As someone who has recently sat through Cruising, I fully understand why. The film divided critics, enraged the homosexual community, who even held boycotts and sent Friedkin death-threats over the film, and the film forever lived with a looming cloud of infamy over its head, with more comments being made about its impact over its quality. His directorial effort Cruising was a film about Al Pacino's cop character going undercover in seedy gay bars in order to catch a series of murders in the specific area. In 1980, Exorcist director William Friedkin made yet another movie that found another great way to stir up controversy and etch itself onto the front page of newspapers.
