40 Years Ago Today: The Exorcist (1973)

Forty years ago today, The Exorcist (1973) was released in United States theaters, and in many senses, the age of the modern horror film truly began.  

At the time, William Friedkin's film met with tremendous controversy, instead of the universal acclaim some people associate with it today. 

The Nation's Robert Hatch called it an "exceedingly well-made bad picture" and noted that The Exorcist "denigrates medicine and psychiatry, it involves the Catholic Church in mumbo-jumbo and, by grotesque make-up and camera trickery...it turns a 12 year old girl into a spectacle of loathsome ugliness for the sole purpose of mindless entertainment.  It should be scorned." (February 2, 1974, page 157).

Jay Cocks at Time Magazine called The Exorcist "vile and brutalizing," and Film Quarterly termed it "the trash bombshell of 1973, the aesthetic equivalent of being run over by a truck...a gloating, ugly, exploitation picture..."

The Reverend Billy Graham went even further, and accused The Exorcist of causing depression and spiritual angst in 1970s movie audiences.  

He said: "A psychiatrist friend of mine has told me that he is seeing new patients all the time whose troubles can be directly traced to their having seen this film.  They report recurring nightmares and problems they never had before.  My friend is concerned, as I am, that there will be more of it, if people continue to flock to the box office."

Other critics were more approving.  Stanley Kauffmann at The New Republic called it the "most scary" picture he had seen in years and declared that "The Exorcist will scare the hell out of you."

Similarly, Films in Review noted that "the horror film will never be the same," while Roger Ebert called it "one of the best movie of its type ever made; it not only transcends the genre of terror, horror and the supernatural, but it transcends such serious, ambitious efforts in the same direction as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby."

I agree with the critics who detect the artistry in William Friedkin's film.  

As I've written many times before, I credit the early parts of the film (the scenes set in Iraq, and later in a Georgetown Hospital) for rendering the special-effects-driven last act so damned effective, and so damned scary.  

Friedkin directs these early sequences as if they are a documentary -- like a cinema-verite travelogue -- and the result is a grounded, gritty sense of reality that completely captures the senses and absorbs attention.  These first two acts are so believably vetted that the third act -- even with the spinning head and split-pea vomit -- still plays, somehow, as realistic.

Novelist William Peter Blatty based his tale of demonic possession on a real-life story he had heard at George Washington University in 1949, but developed it so that it would become the terrifying story of a mother losing a child, and of a child corrupted.   The film isn't exploitative (particularly of Blair), because the point is indeed, childhood destroyed, ravaged by evil.  When our children are threatened in movies, all our futures or tomorrows are imperiled.

Also, I often consider The Exorcist a deliberate meditation about the structure of the universe.  Is there such a thing as the Devil, or is what we perceive as the devil really just a mental illness?  

The film’s first act suggests one answer, based in the knowledge of antiquity.  

The second act, set in the hospital (replete with painful-looking spinal tap) suggests the latter.  And then the third act goes nuts with violence and graphic effects, but also examples of human heroism and nobility.  The film thus provides two answers about life and the cosmos.  The first is that if there is a Devil there must, by implication, be a God too.  

And secondly, that acts of human courage and kindness can, finally, beat the Devil.  

The Exorcist may be brutal, but it is not vile.  On the contrary, it suggests that where evil exists, good exists too.  And that, finally, mankind can make a difference about which force succeeds.

Ask JKM a Question: Do You Dare Walk These Steps Again? (Exorcist III)

A reader named Chuck writes:

“First, I am a huge fan of your blog (as I write while reading it instead of doing work at my desk). Second, I realize that the answer to my question my already exist in your book Horror Films of the 1990s, which I confess I do not own (though 1970s sits prominently on my shelf).

But, anyway, here goes: I was having a conversation with a friend in my LCS, and I told him that, in my opinion, The Exorcist III was one of the best, scariest, movies no one ever talks about. This immediately led down the road to “no, The Exorcist was too good to ever need a sequel in the first place” or “Exorcist 2 was horrible, and the prequels were bad too”, etc., etc.

I am interested to know what your feelings were/are regarding William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III (which was based on his book “Legion” I believe).

But more importantly, I am just curious as to why no one seems to have caught-up to how good it was (in my opinion—I realize you may disagree) so many years later. Was it too long? Was it that the previous sequel was just so bad? Or was it because it was so different from the original film, people just don’t know what to make of it?

To me, you just have to completely divorce yourself from the word “Exorcist” in the title, and look at it as a distinct, original film. The Exorcist is really just back-story here. I always loved how the really scary elements were never actually shown on-screen. Instead, you were more-or-less forced to imagine them in your own mind (although the old lady crawling on the ceiling still makes me uneasy). Plus, the acting quality is obvious. That initial dialogue scene where Detective Kinderman (George C. Scott) “meets” The Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif) in Cell 11, was something marvelous. In fact, I would love to hear your thoughts on that scene in particular.”

Chuck, this is a great question and a timely one indeed, since only recently I read (on The Huffington Post, I believe), commentary from William Friedkin -- a director I deeply admire -- diminishing the Exorcist follow-ups, including Exorcist III.

I do review Exorcist III (1990) in Horror Films of the 1990s, and it probably won’t surprise you to learn that I agree with your contention that it is a superb horror film, and, in fact, a worthy follow-up to The Exorcist (1973).

I write in Horror Films of the 1990s the following about the film:

“Deliberately eschewing flash and hipness, this modest sequel embodies the age-old cinema virtues of seriousness, good performances and spooky atmospherics. When considered together, the elements forge an overriding sense of doom and gloom, of autumn fast approaching, of judgment day on the horizon.

Close-ups of flickering lights, a clock that stops suddenly, and disturbing Christian iconography may not sound like the ingredients of a successful 1990s horror film, and yet such touches contribute mightily to Exorcist III’s aesthetic gravitas, aptly voiced in the film’s exhortation that “the whole world is a homicide victim.”

Indeed, Exorcist III obsesses on an old, aged world, one cracking and tearing at the seams because, once more to quote the intelligent dialogue, “everything’s relative” and there appears to be a worrisome numbing of the globe’s “moral sense.”  As evidence for this assertion, we see the Devil (or at least his minions) seep effortlessly into the ruined bodies of the old and infirm at a grand, gothic Georgetown Hospital…”

I also point out in the same review that the line of dialogue “It’s very late” is repeated in the film twice, and that it seems to be the core idea of the movie: there’s nothing new left on Earth but atrocity and more atrocity, and accordingly, all the characters are grappling with ghosts; ghosts of the past; ghosts of friends, and the ghost, of course, of the Gemini Killer.

For me, Exorcist III works for the very reasons I enumerate there.

It’s as if Kinderman (Scott) and the world itself are exhausted -- even crushed -- by the horrors they witness on a seemingly routine basis.  That exhaustion is spiritual, but also reflected in many characters’ physicality. Scott looks old and drained and tired, as do other performers.  The idea here is that those who have lived a long life in this “rotten” world grow so weak and vulnerable that the Devil uses their doubt…and slips inside them.  It’s a great idea for a horror movie, and an intriguing reflection of the “child possessed” that we see in the original Exorcist.   Here, it’s not someone representing tomorrow who suffers, but someone who has lived through all our (difficult) yesterdays.

The specific scene you discuss -- a lengthy back-and-forth between Kinderman and the Gemini Killer --rewards patience and attention, and works on at least two levels.  The first level is a policeman/suspect interview, of course.  The second level is a spiritual one, involving a mortal and an immortal, a demon, hashing things out.  The performances are strong, as you would expect from Dourif and Scott, but what few critics have mentioned is that this very scene in essence paves the way for many similar sequences in horror films and TV programs throughout the 1990s. 

The lengthy sit-down interview between a law enforcement professional and serial killer who seems more-than (and less-than) human is a dramatic, narrative device that later dominated The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and even one of my all-time favorite shows, Millennium (1996 – 1999).  Sure, there are antecedents other than Exorcist III -- like Michael Mann’s Manhunter in the late 1980s -- but the exact dynamic of serial-killer-possible-demon-in-wait seems to emerge from this particular film.

Why didn’t Exorcist III find more critical acceptance then, in 1990?  And why hasn’t it now?

Back in the 1990s, the old critical guard was still in control of mainstream media, and by-and-large this group treated every sequel as a meritless cash-grab.  The same critics also treated virtually every horror film as “beneath contempt.”

Today, I suspect we’ve gone too far in the other direction, with Internet-based critics bending over to welcome every fan-boy sequel without thought or reflection as to its artistic merit or social value. 

But Exorcist III fit into the pre-existing narrative of “sequels = bad; horror film sequels = worse” and paid the price.  The fact that Boorman’s The Heretic (1977) was also poorly received made the narrative even more appealing, especially to stressed-out reviewers on a deadline.

I also suspect that a core group of horror fans were also disappointed that this sequel didn’t follow in line with more Exorcist-style head spinning and pea soup vomit.  Still, the jolts in Exorcist III are considerable. You mention the old lady on the ceiling, but there’s also that brilliant jump scare involving a distant, cloaked figure emerging suddenly from a patient room to claim a victim.  These jolts, however, are not exactly graphic or gory in nature.  I suspect a certain contingent of Exorcist fans wanted buckets of puke and other nasty manifestations of Old Scratch rather than a quiet, intelligent film about the nature of evil. 

I feel that Exorcist III is more appreciated today than it was on release, but all films possess an historical context that surrounds them like a bubble.  Only few films escape the shape and form of that bubble, or see a re-consideration, after the fact, of their reputation. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is one such film, but so far, Exorcist III hasn’t been hauled out and re-examined as fully.  Writing Horror Films of the 1990s, I also learned that some hardcore horror fans hate the era 1990 – 1999 in film history, and don’t revisit it as frequently as the 1970s or 1980s…or even the 2000s.

Yet I would argue that The Exorcist and Exorcist III actually work rather well in tandem.  By my estimation, The Exorcist works so well because of Friedkin’s documentary-style approach.  The travel sequences in Iraq and the (terrifying…) visit to a metropolitan hospital in 1970s New York enhance the picture’s reality, which comes in handy for the final act, with its levitating beds and other pyrotechnics.

Exorcist III, in a different way, feels like a lengthy philosophical debate about man and mortality.  To some extent, The Exorcist is a visceral experience as a realistic, near-documentary/travelogue, and Exorcist III is a cerebral one, contextualizing the earlier events and shading their meaning more deeply and thoroughly.

I admire both films, to tell you the truth, though for different reasons.

Don’t forget to ask me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com

Friedkin Friday: Nightcrawlers (1985)

Well, this is a little different.

In today's installment of Friedkin Friday, I want to remember William Friedkin's unforgettable (and intense...) twenty-one minute contribution to the 1980s resurrection of The Twilight Zone (1985-1989).

In particular, the man behind cinematic efforts such as The French Connection, Sorcerer, Cruising and The Exorcist directed one of the very best episodes of this often undistinguished re-do, a high-anxiety adaptation of writer Robert R. McCammon's 1984 short story, Nightcrawlers.

The episode was shot by veteran director of photography, Bradford May, and written by series producer Phil De Guere. In the audio commentary for the episode (available on DVD), both men remember Friedkin as difficult, demanding, and yet also inspiring to work with.

Nightcrawlers depicts a compelling and nightmarish story set at a small diner just off the highway...a perfect setting for The Twilight Zone. It is blackest night -- with incessant rain pounding -- as the tale commences. A cocky police trooper (Jimmy Whitmore Jr.) who avoided service in Vietnam enters the diner, recounting to a waitress and the cook a harrowing story about the bloody aftermath of a strange motel shoot-out. He's clearly shaken by what he's seen.

As more travelers (including a family...) seek solace from the violent storm, events in the diner take a weird turn. A nervous man named Price (Scott Paulin) arrives...and is almost immediately revealed to be highly disturbed. He's a Vietnam veteran, you see, and was once part of an elite unit called "Nightcrawlers." Price was traumatized by one particular night mission against Charlie, one which cost the lives of several American soldiers. That night's horrific events remain so resonant with Price that he has developed an unusual power: the ability to manifest his terrible memories...in the flesh.

When Price sleeps (or is unconscious for any reason...) his violent nightmares of 'Nam are granted substance...and then run amok (which accounts for the motel massacre). Price and the trooper don't get along, and after a verbal confrontation, the trooper knocks Price out. His unconscious state paves the way for a violent dream that transforms this 1980s diner into a jungle landscape...one wherein armed soldiers are on a brutal mission to...kill everyone. The episode culminates with a maelstrom of destruction and gun-fire, and the chilling promise that other veterans like Price are out there.. ones with the same destructive "power" and memories.

Boasting a heavily de-saturated and grainy look (the contrast was adjusted by Friedkin himself, according to the commentary), this is a Twilight Zone episode that looks more like Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre than it does the average installment of a popular TV series. This is an appropriate touch, because we're subconsciously reminded of authentic Vietnam War footage, and the grainy look it often boasted.

Utilizing just one set (the diner), Friedkin builds escalating tension by focusing on two visual flourishes; ones that he often deploys in his films: insert shots (to create a sense of detail, mood and texture), and extreme close-ups (to draw us into the world and troubles of the characters). On the former front, we get a tour of the diner's seemingly mundane terrain (including coffee cups filled with steaming coffee, cigarette lighters and the like). On the latter front, we are treated to a sustained, highly-upsetting close-up of the mad Price: red-eyed and psychotic; and growing ever more upset. This shot lasts a long time -- beyond all reason, actually -- and is highly disturbing. Friedkin's decision to hold the close-up (in conjunction with Paulin's committed performance) sells thoroughly the notion of this man's insanity.

The theme underlying Nightcrawlers is that for the men -- the American soldiers -- who witnessed atrocities and horrors in the Vietnman War, the conflict is never truly over. This notion was just bubbling to the surface when this episode of The Twilight Zone was made. It entered the American lexicon during the Reagan 80s as "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" (or PTSD) and never left, although a similar syndrome had once been known as "shell shock." Still, the idea was that we had a generation of men "coming home" in the late 1970s who had seen such horrible things, -- who had done such horrible things -- that they could never again lead what we non-combatants consider a normal life. And worse, their problems were being ignored by the government, the citizenry, and even the majority of the media.

Remember what Freud stated so memorably: that "the repressed" returns as "symptoms." Nightcrawlers makes literal that notion. The only way Price can "exorcise" the demons of Vietnam is to produce those vivid demons in our reality. In much the same way (though less fantastical), there are some Vietnam veterans who lashed out with intense violence against their families and co-workers. So what we have in Nightcrawlers is a genre metaphor for PTSD, down to the idea that - if left unexorcised - the violence unleashed in Vietnam will claim more victims here at home. Given the situation occurring in Iraq today, this metaphor is relevant in 2008.

Producer/writer De Guere thoughtfully describes Nightcrawlers as "one disturbing piece of television," and he's spot-on. In 1985, when this episode aired, violence as depicted here was not the norm either on the tube or on the silver screen. I'm surprised it got on the air as is (especially since the climax is highly destructive...). Also, remember, this episode pre-dates high profile Vietnam-themed efforts such as Platoon (1986) and Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987).

From the opening close-up of pounding rain to the anxiety-provoking visual distraction of bright lightning flashes and intermittent electrical black-outs, Friedkin makes this installment of The Twilight Zone feel authentically like an unpredictable powder-keg; one always on the verge of exploding. The personal fire-works between the highway trooper and Price are balanced well by the real (and disturbing) fireworks in the climax. The episode also generates a ubiquitous mood of deep unease (one of Friedkin's specialties, I'd say).

Yet what renders Nightcrawlers truly a landmark show is the manner in which Friedkin visualizes the tale's underlying theme: that horrors suppressed or ignored (or even belittled by chickenhawks), are horrors that bubble to the surface and threaten the safety of all of us. Friedkin -- so famous for his cinematic exploration of demonic exorcism - here suggests that we are possessed by a different sort of demon, a national one. And furthermore, that it must be reckoned with honestly if it is to be expelled.

Friedkin Friday: Jade (1995)

In the early 1990s, outspoken screenwriter Joe Eszterhas was the toast of Hollywood.

The writer behind the mega-hit Basic Instinct (1992) quickly became the highest-paid screenwriter in history, not to mention one of the most controversial. And for good reason. His scripts enthusiastically blended brutal violence with lurid sex, and his outlook on women was either blatantly misogynist or extremely feminist, depending on your interpretation. Plus his movies often featured craven bi-sexuals and lesbians.

Lots of lesbians.

Eszterhas contributed further "erotic" thrillers -- such as Sliver (1993) -- to Hollywood's revival and re-interpretation of the film noir aesthetic...but with pumped-up, acrobatic sex scenes, macho dialogue, and strange murders aplenty. The result? Suddenly, cineplexes were jammed-packed with so-called "sexy" thrillers like Madonna's (atrocious) Body of Evidence (1993), the equally-moribund Whispers in the Dark (1992) and the uninspiring Final Analysis (1992).

However, by the half-way point of the Age of Clinton (1995), the trend had burned itself out, just like the hot candle wax poured on Willem Dafoe's privates by Madonna in Body of Evidence. Eszterhas's remarkable fortunes were notably reversed, and the writer shepherded two notorious bombs to theaters, the ridiculous and campy (though extremely enjoyable...) Showgirls [1994]) and the dead-on-arrival William Friedkin film, Jade (1995).

The outline -- the outline, mind you -- of Jade was purchased by Paramount's Sherry Lansing (Friedkin's wife) for a whopping 2.5 million dollars. The final film, however, was a Waterloo for all involved. Jade only grossed ten million dollars against a fifty million dollar budget, and was almost universally critically-reviled. Most of the animosity, however, was directed at Ezsterhas's turgid script rather than Friedkin's direction. It's also clear in retrospect that Jade - although no masterpiece (and not in the same class as Sorcerer, Cruising or To Live and Die in L.A.) -- suffered from a double backlash that had little to do with the specifics of the film itself.

First, critics were still gunning for the by-now millionaire celebrity writer, Ezsterhas, desiring to punish him for his egregious success (and his fall from grace, with Showgirls). I'm not sure why this is the case, but many critics love to take down someone "big" who picks a bad project, or who, after previous successes, makes a less-successful film (see: Kevin Costner, Ben Affleck, M. Night Shymalan, and currently...George Lucas.)

Secondly, Jade starred David Caruso, a talent Friedkin once described in an interview (with Charlie Rose) as "the new Steve McQueen." As you may recall, Caruso walked away from a starring role in the highly-successful Steve Bochco TV series NYPD Blue after one (admittedly glorious) season, and critics and audiences interpreted his departure after so brief a spell as one of supreme arrogance and ingratitude. Caruso was also duly punished for his sins: both films he made in 1995, Kiss of Death and Jade, suffered ignoble deaths at the box office. People were angry with Caruso, and his film career evaporated because of it.

Again, none of this historical background is meant to imply or suggest that Jade isn't responsible for its own trespasses; only that - starting out - this critically-derided William Friedkin film had two big strikes against it. Still, Jade might have weathered the twin Eszterhas/Caruso backlash had it been a stronger, better-written film. As it stands, it suffers from a confusing, underwhelming climax, and all the touches we now typically associate with an Eszterhas script.

In other words, Jade feels ugly, leering, and crass. The particular details of the film's narrative are so luridly shocking (a millionaire collects pubic hair trophies of his sexual conquests! The prostitute known as Jade is famous for taking it...uh...the Greek Way!) that we're momentarily distracted from the fact that the characters have little (or no...) depth and that the story is muddled beyond belief.

All of these problems are present and accounted for in Basic Instinct too, by the way, but Verhoeven directed that film with a zealous, even bombastic sense of voyeurism, one bordering on circus-like, and in the lead role Sharon Stone proved herself a game, self-aware ringmaster, a hyper-femme fatale for the ages. Jerry Goldsmith's score evoked Hitchcock, and with her patented Ice Princess act, Stone's character could be traced directly back to Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958). Even if the film wasn't authentically Hitchcockian in technique and meticulous plotting, it felt enough like Hitchcock to pass muster in March of 1992.

But William Friedkin isn't Paul Verhoeven in either style or temperament.

Verhoeven has proven to be at his best as a wicked social satirist, in efforts such as RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997). By contrast, Friekdin is a more gloomy, realistic, existentialist director; one who tends to ruminate on heavier matters. To Live and Die in L.A. and The French Connection both draw a profound moral equivalency between obsessive cops and their criminal quarry. Sorcerer obsesses on the fickle whimsy of fate, and The Exorcist deals with the idea that true evil dwells in this world. In Jade, it's clear that Friedkin is examining something else that fascinates him, in this case, sexual jealousy, and the manner in which people either exorcise it, or hide it from society.

The film noir format has always concerned "the underneath," the simmering, ignoble motives that drive a man to desperation; to commit a crime; to fall in love with the wrong woman; or to kill an enemy. Friedkin, in crafting Jade, utilizes the leitmotif of "the mask" to explore that duality of the surface world and the underneath; to plumb the depths of public/private faces.

One of the first shots in the film, for instance, involves a slow, menacing (and beautifully orchestrated) glide up a long, elegant stairway The camera's prey is -- no surprise here -- a dark black mask on display at the top of that staircase. We seem to steadily approach the empty eye slits of the ebony mask, as if the camera wants us to put it on ourselves. Later, evidence found at a crime scene includes a bloodied mask of another kind, a fertility mask. Critic Bob Stephens, writing for The San Francisco Examiner made clever note of the preponderance of masks in Jade:

"CEREMONIAL AND psychological masks dominate William Friedkin's most recent film, "Jade," which is set in San Francisco. In Friedkin's intriguing murder mystery, we encounter the menacing fertility masks of primitive cultures, colorful masks in the celebratory Chinese New Year parade, opaque public personas and the "masks" of identities assumed in hedonistic sexual activities. In "Jade" people are not what they appear to be; with each new revelation of a homicide investigation, the relationships of politicians, legal agencies and three friends change drastically."

Indeed. Jade's story is one in which masks play a crucial role, and which the truth underneath those masks shocks, surprises and confounds. The film's narrative centers around San Francisco's assistant district attorney, David Corelli (David Caruso) as he investigates the stunning and brutal murder of a local philanthropist. The eccentric man died in a compromising position and the one of the few clues as to the identity of the perpetrator involves his collection of pubic hair snippets from sexual conquests. Yes, you read that right.

One such pubic hair snippet apparently belongs to a mysterious high-class prostitute called Jade. Jade's real identity is unknown, but as the case deepens, Corelli draws closer to finding her, and the murderer too. The case leads Corelli to an investigation of California's governor (Richard Crenna), one of Jade's clients. More disturbingly, it leads Corelli straight to his best friends from college -- Matt (Chazz Palminteri) and Trina (Linda Fiorentino) Gavin -- a high-powered married couple living in San Francisco. Matt is a ruthless attorney, and Trina is a clinical psychologist. That very day, Trina happened to visit the murder victim. She offers a plausible explanation for the social call, but her fingerprints are soon found on the murder weapon: a ceremonial hatchet.

David also finds a cuff link at the scene of the crime, and it too is a crucial clue. Meanwhile, the police (led by Michael Biehn) zero in on Trina. Adding to the cloud of guilt surrounding her, she writes successfully (and gives lectures...) about an issue in "the changing workplace." In particular, Trina discusses how it is important to "distinguish between someone who's had a bad day that ends in a temper tantrum and someone whose failure to resist aggressive impulses results in serious destructive acts."

What happens when people are "no longer able to control their urges?"

According to Trina, "they disassociate from their own actions, often experiencing an hysterical blindness." "They're blind," she establishes, "...to the darkness within themselves."

In most movies of this type, Trina's psycho-babble dialogue would prove a sort of explanation of the killer's motive or mind-set. What separates Jade from the sleazy erotic-thriller pack, and what marks it as a Friedkin film, is that Trina's description covers literally every character in the film.

To wit: Trina leads a double life as Jade -- the hooker every man wants to be with. Her husband Matt...well, if you've seen the movie, you know just how "dark" he is. He's an amoral lawyer and a monstrous, cruel husband, and worse, doesn't even practice foreplay. David himself is pretty dark, threatening the district attorney in order to stay on the Jade case (and gain a political foothold, perhaps, in S.F.).

Michael Biehn's character has secrets too...his public face hides a dark, private one.. As for the governor, he has orchestrated a massive conspiracy to cover his sexual dalliance, all the while maintaining a smile and a laconic demeanor. The "masks" people wear in public, we see, are the masks that allow them to - in Trina's vernacular -"disassociate" themselves from their urges, their moral failings, their monstrous deeds.

As in the best examples of the film noir genre, in Jade it's not merely a few bad apples who are corrupt...it is the world itself that is twisted and perverse. And that tenet certainly fits in with the gritty nihilism we've detected in Friedkin's other cinematic works. There's a great shot in the film, early on, that seems to express visually this conceit. At a ritzy San Francisco party, an empty tuxedo jacket hovers near the ceiling, over the revellers, social climbers and wannabes - the "haves and the have mores." As the shot suggests, they're all sort of empty suits, devoid of morality and social purpose beyond hedonism and self-aggrandizement. On the soundtrack, "Isn't it Romantic?" plays ironically.

So, is Jade misogynist or feminist? Well, the film concerns a woman subjugated and enslaved by her callous, two-timing husband, who - while donning her mask of disassociation -- steps out on her marriage to experience sexual pleasures with other men. This act may make Jade/Trina immoral, but it certainly doesn't make her a monster.

Again, this is made clear through Friedkin's savvy staging of a scene involving Matt and Trina making love. Matt mounts Trina without any foreplay whatsoever, and selfishly - and painfully - has very brief sex with her (I was going to write "makes love to her" but that was clearly the wrong phrase). For the duration of this act, Friedkin's camera remains on Trina's face; in relatively tight shot. A tear falls down her cheek. We detect on Trina's face a flurry of conflicting emotions. There's physical pain; there's emotional hurt; and then the mask returns. The staging -- close on Trina -- makes us feel the pain too and helps us understand that although she may make questionable moral decisions, she's hardly the film's villain. I don't believe the film is misogynist because "Jade" (unlike Catherine Trammell) is not a loopy psycho-killer. Her worst transgression is the search for sexual satisfaction outside of marriage. True, she takes that quest a bit far...but it is mostly the men in Jade who are the monsters.

I would also argue that the film isn't exactly feminist. Jade -- like all the other characters in the film -- dons the public "mask" of propriety while shedding it in private. Just because she's a woman, she's not automatically better than the men. The movie doesn't exactly approve of her of what she's done. In fact, Jade doesn't exactly approve of herself or what she's done. There's one mask in the film even she is ashamed to wear: that of a stocking pulled tight over her face, while a sexual partner screws her from behind. This moment occurs during a sleazy hotel room tryst, and the stocking makes Jade's face look deformed, distorted...even piggish. This is where Jade draws the line; where her ability to "disassociate" fails, and even she feels exploited.

Jade is a thoroughly fascinating film, but ultimately a somewhat unsatisfying and opaque one. Friedkin wants to examine the characters and ideas here with some depth, but the script rarely affords him the opportunity to go beyond the superficial, except in his choice of images. And the final revelatory scene raises more questions than it answers. For instance, if the killer of the philanthropist is whom the script tells us he is, then why the ritualistic nature of that murder? Why would the culprit -- as fingered by the screenplay -- arrange the body in such a fashion? It makes no sense in terms of motivation, in terms of narrative, and in terms of character. It's in that moment you realize how poorly-constructed the film's screenplay is; despite the interesting themes that occasionally make it tantalizing or alluring.

"The frustrating thing about Jade," wrote critic Carlo Cavagna, "is that it proves Friedkin still has it."

Cavagna goes on to explain: "The drawn-out opening sequence, a build-up to a murder during which the camera drifts through an opulent mansion filled with valuable artwork, including several eerie masks, is masterful. The signature of the artist who made The Exorcist is unmistakable. Moreover, the protracted car chase an hour into the film is nearly the equal of Friedkin's exceptional car chases in The French Connection and To Live and Die in L.A., and recalls similarly stomach-lurching work by John Frankenheimer in The French Connection II and Ronin. The secret seems to lie in not overdoing the action and instead allowing the intensity of the actors to play into the scene, while at the same time putting a camera in the car to show the fracas from the driver's perspective."

There are some good points made there and I agree with them to a large extent. Jade occasionally struts with a sense of anticipatory dread and foreboding that is hard to dismiss. And Linda Fiorentino -- star of a fantastic film noir called The Last Seduction (1994) -- is beguiling in the film. Nonetheless, I prefer Friedkin in a more "gritty" and realistic mode (The French Connection or Sorcerer). The expressionistic editing with jolts and subliminal flashes -- a new style when Jade vetted it in 1995 -- has, alas, become boring de rigueur these days and just adds to the triteness of the story.

I also enjoy the Chinatown chase scene -- or what Friedkin calls an "anti-chase" scene since it involves cars stopped by traffic for long intervals -- but as skillful as it is from a purely technical perspective, this sequence doesn't cover any new ground for this artist. Before Jade, we already knew that Friedkin could stage, direct and edit a brilliant car chase. The impression here is that the director is searching -- desperately searching -- for some way to make the risible screenplay more engaging and punchy.

That Friedkin succeeds in that difficult quest with both his "masks" motif and his adrenaline-inducing car chase is a testament to his talent. At the very least, this film is intriguing. Jade may still be a mediocre film, but it's worth at least one viewing if you enjoy film noir, not to mention the spectacle of a great director working around a script to make his points with crafty visuals.

Friedkin Friday: Sorcerer (1977)

In the mid-1970s, William Friedkin -- a director at the top of his game following such box-office blockbusters as The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973) -- led an international cast and crew (headlined by Roy Scheider) deep into the jungle to make his next feature. It was a remake of the 1953 Yves Montand film, The Wages of Fear, but re-titled Sorcerer for modern consumption.

The film was plagued by myriad difficulties: the first director of photography got fired half-way through, Friedkin reportedly didn't get along well with star Scheider (he'd wanted Steve McQueen for the lead...), and the movie went dramatically over budget (ballooning in cost from 15 to 21 million)

The film's luck didn't improve with the timing of the premiere. Sorcerer was released in the summer of 1977 - the summer of a little movie called Star Wars -- and not surprisingly, this gritty and realistic Friedkin effort promptly bombed with critics and audiences, grossing less than 10 million at the box office.

However, thanks to the advent of home video in the 1980s, Sorcerer has earned a cult following over the last few decades, and has recently been excavated for serious study by a new generation of film scholars. Many critics now insist this is Friedkin's "lost masterpiece," (an opinion the director reportedly shares), and one that suffered unduly from the fact that it didn't fit in with a surprise shift in movie trends (from anti-heroes like Dirty Harry, Harry Caul, and Popeye Doyle to more innocent "nostalgia" fare like Star Wars).

Sorcerer depicts the gritty, unromantic story of four men, all from different countries, who - because of fate's whimsy - end up together in an unnamed South American country taking on a very dangerous assignment...for the money. One man is an assassin, having arrived from a job in Vera Cruz. Another is a Palestinian bomber, escaped from Israel. A French man named Serrano -- one involved in fraud -- is the third man. Finally, American Jack Scanlon from Queens (Roy Scheider), who was recently involved (and injured) in a robbery, is our last protagonist, though I use that term loosely here.

These four anti-heroes - taciturn, secretive and dangerous - have been selected (after proving their driving skills...) by an oil company man to transport two trucks worth of damaged dynamite to a raging oil fire some two-hundred miles distant. The dynamite is so volatile, however (the nitroglycerin is actually leaking...) it can't be flown to the site by helicopter or plane.

Instead, the four men (two to a truck), drive old vehicles (named "Sorcerer" and "Lazaro") across the most treacherous jungle landscape you can imagine in hopes of collecting 8,000 pesos. Among the colorful obstacles: a suspension bridge with several floor planks missing (traversed by the trucks - naturally - during floods and a pounding rain storm), armed guerrillas, fallen trees, and more.

In the end, just one man survives the journey, but it turns out he's a marked man anyway, fate having long ago conspired against the entire quartet; the survivor included.

I've written in previous Friedkin Friday entries about this director's uncanny penchant (and skill) in creating narratives that feel very authentic; a quality I connect with the artist's early history making documentaries. What enlivens Sorcerer so powerfully is the "reality" of death that Friedkin crafts in the film. What I mean by this statement is that the violence is sudden, shocking, brief and utterly horrifying. It's a punctuation, not a sentence; a burst of terror, not a sustained fireworks show. There's nothing glamorous or stereotypically Hollywood about how the violence is portrayed, and so when brutal things happen, it's actually traumatic.

For instance, a car accident early in the film is staged with stunning ferocity and accuracy (reportedly a dozen cars were pulped before Friedkin was satisfied with how it looked), and the accident leaves a lingering impact on the psyche. Roy Scheider -- the getaway driver -- escapes the scene, a chaotic wreckage of metal, blood, water and (stolen) money.

Later, an explosion at an oil well is just as jarring and upsetting. It's not a typical movie explosion, but something horrific, gruesome and bracing. This style of filmmaking is disturbing, to be certain, but it raises the stakes and helps to make the movie extremely suspenseful. Here, violent actions have consequences and it's a bloody, ugly world.

Which brings us to another quality of the film: a finely etched sense of place; of location. In the South American (fictional) country where the bulk of the film occurs, Friedkin spares us nothing. We see squalor. We see poverty. We see death and desperation. This is appropriate, pf course, because all four protagonists are desperate men...where else can they go? Their last stop before death is a kind of purgatory; a miserable place where they hope to escape and start again.

The exceptional location detail (no studio work here...) also serves to hone some of Friedkin's underlying thematic points. In one unbelievably affecting and upsetting scene, Friedkin depicts rioting locals as they receive their dead following the fire at the American oil well. The corpses are wrapped (barely) in plastic. and hoisted off a pick-up truck, where they are left to the mourning families. The feeling here is not of a specific country per se, but of the authentic "Third World" in general, and specifically the manner that America (and American companies) exploit the resources (and people) there to line their own pockets. When these people die, they are dying for pennies...but it's the only work in town. This is also an important clue as to the nature of the oil company...and what it will do (or won't do...) to save money.

The first half of Sorcerer lingers a bit long on elaborate introductions of each of the four anti-heroes (in Vera Cruz, Jerusalem, Paris and New Jersey), before they arrive at their community fate in the jungle, but the last half of the film is a whopper: a series of tour-de-force set-pieces that will push you to the edge of your seat. One set-piece, involving nitroglycerin and a fallen tree, is handled brilliantly with a minimum of dialogue and some good performances, but the absolute show-stopper (pictured on the movie poster above...) is the crossing of that rickety old suspension bridge; water raging below; wind blowing it from side to side like a swing; rain falling incessantly. It's here that Friedkin is able to visualize and enunciate some of the core idea of the film most successfully, particularly that no one can escape fate; and perhaps more importantly; no one can explain fate.

Two trucks (carrying the unstable substance...) must pass across this bridge, in relatively short order. Four men aboard two trucks. Nature against them. Fate against them. The tension mounts to a mind-blowing level as natural debris blows across the bridge, as the floor planks buckle, as the bridge sways from side to side and a truck starts to list, then actually tip over, 10 degrees...20 degrees... Then the rope holding-up the bridge starts slowly - ever so slowly - to fray. And all the while, nestled in the rear of the truck is that unstable dynamite, just ready to explode if the truck takes too big a bump.

How can I put this so it won't sound like hyperbole? This is an absolutely amazing, heart-stopping sequence, and even if you don't like William Friedkin, you should see Sorcerer just for this virtuoso scene. Hitchcock couldn't have staged it better. It's the reason we see films: to be thrilled; to be captivated; to bite our nails. I haven't seen a great scene like this in a movie in a long, long time...it will absolutely jangle your nerves. Kathryn couldn't stay sitting down on the sofa while it continued, and continued, and continued...because it is absolutely nail-biting not just in intensity, but in the way it builds to a crescendo.

Some survive the truck trip in Sorcerer, some don't, but what I find most fascinating about the film is that even at the end of the hellish ride, there is no sense of release; no feeling of catharsis. Looking like a zombie (and clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress), the final survivor -- sans a vehicle of any kind -- carries the last box of dynamite to the oil well in his tired arms, barely able to walk. He is white-faced, ghostly. And the camp he walks into is Hell itself, a giant plume of apricot flame illuminating the night forest and night sky. This character survives the journey, but the end of the film makes plain that fate has marked him, just like his dead compatriots.

And that death is catching up with him. Fast. He is a zombie. He died before he began the trip. Someone else saw to that.

Sorcerer transmits this plot point without dialogue, without explanation. You have to pay close attention to the last moments of the film to understand what is going to happen to this man; and the conspiracy that has risen up around him to prevent him from collecting his hard-earned money. There's no indication of this is what is said; only in the images, and in Friedkin's ruthless compositions and editing.

Why is this movie called "Sorcerer?" For the truck? Well, Friedkin has stated that in this film fate is the "sorcerer," wielding it's terrifying magic, and that notion - of fate as sinister, mysterious, inscrutable wizard - is what ultimately makes this a movie worth remembering. Why do some people survive? Why are some obstacles traversed while others are not? Why do some people die when they do? Why do others survive? Why do...tires blow out at inopportune times? How has destiny marked these men? How does it mark us?

There are no answers in this existentialist, gritty adventure. There are no heroes, either. And definitely no happy endings.

In the final analysis, ironically, it was fate that also played a cruel trick on this film (not to mention Friedkin, whose career as an A-list director never fully recovered from Sorcerer's failure with critics and audiences). Yep...a celebrated director crafted a brilliant, timeless adventure film, one true to the spirit of the reigning 1970s anti-heroes, but as it turns out, people were watching space princesses, wookies and light saber duels. Who saw that coming?

Friedkin Friday: Cruising (1980)

Our sophomore (and Google-delayed...) entry in my Friedkin Friday celebration of director William Friedkin brings us to a controversial -- and highly bracing -- cinematic effort called Cruising. This uneasy, deeply unsettling police procedural (which disappeared quickly from theaters in 1980...) is one of Friedkin's most notorious and much-derided films; one that - now shorn of Reagan Era controversy - has only recently been excavated and re-evaluated by some critics. It deserves the re-evaluation because the film doesn't just "cruise" the world it investigates, it inhabits that world...and it makes us inhabit it too. Whether you like it or not, this film is deeply immersive and involving, and so, in the final analysis, it should be judged a success.

Based on a 1970 novel by New York Times reporter Gerald Walker, the movie's narrative involves a series of brutal homicides in the Big Apple's gay S&M/leather scene, and a police officer named Burns (Al Pacino) who goes undercover to investigate the monstrous crimes. The film itself establishes that this particular life-style is not "in the mainstream of gay life" but rather a subset, a so-called "world unto itself."

Despite this ready distinction spelled out in the film's screenplay, New York City's gay community at the time was very worried about how it would be presented in Friedkin's film. The Village Voice feared Friedkin would create "the most oppressive, ugly, bigoted look at homosexuality ever presented on the screen," and admonished activists to scuttle the filmmaking in any way they could. Protesters wielded mirrors to interfere with lighting; and even fired air horns during exterior shooting to render sequences unusable. Several hundred gay rights activists marched in the East Village, hoping to convince Mayor Koch to sever ties to Friedkin and his production.

While some forces in the community mobilized to stop Friedkin, others supported his work. Forever the documentarian, Friedkin insisted that his film depict the specifics of the leather/S&M scene accurately, and he wrangled support from such fetish bars as Mine Shaft, The Cockpit, and Anvil. He was able to shoot lengthy sequences at those real locations, and film real patrons as "extras." The people -- and the behavior -- you see dramatized in the film is thus reasonably authentic. Nothing is staged or phony -- not costumes; not the crowds, not even "Police Night" -- and that fact alone injects Cruising with a high degree of "you are there" immediacy.

You may not always want to watch what goes on in these bars; but you won't be easily able to turn away from the male-on-male bacchanalia either. Friedkin has assured that fact with his trademark attention to detail and fine understanding of film grammar. For "Cruising" is not merely the title of the film, it's the act that we - as viewers (or tourists...) -- are asked to undertake in engaging the narrative.

Friedkin makes this link between us and the leather bar patrons virtually unavoidable by staging a number of first-person-subjective P.O.V. shots in which the "cruisers" walk by us -- slow down -- gaze at the camera, and size us up. It's actually rather intimidating, truth be told, but the point is established visually about what these patrons desire; what they seek; and how they covet it. One of the reasons I go to see films (or queue films, these days...) is to experience some aspect of the world that is alien to me. On these grounds, Cruising certainly satisfies, even if there is some deeply uncomfortable (and predatory...) aspect about the rampant sexuality on display here. It leads one to consider male sexuality; and especially male sexuality in the total absence of female sexuality. I discussed these subjective P.O.V. shots with Kathryn, wondering if they were overdone and exaggerated, and asked her if she thought that men looked at women this way too -- this brazenly -- and she said yes. Absolutely. All the time.

Another way that Cruising lives up to the title is by exposing the viewers to "the regulars" of this urban leather scene. Watch the movie closely -- very closely -- and you will begin to detect familiar faces amidst the pack. The regulars. The people who appear more than once, in more than one guise, and in more than one location. As critic Bob Stephens wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle: "Cruising is not only a hunt within a hunt, but a film that is obsessed with entrances and exits. It's a movie with a vast undercurrent of restlessness, of people looking for a satiating experience, looking anywhere, everywhere. Men constantly go in and out of erotic clubs, tunnels in the park, rented rooms, private booths in porn shops and, in the officer's case, the inadequate refuge of his girlfriend's apartment."

He's right, and the important thing for the movie is that it is the same group of men doing that seeking (Burns included). Sometimes they are revealed in flash cuts, or sometimes depicted in long shots; or often even in shadows during impenetrable night. Yet after a time, your eyes seek out these familiar men, wondering if they are suspects or simply innocents...but recognizing them nonetheless. Friedkin, in populating his crowd scenes with a series of familiar faces, has truly taken his audience cruising with him. In other words, he's training our eyes to work in the same fashion as these men's eyes work. Amidst the blaring punk rock, the leather gear and the predatory looks, our eyes covet a safe harbor. We are hunting. That's the very thing that the killer trades on; the risky hunt, the search for something dangerous...but with somebody who is safe.

The result of Friedkin's impressive and rigorous charting of this world is, in the words of critic Nathan Lee, "a film that is a heady, horny flashback to the last gasp of full-blown sexual abandon, and easily the most graphic depiction of gay sex ever seen in a mainstream movie. Filmed in such legendary bars as the Ramrod, Anvil, Mine Shaft, and Eagle's Nest (the latter two eventually barred Friedkin from the premises), Cruising is a lurid fever dream of popper fumes, color-coded pocket hankies, hardcore disco frottage, and Crisco-coated forearms."

After that colorful and graphic description, you will likely know whether this film is your cup of tea or not, right? Yet in fairness, Cruising is more than that. It is also a fascinating mystery, a thriller in the "undercover cop" milieu, and an Orphean journey into a Dionyson underworld of wild sexual ritual that is both exceptionally drawn and very, very tense. In part, this sense of anxiety arises because the film has landed Steve Burns (Al Pacino) in a strange world where he is alone and without help of any kind. As the screenplay puts it: he's "up a creek without a paddle" and has nowhere to turn.

In an early scene, Burns is called into the police chief's (Paul Sorvino's) office and asked some very slap-in-the-face questions, some very personal questions. "Have you ever had your cock sucked by another man?" "Ever been porked?" Why Burns readily takes this particular undercover assignment (an open-ended assignment in the leather community that could essentially last forever...) is another question all together, and the answer to that mystery is one that the film only teases; but never fully articulates.

For instance, Burns warns his girlfriend (Karen Allen) "there's a lot about me you don't know," an indicator that - perhaps - just perhaps - Burns may already be inclined towards the very lifestyle he's been assigned to investigate. In fact, a case could be made that there are two killers at work simultaneously in Cruising: the one that Pacino is hunting (a murderous man who has deep-seated "father issues" and who stabs his homosexual victims...), and also the one who is dumping severed body parts in the East River. The film establishes early on that these murderers have a very different m.o., but a harried metropolitan police department (anticipating the Democratic National Convention...) is too busy, too overwhelmed, to differentiate between them. Many critics who first screened the film in 1980 did not even realize that there is a high probability of two killers at work; and lumped all the film's murders under one umbrella; under one culprit (just like the police). I submit, however, that there are two murderers at work in the film; and at work in the S&M community.

And one of them may very well be Pacino's character, Burns.

My evidence? First, the film establishes at some length how Burns resembles many of the men being murdered (like he is trying to stamp out himself and his unacceptable urges...). In fact, the very reason Burns gets this assignment in the first place is because of his distinct physical resemblance to the victims. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Burns gay friend, an aspiring playwright portrayed by Don Scardino (a gay man who is not a sadomasochist by the way...) is found brutally murdered at the film's climax. Ask yourself after watching the film: who killed him and why? And why exactly did a worked-up Burns go to Scardino's apartment and get into an entirely unnecessarily scuffle with his volatile partner (James Remar)? In asking these questions, one begins to peel back the deeper, more subtle levels of the enigmatic narrative; the story within a story.

Many reviewers have complained that the character of Burns' is the film's biggest drawback; and that his motives and concerns remain elusive, opaque. For me, that's one of the key components making Cruising a great film. As viewers, we never understand Burns' ready involvement in this case; nor do we comprehend some of his actions and reactions. In the novel, Burns was rather definitively a bigot; but not so here (at least not visibly...). Instead, Pacino plays Burns as something of a question-mark, a man who is apparently a ready traveler (note the scene in the hotel where cops bust in on him...) but who - unbeknownst to us - may already have selected his destination. I believe this ambiguous approach was the right tack for Friedkin to adopt because it's so much better dramatically if our tour-guide isn't an entirely known quantity; with one foot in this world and one foot outside it. If he were totally immersed in the leather scene (to our knowledge) we might have a hard time identifying with Burns. As it stands, we can watch the whole film following Burns, and still wonder if he is guilty of murder when the film ends.

Watch Cruising closely, and you will see one particularly crucial shot repeated. It's a long exterior shot, set at night, that consists of a man in a leather jacket (who could be Pacino - or who might not be...) making his way into a leather bar. The first time the shot appears, this man goes into a bar alone and his entrance occurs immediately following a shot of corrupt policeman forcing sexual favors from two gay street walkers. There is an explicit connection between the two shots. Friedkin pans from the patrol car where the crime is taking place, to a shot of that mystery man walking into the bar. The second time (and final time) the shot occurs, it is very near the end of the film; after the murderer has been caught; the crimes solved. But make no mistake: it's the same man; going back to the same bar. Why show him again?

This is perhaps the most important shot in the film, even if we do not know who precisely that figure is. If he's Pacino/Burns, then we must assume Burns is the second killer, and that his "cruising" of the sadomasochistic scene began long before his involvement in the official case. On the other hand if this figure is the second killer - and a stranger to us - then he is still free - and free to kill - after the investigation has been officially closed.

More than likely, this figure's specific identity is unimportant. Rather he serves as a symbol; a symbol of the danger that lurks when repression, fear, and self-hatred become inseparable mingled with rampant sexual desire. Friedkin and his team could not have known it at the time, but danger of another form (not homicidal) certainly became manifest around this very sub-culture just a few short years after Cruising, when AIDS decimated the community. It is unearthly and strange and very scary how this film seems to foreshadow that tragedy; how it seems to knowingly portray a dark, sad, cynical and empty world on the verge of annihilation. For make no mistake, there is no real love or sense of connection here. Something else is being sought...

Critics have been harsh. "This is a thoroughly unpleasant film," wrote critic James Kendrick for the Q Network Entertainment Portal. "For anyone of any sexual orientation who takes pride in fidelity, the scenes that take place in S&M bars bearing such enticing names as "The Cockpit" and "Ramrod" are positively repulsive. One can see why some of the mainstream gay critics in 1980 were horrified that a large segment of the population would see this film and incorrectly assume that all homosexuals behave in this manner."

Honestly, he's correct in one sense. Cruising can be quite unpleasant and ugly at times. The unfettered, raw male sexuality here...isn't pretty. But as Kendrick himself also notes, this "leather" lifestyle did exist and does exist. And Friedkin's work shouldn't be reviewed on the basis of how people misperceived the movie. Cruising is never homophobic, and in fact takes special care not to appear anti-gay at all. "I didn't come onto this job to shitcan guys just because they are gay," Burns notes at one point. Also, there's the notation I made mention of earlier, when Sorvino establishes this is clearly not "the mainstream" of gay culture. Artists can't be held accountable for how people receive their art; only for their intention in creating the art, I submit.

In creating his "art" in this fashion, Friedkin was making a point, no doubt. He was accurately depicting this world (down to the music in the clubs), and if it is judged ugly by those dwelling outside of it -- so be it. He was observing; and letting us decide what to make of it. He leaves us to decide the "why" of it. This even-handed approach goes right to the core of the film. Is Burns just a good cop investigating a crime? Or is there an underneath here?

Cruising has been interpreted in many ways, which speaks volumes about Friedkin's skill at creating a meaningful work of art. Some critics believe that it attempts to forge a connection, a link, between gays and homicidal behavior (an interpretation I reject); some people believe it is about the repressed gay desire lurking inside a straight man (certainly a possibility; especially given the presence of the subplot with Allen); and some see it as merely a layered murder mystery set in the world of leather bars. I tend to see a more global argument here about where our society was in 1980. I believe Friedkin is actually commenting on how fearful the straight world is of open displays of homosexuality. Look at the headlines in the film which blare "Homo Killer on the Prowl," or the hatred for gays demonstrated by the corrupt cops. The story of a homosexual boy rejected by his father and who turns to murder...is a tragedy about society's lack of acceptance; not homosexuality's intrinsic acceptability or unacceptability. I think Friedkin was saying that a society that excludes, shuns and denigrates people can create in the occasional invidividual a self-hatred and self-loathing so powerful it can turn dangerous.

See the movie and decide for yourself...

Next week's Friedkin Friday entry: Sorcerer (1977)