 Oh, yeah. Man, I found some great costumes for today's episode. How big is that cake that you bought, by the way? Party-sized. Say, you think his pants are too tight? Good God. Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies. But before we get started, what are we drinking? Sam Loomis' Haddonfield Lager. It's basically a Sam Adams Boston Lager clone. No! No! Today we're going to bring to you 1980's Cruising. What? You cruising for a piece of ass? This movie is directed by legendary director William Freakin. Directed The Exorcist, one of the best horror movies of all time. It stars Al Pacino. Karen Allen is also in this. Karen Allen was also in Ghost in the Machine, which we did. Click the link above. This movie also has some appearances by actors who would become stars later on, Al Bundy. James Riemar is also in this too. You're supposed to be an alien, but he got fired for doing drugs. The movie starts off, we see a boat off the shore of New York, and they see something floating in the water. It's an arm. We see the corner, and there's various other limbs and pieces that have been surfacing up all over the city, right? So obviously there's a killer on the loose. He's still on the loose! It cuts to a leather bar. These two guys start talking. The one guy invites him back to his apartment. He hears all the leather creaking. Yeah. You see them in bed after with their boots still on. Yeah, like if you took everything else off, you'd take off your boots too. Like, why are you giving your boots on in the bed? You could dirty up your bed. He asks him, he's like, do you ever get scared? Then he pulls out a knife. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. And he ends up tying him up. Just before he stabs him, he says this little nursery rhyme. Who's here? I'm here. And he stabs him. Multiple times. He stabs the hell out of him. Yeah. And the guy's screaming. It's actually a pretty horrific scene. We see the body on the slab. Cops are investigating it. A certain type of knife that made these wounds. The same as other knives that we made in other killings in the gay bar. Exactly. Steve burns. They bring him in to do some undercover work to start going to all of the clubs. Attract the killer as he looks like the victim. He starts frequenting the bars, right? What to wear? What kind of scarves to wear? What color scarf means? I'll make a decision later. I'm sure you'll make the right choice. So he really starts to get into the lifestyle. Meanwhile, in the park, there's another murder that happens. Who's here? I'm here. Steve burns is getting really deep into the club life. He's getting distant with his girlfriend, which he probably really shouldn't be visiting anyways because he's supposed to be undercover. Sex scene, really giving it to words, almost like he's going to prove his manhood now even more so because of his undercover work. Hoity-toity guy closing up his fancy shop. He's all rich with the convertible. Right. Drives to, well, a seedy peep show goes into the booth and this guy follows him in. More of a hook-up place than a real peep show. He's cruising. Yeah, he's cruising. Cruising for a piece of ass. As a movie's playing to start, you know, touching a little bit, he gets killed. Yeah. And it's a great kill because the projection is happening on top of the kill. You can see the face of the killer, like in the guy's sunglasses. But she knows finally starting to let loose a bit in the club on the dance floor and sniffing this glue that's on his handkerchief. And finds out there's this one guy is always being kicked out of bars, always getting into trouble for getting to altercations. He lures the guy over to his apartment. He picks him up. In the meantime, there's some cops staked out with a radio and they have a signal. The radio goes dead, so they don't know when or if they're ever going to get the signal. They bust in early into the apartment and Steve is all tied up. You're early. You're early. Man, from his point of view, you're probably good that they showed up. They haul in this poor guy. They interrogate him hard. We're going to fill the sink up with water, and we're going to dip your balls in it. Then this big, huge black guy walks in with nothing but a jog strap and these cowboy boots. And the cowboy hat. Cuffs the hell out of this poor kid. But they got nothing on him. Chief says you got to stay on it. And by the way, here's a bunch of yearbooks. Because the first ever murderer we found was a professor who frequented the bars. We figured that he might have known the murderer. Recognizes somebody right away. He goes to visit his neighbor, which he's befriended. His boyfriend is there instead. He gets into a big fight with them, and a physical altercade breaks through the door and provokes him. You can tell he's going off the rails. So after he basically threatens this guy, he goes out cruising, hoping that the murderer is going to pursue him and that he could finally catch the murderer. That's where we're going to end it. Yeah, if you want to see how cruising ends, keep watching Cruising. Based loosely on the book by Gerald Walker. And actually, Freakum has approached more than once to do a movie about this book. And he didn't really want to do it. Until he realized that if he made it take place in modern times, and not in the 70s when it was written, and had it take place in the S&M clubs, there would be an awesome backdrop for a murder mystery. And they really did their research. They went to all the bars. They get an idea of what it was really like in that scene. And they actually shot in the bars, too. Shot in a bar that was called the Mineshaft. But they changed the name to both the cockpit and the ramrod for the movie. Which are great names for gay bars like let's face it. From the get go, we're lucky that this movie was even made and released. Because it went through so much problems with production. Touching on the, you know, the gay scene. Spurred on all this protesting. They were lucky to even get what they got. Yeah, yeah, the protesting was so heavy that they had to record almost all the dialogue from all the outdoor shots. Afterwards, the mics are picking up all the protestors yelling and screaming. The movie was highly criticized for anti-gay commentary. This movie actually has none of that. It actually has no gay commentary whatsoever if you really watch the movie. No anti and no pro. It is just simply a backdrop for the movie. That's all it is. And William Friedkin has gone on record saying that. And it's a great setting for a murder mystery. It's dark and it's seedy a little bit. And the fact that everyone kind of dresses the same helps the mystery too. Because everyone kind of looks the same with the dark hair and the glasses and they got the hats on, the leather jackets. Yeah, everybody's kind of in disguise almost. As the viewer, you kind of let your guard down. You forget that there's a murderer and you start watching what's going on in these clubs, right? In real life, that's probably how it was, right? It's probably like all the stuff's going on. Well, a murderer lurking around is the furthest. The last thing on your mind. Exactly. The look of this movie is fantastic. All the shadows and the colors or the lack of colors even. The director of photography actually wanted to film the black and white. Friedkin's like, no, we're not doing the black and white. But certain shots, especially the nighttime shots, could be black and white. It's got that monochrome blue look that was basically became super popular in like the 2000s and all those movies had that blue tint to it. Right. Cruising did it in 1980, like 30 years before it became like a fad. The music also helps a lot in this movie to create the atmosphere. And I love how there's a whole bunch of different things going on with the music, right? There's contemporary music of the time in the clubs. He synths sounds during the kills, which really makes it creepy. And then when he's on the hunt, there's all that kind of weird jazz music. And not just the music, but the sound design of the film, like the sound of the setting that they're in, like when they're outside and the crickets are going and it's like, you know, a kill is going to happen and all these cricket sounds are starting to kind of overwhelm you. And when they're cruising outside, there's that kind of arch that they all hang out in. You hear all the people walking with the chains. You hear all the chains. The leather. The leather crunching all the time. It makes you feel like you're there. It makes it sucks you into the movie. The sound design sucks you right into that scene. There's a lot of misdirection with the killer and the kills. You actually have to watch the movie probably two or three times to even get it because they don't spell it out for you at the end. There is more than one killer. Yes. And you can only find that out by watching the movie two or three times. The killer from the first kill actually is the guy who gets killed in the second kill. If you look closely, the guy who goes into the peep show to kill the guy in the peep show is the guy who gets murdered in the first kill. So Freakin' is really playing with who is the murderer here and the fact that they all wear the hat and glasses works perfectly because you can't really tell unless you really look that it's a different guy almost each time. The fact that each killer says who's here. I'm here. Before each kill, it's very interesting because you just then assume it's the same person but it's not. But it's not, no. Pacino is actually kind of weak. Personally, I kind of don't like him all that much in this movie. Seems a little phoned in. Yeah, like he's probably the weakest link in the whole movie. It was supposed to actually be Richard Gere to play this part. He really, really wanted to do it. It would've been very interesting him being in the role because I think he would've been a young upstart. Yeah. He would've probably put everything into it. He had something to prove at the time. Pacino, not so much. Richard Gere, actually, he's pretty good looking, right? So he would fit into that whole scene. Pacino, not that good looking. I wish they would've gone a little deeper in and fleshed out a bit was the Steve Burns character. In the book, apparently that character has a bit of a history of being a homophobe. I actually beat up like a gay guy in high school. It's a bit of a racist. And they don't really dive into any of that. And it kind of maybe would've made the fact that he is doing this undercover work in the gay clubs a lot more interesting. It wouldn't have made for such an ambiguous ending. Right. But overall, cruising is such an underrated, overlooked mystery, murder, masterpiece. It really pulls you into that scene. Yeah, that whole scene. That whole scene, it's great. And the fact that, like you said, doesn't really make a statement on the gay lifestyle. Shows a small aspect of that lifestyle, which was the gay bars, the leather bars at the time, chose to use for a setting for a movie. I do like how the movie sort of showcases the fact that it's not gay people or straight people that are vulnerable, it's anybody. Anybody, yeah. Right? And anybody can get killed. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it doesn't discriminate. So if you're in the mood for a dark, gritty, murder mystery that's almost kind of a slasher, check out cruising. It's a real ride. Ending is one of those great mystery endings where you're, ah, could go either way. It could go anyway. It's one of William Friedkin's kind of overlooked movies, but it's one of his best, one of his better movies. So please check out cruising. And until next time, keep drinking and cruising for a piece of ass.