Cruising

The introductory feint is on Taxi Driver, "normalcy" is Joe Spinell in the patrol car talking about killing his wife and blowing up the city. "Homo killer on the prowl," New York rough-trade dives set the stage, "a world unto itself." The policeman (Al Pacino) gets an undercover assignment, dons tank tops and pocket hankies, discovers the thin line between repulsion and fascination. Stabbings in hotel rooms and amid Central Park bushes hint at multiple murderers, the suspect (Richard Cox) studies musical theater at Columbia and keeps notes on Augustine's The City of God. Infiltration, immersion, penetration. "Sounds addictive." The other side of The Boys in the Band, fusing procedural (The French Connection) and possession (The Exorcist), a central William Friedkin work. It opens and closes with oceanic views, in between there's a subterranean luxuriance of metallic blues and flesh-bound paleness. The abusive machismo of cops meets its parody in queer clubs with names like The Cock Pit and The Anvil, a matter of power games and costumes. (There's even "Precinct Night" specials, when caps and nightsticks are added to the Crisco-lubricated festivities, cf. Osborne's A Patriot for Me.) The camera pans across a sprawl of jolly sodomites and rests on a watchful, zipped-up gimp in the corner, the squeak of leather and the jingle of handcuffs comprise the cold nocturne. By comparison, the hero's heterosexual monogamy with a bland girlfriend (Karen Allen) is visualized with bright lighting and classical music, with none of the dangerous thrill embodied in Pacino's pained pantomime. "I can't believe you're not afraid." Psycho figures in the spectral father bearing the killer's voice, the final gaze into the mirror dissipates or extends the nightmare. With Paul Sorvino, Don Scardino, Jay Acovone, Randy Jurgensen, Barton Heyman, Gene Davis, James Remar, Ed O'Neill, William Russ, and Powers Boothe.