"Cruising": Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay world. With a nude Mr. Big

 

Link to NSFW version

During the 1970s and 1980s, gay men appeared in movies almost exclusively as limp-wristed hairdressers and drag queens with murderous split personalities.   Cruising, 1980, promised something different: gay men with apartments, jobs, and hangouts; and who were masculine, actually super-macho, with muscles, club bulges, and leather chaps.

Sounds like fun, right?  Wrong.

The tv promo said only that Al Pacino would play a cop who "disappears into the darkness," and the theatrical trail showed him putting on makeup, plus men dancing together, and brief flashes of the words "homosexual,"  "violence," "murder," "fear," and "sex").  
The movie wasn't playing in Rock Island, so one cold Saturday my boyfriend Fred and I drove an hour west to the college town of Iowa City to see our first gay movie, ever.

The plot: in sleazy, decadent gay bar, a "homosexual" played by Arnaldo Santana cruises a mysterious stranger.  After discussing what turned them gay, they go home together, where the stranger politely asks the "homosexual," to lie still while he stabs him to death.  Santana complies!

During the 1970s, criminologists often theorized about why gay men would pick up total strangers for sex.  Some said that they were unable to control their "deviant" sexual desires, and others, that they were looking for a quick, easy way to destroy society by "wasting their seed" instead of making a baby. But most said that they felt so guilty over being gay that they wanted to be murdered.

More bar pickups, more murders. There's a gay serial killer out there "targeting his own!"  Police detective Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is asked to go undercover and catch him.  

So he moves into a sleazy apartment in the bad part of town, puts on a leather vest, applies makeup, and goes cruising.

He befriends his next door neighbor (Don Scardino), but runs afoul of Ted's effeminate, histrionic dancer-boyfriend (James Remar).

Occasionally Steve sees his girlfriend, but he becomes less and less interested in her as he is infected by the "gay lifestyle."

More sin, degradation, and dicks after the break

Eventually he finds the man he thinks is the killer, a disgruntled gay music student.  But after they take him into custody, the Next-Door Neighbor's body is found, so they arrest the Histrionic Boyfriend.  Is it just one of the usual gay lovers' quarrel-homicides, or is Gregory the real serial killer?  Since all gay men are violent, it's hard to tell.

Steve moves back in with his girlfriend.  But it's too late, he's turned gay.  He puts on his makeup and leather and heads out to the bars.  Maybe he's a killer now, too.

Brr.  What have we learned about gay men? They all live in horrible neighborhoods, with artistic or creative jobs.  In spite of their leather jackets and muscles, they're all makeup-wearing queens.  They have no culture, no organizations, nothing but bars. 

They're obsessed with what "turned" them gay, desperate for a cure.  hey're shallow, histrionic, and violent, with a strong death wish.

Director William Friedkin was surprised when gay men picketed Cruising.  He thought they would thank him for drawing attention to the small, "deviant" segment of their community who hooked up with strangers. Modern audiences can watch it as irony or even camp, but to a gay kid just starting to come out, it was more depressing than offense.  A future with an apartment, a job, friends, and moments of happiness was apparently impossible.  Gay meant desolation and despair in a criminal demimonde.

Bonus: James Remar moved on from the histrionic, violent dancer Boyfriend to 181 acting roles listed on the IMBD.  You may have seen him in The X-Files, North Shore, Grey's Anatomy, Animal Kingdom, and Oppenheimer.  He may be most famous for playing Mr. Big, aka Richard Wright, who dates Samantha on Sex and the City. 

Nude photos on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

See also: Matthew William Bishop: leatherman, muscleman, LGBTQ advocate.

Hank Strong: Bodybuilder, firefighter, leather daddy