Friedkin uses the gay leather scene to show NYC as an abattoir where two will go out at night to play a game trading turns as butcher and meat. They often get more than they bargained for when sizing each other up. "Cruising" means hunting for sex-prey-death. The hetero-macho cop world and Gay S&M bars supposedly fetishize this erotic and lonely compulsion more than the "straight" world, which just ignores the mayhem and lets it go on. There's a lot of dumb use of stereotypes; the side of Pacino's character that we should know about is underdeveloped; and some plot jumps are insulting -- to the characters and to our good sense. Eventually, you get the feeling that this foray into a controversial subculture is not really complex and considered as much as it might be another cheap horror show. And as a horror show, it's only unique because it always risks being bigoted and because it's transgressive with sexual identity. The hetero-male viewer shares Pacino's voyeuristic perspective and the female viewer is wondering about what might attract that male viewer. (Karen Allen doesn't get to do much, but she does get to try on her boyfriend's gay gear.) Pacino begins as a sensitive undercover cop and transforms into a violent hunter, who's afraid of either his capacity for affection or his hidden drives. Somehow, his repulsion at the police abuse of a gay sex suitor is the catalytic event that makes Pacino embrace his pathology and enjoy testing the prowess of the killer inside him against that of the serial killer he's tracking. It's an emotional trigger which is not easy to believe. Easier to believe is that he's intrigued with this cruising world partly because he's testing his inclination that "nothing human is alien to me." It should be said that although Friedkin tries to build layers of ambiguity throughout the whole film, he undercuts all that work at the end, in coaching Paul Sorvino -- who's good as the stoic police captain -- to let his last scene fill with emotional facial expressions. The captain's out-sized reaction to another murder pushes the audience too much toward one conclusion: Pacino's character, soon to be detective, has been cursed with a Joe-Estzerhas final twist. Not sure whether what happens to this cop is meant to challenge the male egos in the audience -- as in, how close to aggressive gayness can you stay and still be heterosexual? Maybe it's supposed to show how living through excess-abandon can drive people to not care about one body from another, at least enough to let gender get in the way. Regardless, using different actors, dressed in the same gear, for the killer -- which is both confusing and a cheat in the mystery -- isn't metaphysically intriguing enough to excuse the fact that those same actors are playing the past and future victims. This seems like blaming the victims for enabling the killers, an idea that goes beyond controversial; it's sociopathic, especially since the screams of two victims electronically curlicue into pig squeals. Great soundtrack put together by Jack Nietzsche, great sound design, proper use of Joe Spinell as human horror, interesting Powers Boothe cameo, and sordidly bizarre Bruno Kirby cameo. -- Why did Kirby want to do this? In fact, why did Friedkin or Pacino? ... This question of project choices becomes the most resonant one of the movie! Did they want to prove to themselves that "nothing human is alien to definitely brilliant but securely heterosexual artists"? Or were they being flamboyant heterosexual artists who, believing their own genius for "serious" subject matter, secretly felt they deserved their own chance to do camp?