Cruising

A police detective goes undercover in the sleazy and underground gay subculture of New York City to catch a serial killer who is murdering numerous gay men with S&M tactics.

• Director:William Friedkin
• Genre:Crime / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
• Runtime:102 minutes

Cast

Al Pacino : Steve Burns
Paul Sorvino : Capt. Edelson
Karen Allen : Nancy
Richard Cox : Stuart Richards
Don Scardino : Ted Bailey

In New York City during the middle of a hot summer, body parts of men are showing up in the Hudson River. Police think it is the work of a serial killer who is picking up homosexual men at West Village bars like The Eagle’s Nest, The Ramrod and The Cock Pit and then taking them to cheap rooming houses or motels and stabbing them to death after tying them up. Officer Steve Burns (Pacino) is sent deep undercover to the urban world of gay S&M Leather bars in the Meatpacking District of the West Village in order to track down the killer. He rents an apartment in the area and befriends a neighbour, Ted Bailey (Don Scardino) a young openly gay struggling playwright. His undercover work takes a toll on his relationship with his girlfriend Nancy (Karen Allen) due to his refusal to tell her the details of his current duty while also building a close friendship with Ted, who is having relationship issues with his dancer boyfriend Gregory Mellanaise.

Burns mistakenly leads the police to investigate the waiter Skip Lee (Jay Acovone), who is intimidated, beaten, and forced to strip and masturbate in front of four detectives in order to provide them with a semen sample. Burns is disturbed by this police brutality, and comes to believe that the police are merely motivated by homophobia. Outraged, he almost quits his job. However, he is convinced by his boss (Paul Sorvino) to continue the investigations. In the end of the film, Burns thinks that he has found the serial killer, a gay music student, who attacks him with a knife in Morningside Park. Burns brings the man into custody, however, soon afterwards, the severely mutilated body of another victim, Ted, the young gay man Burns had befriended early on in the film, is found dead and the case remains unresolved. The police think of it as a lover’s quarrel turned violent and put out an arrest warrant for his boyfriend Gregory (Ted had earlier described to Steve about how he could be controlling and possessive.) In the ambiguous finale, Nancy tries on Burns’ leather peaked cap and he wipes off his shaving cream and looks directly at the camera. Read more