Richard Tuggle directs Clint Eastwood, Genevieve Bujold and Dan Hedaya in this psychological thriller where a New Orleans cop hunts a serial killer who rapes and kills the same sex workers our protagonist likes to frequent.

At one point there is a lingering shot of a sweaty boy-ish ass and I joked to Natalie “There’s Clint’s smooth butt.” The camera panned across and it was indeed the unlikely nude rump of old craggy face himself. A strange thriller – too seedy to be erotic but too abrasively transgressive to sate Eastwood’s fanbase. By day, Detective Wes Block is a sweet loving single Dad with too many stray dogs and a mild mannered approach to office politics. By night, he is an absolute fuck fiend – known at all the orgies and cathouses. So he suspects himself, puts his daughters at risk, begins to rethink his attitude towards women and genuinely gets lost in a sex hell world more Se7en than Coogan’s Bluff. Unlike Dirty Harry, he isn’t a man of action but he is dirty. The finale finally sees him break a sweat that isn’t from getting his pussy on. A prolonged foot chase that really wallops with a gory little punchline. An unintentionally camp mess of a movie, yet fascinating and endlessly entertaining all the same. Clint’s finest work in the Eighties?

7

Perfect Double Bill: Cruising (1980)

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