Cruising (1980)
© 2008 William Ahearn
Homosexual-related serial killings rarely get the Hollywood treatment, even if some of the most prolific killers were involved. Juan Corona, Jeff Dahlmer, John Wayne Gacy (who, even with the added bonus of the clown suit, never got a major motion picture), Elmer Wayne Henley and others, made their names in the popular culture due to TV, newspapers and books.
For more on homosexual-related serial killers, go here and here.
Director William Friedkin saw a gay serial killer movie as a groundbreaking move and began to work on a script based on a series of real life murders involving homosexuals and using segments of the gay community as backdrop. He had no idea of what he was getting himself into.
The stories that serial killer movies tell are strange enough. The true story behind William Friedkin’s 1980 film “Cruising” is downright bizarre. The film is based – in part – on Gerald Walker’s 1970 novel Cruising. Walker was an editor at The New York Times and according to his 2004 obituary in that newspaper the novel is about “the New York City homosexual underground.”
Friedkin was looking for a larger story than a travelogue of sexual diversity and he heard about the so-called “bag” murders that occurred from 1962 to the late 1970s in New York City. Six men were killed, dismembered (or disarticulated, as the crime scene analysts say) and various body parts were stuffed into garbage bags and dumped in the Hudson River. Clothing remnants and tattoos identified some of the men as gays. Without identities and with no known cause of death, the parts were never officially labeled murders by the New York City Police Department.
Then one of those odd coincidences that happen in life happened. When Friedkin was in New York City filming the hospital scenes for “The Exorcist” he cast an actual X-ray technician in the movie. That technician was later convicted in 1979 of killing critic Addison Verrill. The technician admitted picking up Verrill in a gay bar and then killing him after sex in the victim’s apartment. Friedkin – looking for some insight into the mind of a killer – met with the technician in prison to try to understand the mentality of the “bag” murderer.
There is every chance that William Friedkin actually was talking to the “bag” murders serial killer. The X-ray technician’s name is Paul Bateson and unofficially, at least, the NYPD believes he was the serial killer. There is some background here.
Everything about the film seemed to point toward exploitation, even if Friedkin had directed “The Boys In The Band.” Not surprisingly, the film drew protests from the gay community and for an article on the issues that enflamed the protests, go here. It contains some interesting information about the New York City of the time.
Underneath the titillating gay exploitation is the story of an unqualified policeman getting lost in the weeds of his own investigation. Al Pacino (who would appear in a similar film in “Sea of Love”) never seems to play to the script and a lot is lost when the ending comes around. Had Friedkin and Pacino listened to the story, it would have been a far more interesting film.