I am going to go out on a limb here and say I think CRUISING is William Friedkin’d best film. I saw it in a theater just off Times Square back in 1982 or so. I had just started a job as an assistant editor, the editor I was working for, Bud Smith, told me it was playing and I should go see it. So I did. At the time I was creeped out by the film and the creepy forty deuce theater I saw it in. I thought it was confusing, I did not get it. I was in awe of some of the visuals, powerful images , shadows, dead bodies, a Blue Arch in Central Park at night. But I didn’t think it worked. I recently rewatched it and I had a revelation, the filmmaking is top notch! The camera work, editing and score( by my old friend Jack Nitzsche) are all great. The plot is bizarre, but now I think it is genius in a David Lynch kind of way.
The first victim comes back to life to murder the second victim. All the killers are dubbed by the REAL KILLER’s father. Who exists only in the mind of his son, having died years earlier. And when the REAL KILLER is being interrogated, he says in his fathers dubbed voice “I didn’t kill anyone” . this is all subversive filmmaking of the highest order. What does it mean? Well, Friedkin was inspired to make this film by talking to a real killer in jail for murder. This guy had appeared in a small role in THE EXORCIST. He played an X-Ray technician. He told Friedkin that the cops said they would go easy on him if he confessed to a whole string of gay murders, even though he only recalled doing one of them. I’m sure this got Friedkin thinking, do we ever know the truth about these things. Are they more complicated than we realize? Are people influenced by other forces when they commit these horrifying crimes? I think he found a creative way to explore this ambiguity, uncertainty. The film had such a negative backlash, mainly due to protests by the gay community in NYC, but none of them had seen the film. They were reacting to a film about gay people being murdered. The S&M gay community supported the film and a lot of them appeared in it.
I actually think the film was a step forward in the Cinematic treatment of gay people. There are scenes in leather bars, S&M clubs, extreme sexual things are happening but you never feel they are being judged in any way. No one is saying “That’s bad!” or “That’s disgusting!”Friedkins cameras are in documentary mode. He’s showing us what goes on behind these doors but not making any judgement calls. Also in so many “Straight” horror films , people have sex and are then slaughtered by a monster , the Puritanical result of out of wedlock fornication. Here gay people are given the same treatment. So they are being treated exactly the same as straight people. All in all I think this film represents a big step forward in portraying gay characters.
The film opens with two incredible poetic images, Hi-Con Black and White shots of iconic images from the film, one is a crowd of leather clad club goers outside of The Mineshaft, the other is Pacino in Central Park standing in a stone archway. There’s no explanation as to why these images are here, but with the minimalist atmospheric score I find them enigmatic, compelling, in a word poetic. And that sets the stage for some great Cinema, offbeat, unorthodox. The murder scenes are gripping , the one in the Peep Show, that yes the projected porn as a visual element is Cinema of the highest order. There is even a subliminal ( 4 frame) cut of a penis slithering into a butt during the stabbing, Artfully done, it took me a couple of viewings to see it.
The soundtrack is amazing too. Great sound effects , great Foley of creaking leather, rattling chains, all kinds of strange atmospheric textures laid over the scenes in an incredible way. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The score is great, iconic, Nietzsche recorded several bands for this movie including The Germs and Willie DeVille. He told me that Friedkin complained that he spent too much on the score. I guess because the movie did not do well at the Box Office. It’s really a shame that this film was so badly judged and received, mainly because of the protests, it had a negative publicity campaign before it came out. Some theaters even put up signs saying they were sorry they had to show the film, they didn’t want to but were contractually obligated to. It’s bad when things are judged by people that have not seen them or read them or heard them. Just attacking something based on a rumor, something they read, not making their own minds up about it. The film was a commercial flop. unfortunately because Friedkin should have continued in this vein of creativity. A sort of Metaphysical Thriller. He really forged a new style that he wound up abandoning in reaction to its reception. A Real Shame.
An often overlooked fact about this film and The Exorcist is that Bud Smith and Jack Nitzsche worked on both of them. Their contributions to both was inestimable in my opinion. Bud met Jack while working on Bob Downey’s Greasers Palace, a psychedelic Western.
Bud Smith
Denizen of the Midnight Movie Craze of the 60’s and 70’s along with El Topo, Fantastic Planet and Performance. (more on this film in a minute) Nitzsche started out as an arranger, the guy that wrote the parts for Phil Spector legendary Wall Of Sound. The Rolling Stones were enamored of this sound and sought Jack out. He collaborated with them on several songs and wound up scoring the Mick Jagger starring film Performance by Donald Cammel and Nick Roeg. An amazing score, one that supposedly Friedkin loved. Bud introduced Nitzsche to Friedkin and Jack along with his friend Ron Nagle recorded a lot of special sound effects for The Exorcist, rats running on sandpaper, crashing glass, glass harmonicas, bees in a jar. All kinds of exotic sounds. Then Bud would edit them into the film in a very creative unsettling subversive way.
Jack Nitzsche
The combination was irresistible. Their collaboration on Cruising was just as powerful. They deserve so much credit for the atmosphere and unsettling nature of these films. Both masterpieces of sonic and Cinematic brain manipulation. Bravo!
My final thoughts on Cruising (at least for this write up) deal with the subject matter, Pure sex, pleasure uninhibited, no Catholic guilt, just raw experience, such a powerful force, that it’s been controlled by Laws, the Church, the Public Mores of Society, clamped down, repressed, locked away. Here is a film that exposes pure hedonism, pure freedom of personal sexual expression as the backdrop for a murder mystery, a detective film in a Meta universe where the dead can come back to life, in their own form and controlling the body of others. But not in a Supernatural Zombie vampire kind of way. In a freudian head trip kind of way. Psychological not Supernatural. A real mind bender.
