LEATHER 101: Cruising

During a hot New York City summer, body parts of men begin showing up in the Hudson river. Police develop a theory it’s the work of a serial killer picking up gay men at S&M Leather bars like The Eagle’s Nest, The Ramrod and the Cock Pit, taking them home and then stabbing them to death after tying them up. Officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is sent deep undercover into the Leather underground in order to track down the killer.

Cruising was released in the 1980s and followed the typical treatment of gays in film, portraying them as comic foibles or as murderous deviants. The subject matter of the film struck a nerve with gay leaders of the time, and when Cruising was in production, Gay Rights Activists and members of New York’s gay community protested the production of the film, even going so far as urging them to disrupt filming. Gay owned businesses were asked to bar the film-makers from their premises and people attempted to interfere with shooting by pointing mirrors from rooftops during filming, and blasting whistles and air horns.

The MPA of America originally gave Cruising an X rating until the director deleted 40 minutes of footage said to depict graphic sex and club scenes.
Like it or not, Cruising was a landmark film for the time, given the homophobia of the 80s, but the quality of the film is murky and debatable. You can still catch cruising on late night airings, (how I actually saw it for the first time) and on DVD.