{"id":3051,"date":"2026-06-06T22:54:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T22:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/06\/mineshaft-the-cruising-murders-review-an-engrossing-if-incohesive-dive-into-william-friedkins-gay-sm-thriller-and-its-surrounding-controversy\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T22:54:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T22:54:00","slug":"mineshaft-the-cruising-murders-review-an-engrossing-if-incohesive-dive-into-william-friedkins-gay-sm-thriller-and-its-surrounding-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/06\/mineshaft-the-cruising-murders-review-an-engrossing-if-incohesive-dive-into-william-friedkins-gay-sm-thriller-and-its-surrounding-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders\u2019 Review: An Engrossing if Incohesive Dive Into William Friedkin\u2019s Gay S&M Thriller and Its Surrounding Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\tArguably no major gay-themed film has ever been as polarizing within the queer community as 1980\u2019s\u00a0Cruising<\/em>, the gritty William Friedkin<\/a> crime thriller set against the backdrop of New York\u2019s leather-bar scene. Documentarian Jeffrey Schwarz takes a three-pronged approach to the subject in\u00a0Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders<\/em>, examining the real-life homicide that inspired the story, the development and filming on New York locations, and the controversies that dogged the shoot, with massive protest crowds of LGBTQ<\/a> rights activists disrupting production and rattling the star, Al Pacino<\/a>. \t<\/p>\n

\tSchwarz has an excellent track record as a chronicler of queer pop culture \u2014 the Hollywood hunk both pre- and post-coming out in\u00a0Tab Hunter Confidential<\/a><\/em>; John Waters\u2019 muse in\u00a0I Am Divine<\/a><\/em>; gay activist and scholar Vito Russo, author of\u00a0The Celluloid Closet<\/em>, the definitive study of queer representation in movies, in\u00a0Vito<\/a><\/em>; and\u00a0Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon<\/em>, a portrait of gay porn hall-of-famer Jack Wrangler. That\u2019s just to name a few. <\/p>\n

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\t \t \t\t \t\t\t\t\tMineshaft: The Cruising Murders\t\t \t <\/h3>\n

The Bottom Line<\/span> \t\t\t\t\t \t \tStill a lightning rod almost half a century later. \t<\/span> \t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Venue<\/strong>: Tribeca Festival (Spotlight Documentary)
With<\/strong>: Dan Savage, Michael Musto, Randy Jurgensen, Don Scardino, Robert Geary, Pamela Verrill Walker, Andy Humm, Charles Kaiser, Dennis Dermody, Frank Henenlotter, James Polchin, Jim Hubbard, Matt Foreman, Richard Berkowitz, Richard Goldstein
Director<\/strong>:\u00a0Jeffrey Schwarz
\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 24 minutes\t\t\t<\/span> \t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tThe lore around\u00a0Cruising<\/em>\u00a0proves somewhat harder to distill, making the new film discursive, its focus shifting throughout in ways that are not always fluid. Schwarz (also serving as editor) is careful to contextualize Friedkin\u2019s thriller in a time when gay men rarely saw themselves portrayed by Hollywood with any kind of complexity. That no doubt heightened sensitivities, causing gay activist groups to speculate that depicting the allure of danger and violence within the S&M subculture of the 1970s might provoke homophobic hate crimes. \t<\/p>\n

\tAnother area deemed problematic was the ambiguity of the film\u2019s ending, over which questions linger about the effect on Pacino\u2019s character, undercover cop Steve Burns, of being immersed in the world of hardcore, sexually aggressive leathermen for a prolonged period. Had he developed same-sex urges? Was he himself a killer? Just the veiled suggestion that exposure to the underground gay scene might somehow make it contagious rankled many, notable among them Russo and openly gay\u00a0Village Voice<\/em>\u00a0columnist Arthur Bell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tA \u201cmole\u201d on the production was believed to have leaked the script to Bell, who began publishing columns urging readers to protest what he wrote \u201cpromises to be the most oppressive, ugly, bigoted look at homosexuality ever presented on the screen.\u201d Some who were present remember that movement as an extraordinary coming together of the entire queer community \u2014 \u201cA party\u201d for some, \u201ca battleground\u201d for Friedkin, his cast and crew.<\/p>\n

\tWhile\u00a0Cruising<\/em>\u00a0has become less of a hot potato over the decades, particularly once a much fuller spectrum of queer representation became available, it remains an uneasy blip on the timeline of LGBTQ cinema.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tFriedkin maintained that it was never intended to represent the entire \u201chomosexual world,\u201d just one small subculture, which fits with what an observer notes is the director\u2019s interest in closed societies \u2014 the police, the priesthood, the gay fetish scene. \u201cI\u2019m just making a thriller that\u2019s not meant to oppress anybody,\u201d he says here, seeming to think gay men should be grateful for the visibility. \t<\/p>\n

\tBut disclaimers aside, queer people back then were so unused to seeing themselves in three-dimensional screen depictions that the very fact of\u00a0Cruising<\/em>\u00a0being one of the first gay films to target mainstream audiences \u2014 Friedkin had\u00a0The French Connection<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Exorcist<\/a><\/em>\u00a0under his belt, Pacino had done\u00a0The Godfather<\/em>\u00a0and its first sequel,\u00a0Serpico<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Dog Day Afternoon<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 inevitably meant it would be interpreted to some degree as an indictment of homosexuality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tGay rights had only just begun to make headway with visibility, acceptance and social standing, so this return to an older narrative \u2014 one that confirmed all the worst prejudices of sordid homosexual depravity \u2014 was seen as a step backwards. For many of us, the poorly reviewed\u00a0Cruising<\/em>\u00a0was just not a great movie, creepy, but at times borderline ridiculous and riddled with inauthentic dialogue. The assertion of some queer pundits that it has since been re-evaluated as a gay classic seems spurious and Schwarz fails to mount much of a persuasive case for that reassessment.<\/p>\n

\tFriedkin<\/a>, who died in 2023<\/a> and is seen only in archival interviews, now seems disingenuous in some of his denials that the film was exploitative, especially with regard to the murder that inspired it.\u00a0(Pacino distanced himself from the movie even before its release, refusing to do press.)<\/p>\n

\tThe director read about the killing of Addison Verrill, a 36-year-old film reporter and reviewer for\u00a0Variety<\/em>, in a\u00a0Voice<\/em>\u00a0column by Bell. Friedkin never approached Bell or the victim\u2019s family while developing the script. Former entertainment lawyer Bob Geary, who had been romantically involved with Verrill, still appears traumatized that a filmmaker would feed off his former partner\u2019s tragedy for entertainment. Geary\u2019s interview snippets are among the doc\u2019s most emotionally resonant moments, along with those of the victim\u2019s sister, Pamela Verrill Walker. \t<\/p>\n

\tOne of the more startling nuggets the doc reveals concerns Paul Bateson, the former radiological technician convicted of Verrill\u2019s murder. They had met the night before at West Village leather bar the Mineshaft. According to Bateson\u2019s account, they went home to Verrill\u2019s apartment and had sex that he felt was nonreciprocal. Since the journalist had fulfilled neither his physical nor emotional needs, Bateson killed him on impulse the following morning while he was still sleeping, banging him over the head with a cast iron frying pan and then stabbing him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tIn an uncanny coincidence, Bateson had played a small role as an assistant in an NYU medical center scene in\u00a0The Exorcist<\/em>\u00a0five years earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tFriedkin was also intrigued by Bateson becoming the sole suspect in what were known as \u201cThe Bag Murders,\u201d in which dismembered bodies, seemingly cut up by someone with medical experience, were fished out of the Hudson River in trash bags. The victims remained unidentifiable, through remnants of their clothing indicated they were gay men from the leather scene. Bateson boasted of his responsibility while awaiting trial, but lack of hard evidence meant he was never charged with those crimes.<\/p>\n

\tSchwarz has gathered a surplus of fascinating information, sharply packaged as always and accompanied by a period-evocative synthwave score by Makeup and Vanity Set (Nashville-based musician Matthew Steven Pusti). But a binding point of view remains frustratingly elusive, suggesting the material might have been better served by a three-part limited series. The tripartite focus \u2014 real-life murders, movie, protests at the time vs. how it\u2019s viewed today \u2014 feels disjointed. At a little under 90 minutes, the film also feels cramped. \t<\/p>\n

\tNonetheless, for anyone interested in queer history, both social and pop-cultural, there\u2019s a lot here to chew on. Just the extent to which Friedkin and former undercover cop Randy Jurgensen, who served as an advisor, immersed themselves in the gay fetish milieu while developing the project makes for juicy insights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tFriedkin says they even followed the dress code for theme nights at the Mineshaft, though he claims he was seldom bothered by sexual advances: \u201cI was just another fat Jew in a jockstrap.\u201d The fact that the director was casting porn actors and leather daddies and the location (a reconstruction of the Mineshaft in a different club) was serving shots and drugs feeds into the idea that Friedkin was going for a heightened, more sexually charged reality that might be read as sensationalistic.<\/p>\n

\tUltimately, the film\u2019s biggest takeaway dovetails with the way in which\u00a0Cruising<\/em>\u00a0is viewed at almost five decades\u2019 distance. It\u2019s a window, however skewed, into the hedonistic party of post-Stonewall sexual freedom before the terror of the AIDS crisis struck and shut everything down; a time when hookups started with eye contact rather than apps, when New York City was jumping with leather bars \u2014 the Anvil, Badlands, Sneakers \u2014 not to mention the sexual playground of the Meatpacking District (\u201cthe Trucks\u201d) and West Side piers. As such, Friedkin\u2019s film has taken on a social-history aspect that dilutes its toxicity.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arguably no major gay-themed film has ever been as polarizing within the queer community as 1980\u2019s\u00a0Cruising, the gritty William Friedkin crime thriller set against the backdrop of New York\u2019s leather-bar scene. Documentarian Jeffrey Schwarz takes a three-pronged approach to the subject in\u00a0Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, examining the real-life homicide that inspired the story, the development and filming on New York locations, and the controversies that dogged the shoot, with massive protest crowds of LGBTQ rights activists disrupting production and rattling the star, Al Pacino. Schwarz has an excellent track record as a chronicler of queer pop culture \u2014 the Hollywood hunk both pre- and post-coming out in\u00a0Tab Hunter Confidential; John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1811,492,2,1257,59,60,1322,1712,361,956,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-al-pacino","category-documentary","category-hollywood","category-lgbtq","category-movie-reviews","category-movies","category-tribeca","category-tribeca-2026","category-tribeca-festival","category-tribeca-film-festival","category-william-friedkin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}