Comments on: Cruising (1980)

By: Louis Finch

Louis Finch — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:51:12 +0000

“Crusing” was on open tv in Spain this Saturday around noon. Surely children are out to the beach, but it represents tv stations policies this side of the pond. Alas, I also feel the movie is not fit for children mainly because its slopy quality as a movie and utterly homphobic. I felt the same way when I saw it back some twenty five years ago. Still is a document of a part of society just before the AIDs explosion…

By: WcpJams

WcpJams — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:55:53 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. I only went to see the movie because i am an Al Pacino fan. But halfway through it i realized i had made a mistake. And so did he by doing that film. It belongs right where it’s at, at the top of the list of the worst movies ever. Wcpjams!

By: Flickhead

Flickhead — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:48:10 +0000

I don’t know if you can see them on the DVD, but Friedkin’s subliminal inserts are visible on VHS if you keep hitting the pause button. Shadowy anal sex close-ups are intercut with shots of knives.

Friedkin denied it at the time. Otherwise, Cruising would’ve been rated ‘X’ instead of ‘R’. No one at the MPAA was conscious of it.

By: Joe Valdez

Joe Valdez — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:12:04 +0000

Michael: Great comments. No, I don’t think Friedkin had a political agenda or was trying to imply something about the gay community. He simply depicted what he saw going on in the leather bars, unedited and uncut, without any thought about how people might react. But sometimes, the more a depiction is based on reality, the more hard-to-believe it is and I think Cruising is definitely a case of that.

By: Michael Blowhard

Michael Blowhard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:45:14 +0000

Lots of nice points. The movie sure did have its crudenesses. On the other hand … Whatever the movie’s weaknesses, I gotta say that it “gets” the far-out kinky Mardi Gras that was the downtown gay sex scene circa 1980. I was around the downtown scene in those years, I saw a bit of the far-west-side gay thing, and it looked like “Cruising.” The scene itself looked evil and end-of-the-worldish because that’s part of what the people taking part in it enjoyed. (The punk scene likewise: it was a partying at is all fell apart scene.) I don’t mean to suggest that Friedkin was being purely objective about it, but the scene itself really was pretty far-out and hard-to-believe, even at the time.

I didn’t think the film was trying to make the case that it was portraying all gays, let alone all of gay life, did you? It was just a thriller set in one specific pocket of gay life. But I haven’t seen it in 25 years. Was it trying to generalize?

By: Marilyn

Marilyn — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:23:54 +0000

He’s from Chicago. As a native, I relate to living side by side with swine (and I don’t mean the stockyards). People in this town just expect corruption and lawlessness as a way of life. It can really warp your sensibilities.

On the flip side, the comedy side of Chicago repulsiveness is Stuart Gordon and his “Re-Animator” series.

By: Joe Valdez

Joe Valdez — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:28:03 +0000

Marilyn: It occurs to me that even the movies that will be named in the first paragraph of William Friedkin’s obituary – The French Connection and The Exorcist – have a certain in-your-face repulsiveness to them. For much of his career, the man just let the mad dog get too close to good company.

By: Marilyn

Marilyn — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:58:32 +0000

No argument this time. “Cruising” is an eyesore.