Cruising (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Mar 05, 2025
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

William Friedkin

Release Date(s)

1980 (February 25, 2025)

Studio(s)

United Artists/Warner Bros. (Arrow Video)

Film/Program Grade: B+
Video Grade: A
Audio Grade: A-
Extras Grade: A+
Overall Grade: A+

Review

When William Friedkin’s Cruising was first exhibited in early 1980, it opened with the following disclaimer:

“This film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in one small segment of that world which is not meant to be representative of the whole.”

The presence of the disclaimer is hardly surprising considering that Cruising had already generated plenty of controversy during its production. Activist Arthur Bell had gotten a hold of an early draft of the script, one that hewed a bit more closely to the 1970 Gerald Walker novel on which the film was ostensibly based, and Bell proceeded to write a series of exposés for the Village Voice where he condemned its negative portrayal of the gay community. Bell wanted to sit down with the filmmakers in order to voice his concerns directly, but when producer Jerry Weintraub more or less told him to pound sand, Bell encouraged the community to loudly protest the film and disrupt the production. That they did, which naturally drew even more attention to the film. The whole sordid affair may have been avoidable, but Weintraub probably reasoned that any publicity is good publicity, so he indirectly encouraged Bell to stir the pot.

The reality is that Cruising generated controversy because it was designed to court controversy—a feature, not a bug—which shouldn’t be surprising considering that William Friedkin was involved. Friedkin loved to disorient viewers and push their buttons as much as possible, punctuating the baffling prologue to The French Connection by having a character graphically shot in the face. He raised that to the next level in The Exorcist, with another baffling prologue followed up by even more extreme levels of grotesque imagery and blasphemous content, all of which was intended to scar audiences for life (mission accomplished, for many viewers). Tellingly, when Weintraub first brought Walker’s novel to Friedkin, the director wasn’t interested since it was about a series of murders set in the relatively mainstream LGBTQ milieu. It was only after Friedkin read stories that Bell had written about a grisly series of real-life murders set in the S&M subculture of New York City’s leather bars that he got interested, especially after Paul Bateson was arrested and charged with one of the murders.

Bateson was already an acquaintance of Friedkin’s after having played a small role in The Exorcist, so Friedkin visited him in jail repeatedly while he was awaiting trial. Friedkin also spent some time talking to active-duty NYPD detective Randy Jurgensen, who had played small roles in all but one of Friedkin’s films since The French Connection. Jurgensen had gone undercover as a gay man in order to investigate a series of shakedowns by two police officers (or at least by two people who were posing as police officers, anyway), and he told Friedkin that the experience had caused him to question his own identity. Friedkin took all of these bits and pieces and put them together into an undeniably lurid whole that was guaranteed to draw the ire of the gay activists and anti-gay activists alike, and thus draw attention to the film itself. Once again, mission accomplished.

At its most basic level, Cruising is about the hunt for a killer who is targeting denizens of New York City’s leather bar scene. When Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino) is given an ultimatum to find the killer or else, he enlists officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino) to go deep undercover and draw out the person (or persons) responsible. As a result, Steve has to temporarily cut ties with his girlfriend Nancy (Karen Allen), and he gets so deep into that world that he starts to question his own identity. Superficially, that may sound like a blend of police procedural with a serial killer movie, a concept that Michael Mann would explore a few years later in Manhunter, but Friedkin was operating on a different level. He had already redefined the entire cop genre nine years earlier with The French Connection, and he was still friends with real-life cops like Jurgensen, Sonny Grosso, and Eddie Eagan (Jurgensen and Grosso both play small roles in Cruising). That friendship inevitably colored Cruising, since Friedkin chose to omit the fact that many of the real leather bars in NYC were owned by the mob, which had paid off the police in order to allow the bars to operate relatively free of restrictions. (If you’re wondering how some of the graphic public decadence on display in Cruising could have possibly eluded the attention of the police, well, that’s why.)

Yet Cruising isn’t really a cop movie, nor is it a serial killer movie, either. While Friedkin may not have been consciously aware of this, there was another influence that informed many of the decisions that he made while scripting and editing Cruising: the stylized decadence of gialli. For all of the fruitless arguments back and forth about whether or not a specific film actually qualifies as a giallo, Cruising seems to have escaped that kind of attention when it really shouldn’t have. We’ll get to the details regarding the murders and the killer(s) in a moment, but for now, consider how Cruising opens:

The first shot shows the New York City skyline as seen from the water, which is followed by a tugboat crew discovering a severed arm floating in the very same water. Then it cuts to the morgue, where the coroner and Detective Lefransky (Jurgenson) argue about how to identify the potential killer. That’s followed by a shot of patrolmen DiSimone (Joe Spinell) and Desher (Mike Starr) as they cruise the streets of New York, bemoaning what the city has become. Yet DiSimone and Desher are an active part of the corruption that infests New York; these cops are actually cruising the cruisers (something that will become increasingly significant as the film progresses).

In terms of style, narrative, and content, all of that could easily be mistaken for something out of a Lucio Fulci film (right down to the persistent ADR that was necessitated by all the background noise created by the protestors). It’s almost like The New York Ripper with a wee bit of Zombi 2 thrown in for good measure. Fulci’s deeply cynical view of human nature, which bordered on misandry, was also reflected in Friedkin’s worldview in Cruising (and elsewhere). Yet that’s only the beginning of the similarities between Cruising and the gialli that may have unintentionally influenced it.

And “unintentionally” is probably an accurate description in this case, because many of those similarities arose as a result of the lengthy development process and the equally tortured editorial process on the back end. Friedkin has a well-deserved reputation for rethinking and revising his films long after they were released (something that ended up affecting Cruising on home video, too), but it’s easy to forget that his penchant for reshaping things also affected the way that he made his films in the first place. And that’s what irrevocably altered the nature of Cruising not just from what Gerald Walker had intended, but even from what Friedkin may have intended when he first sat down to write the script.

A giallo usually keeps the identity of the killer carefully hidden until the end, offering numerous red herrings along the way to keep viewers disoriented. Disorientation was a mode that came naturally to Friedkin, and in that vein, he decided to muddy up the waters in Cruising by switching back and forth between the actors playing the victims and the ones playing the killer(s)—the victim in one scene might well be the killer in the next. Since it’s established that prime suspect Stuart Richards (Richard Cox) has daddy issues, then regardless of which actor may be playing the killer(s) in any given scene, they’re all dubbed by James Sutorius, who also dubbed the voice of Stuart’s father Jack—a person who may or may not even exist in the first place. For a film about shifting personas and questions of identity, Cruising never provides any kind of an anchor to help viewers find their footing. The whole film is a red herring.

That extends to the nominal hero in Cruising, Steve Burns. While the identity of the killer and the reactions of the undercover cop were much clearer in Walker’s novel, Friedkin’s decision to incorporate different real-life murders into his own narrative meant that there could never have been a single plausible solution that tied all of them together. So, he decided to run with the ambiguity instead, even implicating Burns in the process. There might be one killer or multiple killers; the prime suspect may or may not be guilty of anything; and Burns may be responsible for one or more (or even all) of the murders. Or not. There are clues sprinkled throughout that point to Richards, Burns, and multiple other characters. While there are two particularly damning ones that do implicate Burns (one of them is his reaction to something that Nancy says near the beginning of the film, while the other is a subtle musical clue), even Pacino was frustrated by the fact that Friedkin refused to tell him how to play the character. If Cruising really is a giallo, then it’s one where the central mystery can never be resolved. There’s no possibility of unmasking the killer when everyone else in the film is also wearing masks.

Ultimately, that’s both a strength and a weakness in Cruising. By muddying the waters regarding the identity of the killer, which leaves the film tantalizingly ambiguous, Friedkin also muddied the central question of personal identity. Jurgensen had questioned his own identity after going undercover in a similar milieu, but Burns never really had a clear identity to begin with. He was already wearing masks long before he went undercover. As a result, it’s equally unclear exactly what Friedkin was trying to say in the film regarding identity and human sexuality in all of its forms. Cruising isn’t just an open text; it’s an incoherent one, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Arthur Bell and his fellow activists read into it what they wanted to read into it, while nervous studio executives and homophobic audiences read something else into it entirely. Cruising is a litmus test that says as much about the people who watch it as it does about the people who made it. It’s a feature length Kuleshov effect, letting viewers draw their own connections between the frequently discontinuous images that are constantly assaulting them (including a few that are borderline subliminal). Yet however you choose to read Cruising, its elusive nature can never be fully pinned down. That’s one of the main reasons why it survived the controversy in 1980 and is still debated to this very day, while other similar films are long forgotten.

Cinematographer James Contner shot Cruising on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. Cruising has had a long, strange journey on home video, with many alterations along the way (and those alteration go back to its theatrical release, if you believe Friedkin regarding the hardcore footage that he supposedly included in his original cut, but either way, he still had to make adjustments for the MPAA). His predilection for revisionism extended to the color timing on each version as well as the content itself. Arrow’s own 2019 Blu-ray, which was supervised by Friedkin, proved controversial due to its overall blue/teal color balance as well as a few new alterations. Yet according to the detailed restoration notes by James Pearcey and James White, this time they were allowed to work with Warner Bros. directly, and their goal was to bring everything back to the original uncensored international theatrical version. To that end, they were given full access to all of the elements and materials in the Warner Bros. archives. This version is based on 16-bit 4K scans of the original camera negative by Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, with digital cleanup and grading performed by Silver Salt in London (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 grades are included on the disc).

The results are a revelation compared to any and all of the previous versions of Cruising, Arrow’s own Blu-ray included. The heavy blue/teal push from that one is gone, replaced by a far more natural color balance throughout (although there are still a few night shots that lean blue, but they’re clearly intended to have been that way). If you hold up any of those previous versions as the standard, you may be disappointed, but the archival print elements that Arrow used as a reference are likely more accurate to how the film originally looked. Everything is clean as a whistle and the grain looks smooth throughout, even in the handful of optical transitions like the dissolve at 20:20. It looks like Arrow was able to use the original negative trims to recreate any transitions digitally without the image degradation that resulted from using optical dupes instead. The contrast range is excellent, with deep black levels that drop off to true black whenever appropriate. Compared to previous versions of Cruising, there’s no comparison at all—there’s just nothing to criticize here, and that’s a first.

Audio is offered in English 1.0 mono, 2.0 stereo, and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. Cruising was released theatrically in mono, and this 1.0 track is a restoration from the original mono stems, while the 2.0 and 5.1 remixes were created for the 2007 DVD release. Both of them contain alterations to the original mix—for example, at 26:45, an ominous musical cue has been added in the background while Al Pacino is making himself up before heading out to the bar. Other sound effects and musical cues have been added and/or subtracted at Friedkin’s whim. The 2.0 track is problematic since the dialogue doesn’t always anchor well to the center channel when run through a decoder, while it sounds centered and better integrated in 5.1. Both the 2.0 and the 5.1 do offer more presence and depth for the music, but 1.0 is still preferable since it’s the unadulterated theatrical mix. As always, your own mileage may vary. The music does sound a little thinner in mono, but it doesn’t help that the three tracks aren’t level matched with each other, so raising the volume helps a bit. (Note that there is some scuttlebutt online that the front and rear channels may have been accidentally reversed in Arrow’s 5.1 track when compared to previous ones, but it wasn’t immediately obvious and I preferred the mono track anyway.)

Arrow’s Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of Cruising is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with additional extras—note that there’s no Blu-ray copy of the film itself. The insert is reversible, featuring new artwork by Sister Hyde on one side and the original theatrical poster artwork on the other, plus a fold-out poster with both artworks. There’s a 28-page booklet with reproductions of pages from Friedkin’s screenplay for alternate scenes that weren’t included in the final film, as well as a 120-page booklet that reproduces vintage and newer articles from The Village Voice, the New York Times, and Playboy, among others, plus archival materials, new essays, and restoration notes. Contributors (old and new) include John Rechy, Richard Goldstein, Arthur Bell, Andrew Sarris, Jason Bailey, Aljean Harmetz, Jack Fritscher, John Burke, Ted Heaney, David Loehr, Tony Allicino, Rory Lance, and Jane Wechsler. Everything is housed inside a rigid slipcase with a leatherette-textured slipcover (a subtle but clever touch). The following extras are included—note that while they’re all presented in HD, the two archival featurettes are actually upscaled from SD:

DISC ONE: FEATURE FILM (UHD)

Audio Commentary with William Friedkin
Audio Commentary with William Friedkin and Mark Kermode
There Were Cops, a Dark Bar... and Al Pacino
Heavy Leather Alternate Score
The Backroom:
- Deleted Scenes:
  - Why Take the Job? (:56)
  - Night Stick (3:35)
  - Porno Booth Scene (2:40)
  - Original On-Set Audio:
  - A Piece of Work (10:38)
  - Protestors (1:48)
  - Club Scenes (:33)
  - Killer’s Voice (:21)
  - Apartment Audio (1:29)
- Alternate Elements:
  - French Disclaimer Card (:59)
  - French Credit Roll (4:02)
  - Spanish Disclaimer Card (:37)
  - Alternate English End Credits (1:09)
  - Alternate Introduction – Comparison (1:13)
  - Alternate Introduction – 2006 Restoration (1:09)
  - Alternate Introduction – 2018 Restoration (1:11)
- Censored Material:
  - Censored Scene Reel 02a – Comparison (1:38)
  - Censored Scene Reel 02a – Complete (1:42)
  - Censored Scene Reel 03 – Comparison (1:55)
  - Censored Scene Reel 03 – Complete (2:11)
Archival Extras:
- The History of Cruising (21:05)
- Exorcising Cruising (22:31)
Trailers and Promotional Items:
- Trailers:
  - Teaser (1:13)
  - Theatrical Trailer (3:29)
- TV Spots:
  - TV Spot 1 (:31)
  - TV Spot 2 (:34)
  - TV Spot 3 (:33)
  - TV Spot 4 (:32)
- Test TV Spots:
  - Test TV Spot 1 (:31)
  - Test TV Spot 2 (:29)
  - Test TV Spot 3 (:33)
  - Test TV Spot 4 (:33)
  - Test TV Spot 5 (:34)
- TV Spots Optical Tests (2:35)
Photo Galleries:
- Promotional Items:
  - Argentina (1 in all)
  - Australia (9 in all)
  - Belgium (2 in all)
  - France (19 in all)
  - Germany (33 in all)
  - Greece (1 in all)
  - Iceland (1 in all)
  - Indonesia (2 in all)
  - Italy (14 in all)
  - Japan:
    - Promotional Items (6 in all)
    - Theatrical Programme (25 in all)
  - Mexico (9 in all)
  - Spain (13 in all)
  - Thailand (1 in all)
  - U.K. (6 in all)
  - U.S.A.:
    - Promotional Items (15 in all)
    - Press Kit (25 in all)
    - Pressbook (12 in all)
    - Yugoslavia (11 in all)
- Key Art (3 in all)
- Musical Releases (8 in all)
- Jane Wechsler On-Set Sketch Gallery (9 in all)
- Set Items Gallery (6 in all)

In addition to the original 2007 DVD commentary by Friedkin working solo and Arrow’s 2019 commentary pairing Friedkin with Mark Kermode, Arrow has added two new alternative audio tracks. The first is There Were Cops, a Dark Bar... and Al Pacino, which is essentially a curated commentary track featuring interviews with Don Bolles, Kenny Margolis, Louis X. Erlanger, Carole Pope, Madelynn Von Ritz, Shawn Casey O’Brien, and Jonathan Hertzberg. They discuss the creation of the songs for the film’s soundtrack. Unfortunately, none of them are identified within the track itself, but they do seem to appear in the same order that they’re listed on the menu selection. On the other hand, the Heavy Leather Alternate Score replaces all of that music with tracks that were written and performed by electronica artist Pentagram Home Video, taken from his 2019 album Who’s Here? I’m Here, You’re Here. That album was inspired by Cruising, so it’s interesting to hear the music actually incorporated into the film itself. It really drives home the similarities to giallo.

Between the two Friedkin commentaries, the newer one with Kermode is preferable if for no other reason than Mark does his best to keep Friedkin from his worst predilection: narrating what’s happening onscreen (although even Kermode can’t stop him from doing it occasionally). It’s too bad that Friedkin wasn’t paired with moderators more often than this, because it really helped to keep him on point and giving out real information about the film.

Of the three different Deleted Scenes that are included, Night Stick is the most interesting. It’s an audio-only excerpt of a scene with Joe Spinell and Mike Starr from a lost longer cut of the film that was discovered by James Pearcey and James White while they were examining the audio elements in the Warner Bros. archives. It’s presented here in illustrated form, to give some idea of how the scene might have looked. The Original On-Set Audio kicks off with A Piece of Work, which is an interview with production audio mixer Kim Ornitz discussing the challenges of trying to record dialogue over the sound of the protestors. That’s followed by a few scenes demonstrating the issues that he faced, as well as an example of the killer’s original voice.

The Alternate Elements include various foreign language disclaimer cards and alternate English language closing credits, but the really fascinating part are the alternate introductions from the 2007 DVD and Arrow’s 2019 Blu-ray. The comparison between all three of them really drives home the changes that Friedkin kept making—including the altered color timing. The Censored Material includes two club sequences that were tamed down for domestic release. Each of them is presented in side-by-side comparisons with the uncut scenes, and the full censored sequences are also shown separately. (There’s no need to include the uncut scenes separately here since they’re now properly incorporated into the film itself.)

The Archival Extras include two featurettes that were produced for the 2007 DVD. They include interviews with William Friedkin, Jerry Weintraub, James Contner, Sonny Grosso, Randy Jurgensen, Richard Cox, Don Scardino, Gene Davis, Jay Acovone, James Remar, editor Bud Smith, casting director Lou Digiaimo, and production executive Mark Johnson. The History of Cruising really centers around the prehistory of Cruising, from the conception of the story to the casting, including the research that everyone did in the gay bars of the era. Exorcising Cruising focuses on the actual production and its aftermath, including the controversies, ambiguities, and the protests.

Aside from an extensive collection of trailers and TV spots, the rest of the extras on the first disc consist of some genuinely exhaustive Photo Galleries. They’re well-organized, too, which is a refreshing change of pace for anyone who remembers the LaserDisc era when still-frame supplements frequently had this level of organization, rather than the random image dumps of today.

Of course, don’t change that dial, because there’s a whole pile of extras still waiting on the second disc:

DISC TWO: EXTRAS (BD)

I Want to Be the Curator (38:29)
Walking the Line (71:13)
Cut Offs (55:00)
Who’s That Guy? (13:42)
Pounding the Beat (46:57)
The Boy on the Bus (37:30)
Mineshaft Memories (33:41)
BeyondFest Q&A (44:10)
Breaking the Codes (13:02)
Production Stills (115 in all)
Stop the Movie (11:51)

The first several extras on the second disc consist of new and archival interviews. I Want to Be the Curator and Walking the Line are new interviews with Karen Allen and Randy Jurgensen, respectively. Allen is as vibrant as ever, and her memories of making Cruising are still crystal-clear. Since Jurgensen’s own experiences influenced the film, he’s able to provide a glimpse into the broader context surrounding the production. At 91 years young, he hasn’t lost much of his own spark, either.

Cut Offs, Who’s That Guy, Pounding the Beat, and The Boy on the Bus are archival 2017 interviews with Bud Smith, Jay Acovone, Mike Starr, and Mark Zecca, respectively. Smith sounds like he had suffered from a stroke or some other such issue, but fortunately there are subtitles just in case he’s too difficult to understand. (He finally passed away in 2024.) Mike Starr offers some fond memories of working with Joe Spinell, but the most interesting of all is probably Mark Zecca, who talks about his own experiences as a gay man exploring the venues in New York City, as well as his perspectives on the film, the protests, and the controversies. In that vein, Mineshaft Memories is a collection of archival 1990 interviews with Wally Wallace, former manager of the real Mineshaft bar in New York. It was recorded by activist and historian Jack Fritscher.

The rest of the extras include a BeyondFest Q&A that was recorded after a careening of Cruising at the American Cinematheque in 2022, shortly before Friedkin’s own passing. He was definitely showing signs of decline at that point, but he still had plenty to share with the enthusiastic audience. Breaking the Codes is a visual essay by David McGillivray, who explains the need for clandestine codes in the gay community during that era and the “hanky codes” as used in the film. (In reality, there were nearly a hundred different colors and combinations, so misunderstandings like the one in the film were a very real thing.) Stop the Movie is a silent short subject by Jim Hubbard, who captured the protests during the filming of Cruising. It can be viewed with or without optional commentary by Hubbard. Finally (yes, for real this time), there’s another gallery with Production Stills, this time in one large unorganized group.

Taken together, it’s an astonishingly comprehensive set of extras. Very few people will ever go through all of them (unless you have a pressing need to explore Icelandic and Yugoslavian advertising materials), and yet their archival value is utterly priceless. And that’s what this UHD set from Arrow really is: an exhaustive archive of all things Cruising, including the way that it looked and sounded during its original theatrical release. With all due deference to Friedkin and other filmmakers who feel the need to repeatedly tinker with their own work, it’s great to have Cruising restored to something that more closely replicates how it appeared in 1980—albeit in much higher quality than theatrical prints of the day. It even documents some of the changes that the film went through, although it doesn’t include the full altered versions. (Arrow’s 2019 Blu-ray is still available for those who may prefer Friedkin’s latest re-imagined version.)

For good or for ill, Cruising is a document of a bygone era, both in terms of the subject matter and how it was produced, and this set is an exhaustive (and exhausting!) document of that document. It’s easily one of the best, if not the best release of 2025 so far, and it’s hard to imagine anything else topping it. Highly, highly recommended—at least for those who can deal with the content, anyway. For all of the progress that we’ve made since 1980, we’ve started regressing again in some ways. Regardless, Cruising was, and still is, and important film that deserves fair consideration from any true film fan.

-Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).