ambiguous quality”. I’m not sure. Pacino is pretty damn good, there’s not a trace of the Pacino panto stuff, and he often looks terrified as he slides around a bar full of guys in leather chaps, bare bottoms jiggling, with fisting, sucking and fucking all going on around him – suggested though never shown.

With two Godfathers, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon under his belt at this point, Pacino did not have to do this movie. Who else of his starriness would have taken on that role – can you imagine De Niro as Steve?

It’s a better film than is often credited, and from these decades on the furore looks at least 50 per cent undeserved. Friedkin does not demonise the gay community, and some of the objections – though no one would have said it at the time for political reasons – probably came from those who didn’t want gay life explored or exposed. They wanted the subculture to remain a subculture and not become public property (see also the great Todd Stephens movie Swan Song, starring Udo Kier, which writes the book on this).

Coming out two years after the Village People song YMCA, Cruising in fact marks a crucial moment in gay life. When a scene gets seen, in important ways it starts to die.

Cruising – Watch it/buy it at Amazon







I am an Amazon affiliate





© Steve Morrissey 2025