WARNING! Spoilers below. . .
It's a curious movie, interesting but difficult (at least for me) to figure out. Maybe when I've retired, I will have time to sit down and really watch it, study up on it, and draw some conclusions about it. It's such a dark, cynical movie that I don't know if I really want to do that. It might leave me even more spiritually bereft than I already am. I mean, I can't watch too much “Law and Order” or “CSI” because doing that depresses me, seeing how mean, evil, and nasty people can be.
As it is, I can't figure out if the movie is just too deep and ambiguous for me to understand or if William Friedkin was whacked out on ego or drugs or something when he made it and made a mess of a movie that only he could understand.
There are some interesting insights into the movie on its IMDb message board. As with the BbM board there, you have to get through some crud to get to the good stuff. The ones I'm including below give me a little clarity on what's going on in the film though. From what I've read there and other places, at least one of Friedkin’s big themes for the movie was identity.
One interesting thread can be found at
http://imdb.com/title/tt0080569/board/nest/20603601. Here’s part of the first post:
We see three murders in the film; the first at the hotel, the second in Central Park, and the last one in the peepshow.
All of the following information is taken from the final draft of Cruising.
The Hotel Killer is Stuart Richards (played by Larry Atlas)
The Hotel Victim is Loren Lukas (played by Arnaldo Santana)
The Central Park Killer is Stuart Richards (played by Richard Cox)
The Central Park Victim is Eric Rossman (played by Larry Atlas, who also played the Hotel Killer)
The Peepshow Killer is Stuart Richards (played by both Richard Cox AND Arnaldo Santana (who also played the Hotel Victim))
The Peepshow Victim is Martino (played by Steve Inwood)
The voice of Stuart Richards in the murder scenes is provided by James Sutorius, who also provided the voice for Stuart Richards' father, Jack Richards.Does that make sense? I've re-watched the movie, fast forwarding to see each murder scene in succession (very pleasant!) and determined that the poster is correct.
Long story short, the killer is crazy. He's kinda Norman Bates-ish in that he carries the voice of his parent (in this case, his father) with him as he murders, but he also takes on the identity of his victims in some sort of random fashion that I can't find rhyme or reason to. Add to that Friedkin’s statement in interviews that there's more than one killer, and I need a flow chart or something to make heads or tails of it all.
Another interesting thread can be found here:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0080569/board/nest/68055208. One post that sticks in my head:
Keep your eye on Joe Spinell throughout the film. He is one of the two abusive cops at the beginning. Later, when one of the tvs complains at the station house, Paul Sorvino's character taunts, "Do you know how many police impersonators there are out there?" So now we wonder if Spinell is a real cop or not, especially when we see him cruise Pacino in a gay bar; later outside he spooks Pacino so badly that Pacino walks off with a less-menacing cruiser. (And where do they go? Another unanswered question.)
But at the end, at the Ted Bailey homicide scene, Spinell is there in uniform. So he is a real cop after all?
This ambiguity about cops/cruisers is brought forward in a wonderfully ironic scene in which it's "Precinct Night" at one of the clubs -- all the patrons are dressed as police, except for real cop Pacino who wanders inside wearing wearing his regular street-prowling clothes!Like Lynne, I've added “Cruising” to my Netflix queue, mainly for the commentary. Maybe hearing that will give me more insight about it. As it stands now, I like to view my VHS copy just for the parts with the HOT first victim Loren Lukas (played by Arnaldo Santana) – at least up until he gets killed.
