!['Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders' Review: Jeffrey Schwarz's Documentary Explores the Infamous William Friedkin Film With Mixed Results [Tribeca]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/10160326/Mineshaft-The-Cruising-Murders-Clean-16x9-02.jpg "'Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders' Review: Jeffrey Schwarz's Documentary Explores the Infamous William Friedkin Film With Mixed Results [Tribeca]")
Often, when choosing which documentary to review, the title does a lot of the heavy lifting. Take, for example, Jeffrey Schwarz’s newest film, “Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders,” which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Its three-word title gives you everything you need to know. A documentary about the Mineshaft and the 1980 film “Cruising”? Count me in. But oddly, while the title does do much of the legwork in setting up the film, its simple three words also hint at the film’s structure problem.
It’s about the Mineshaft, it’s about “Cruising,” and it’s about the murders that inspired the film, but mainly treats these three as almost discrete objects of study. Anyone who’s seen the William Friedkin and Al Pacino film “Cruising” will remember the infamous leather club that Pacino’s character visits. Modeled on the Mineshaft, an infamous leather bar in the meatpacking district, that film almost doggedly recreated the club when they were denied permission to film on site. An exploration of the cultural and historical context of the Mineshaft, especially in relation to queer history, and the sexual excesses of pre-AIDS New York in the 70s and ’80s, would make for an engrossing documentary. An entire film could be made about it. But, oddly, only a short section of Schwarz’s film concerns itself with Mineshaft.
Then, we have the actual film “Cruising,” a lightning rod that shot through the LGBTQIA+ scene when it was filmed in New York City in the late ’70s. Protested by the very subculture it sought to shed light on and eventually disowned by its star, the film has a complicated cultural reception. It’s one of the few films to take the leather subculture seriously, but also wraps that exploration in a trite and sensationalized story of a heterosexual cop’s introduction to the scene through the investigation of a series of murders. It’s very obviously made by outsiders looking into a subculture with a type of fishbowl curiosity. Still, it was also ahead of its time and remains an artifact in Friedkin’s directorial oeuvre. The film itself is such an odd curiosity of Friedkin’s directorial preoccupations, while also being somewhat incomprehensible in its plotting and thematics.
That complicated critical reception, and the re-evaluation that the film has undergone by the queer community in subsequent years, as more films have come out to give a fuller picture of queer identity, is equally fascinating. Lauded, dismissed, argued about, and reclaimed, “Cruising” has such a complex social history. As many of the film critics interviewed by Schwarz attest, the film is, paradoxically, exploitative and curious. A film on the legacy of “Cruising” would also make for a great documentary.
Then, we get to the third word in the title: “Murders.” This is what actually bookends Schwarz’s film, as it explores the murder of openly gay Variety film critic Addison Verrill by Paul Bateson in 1977. It’s a horrendous story that touches on the community’s fear in the ’70s and intersects with the previous two, as Verrill was known to visit the Mineshaft and Bateson had served as a day player on Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (he’s the tech in the angiography scene). In fact, Verrill’s murder served as inspiration for Friedkin to pursue this project, in addition to Gerald Walker’s novel “Cruising,” something that creates open hostilities between Friedkin and Verrill’s family and friends, including the influential Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell.
The most empathetic and, obviously, interesting thread for Schwarz is Verrill’s life, juxtaposed with the larger gay scene in New York City, as his former lover, Bob Geary, and sister, Pamela Verrill Walker, speak to his life and experiences. It also helps that the film uses Verrill as a central node to connect these disparate threads. What does it mean that Friedkin co-opted Verrill’s story without giving him credit or consulting with the family?
Are these three ideas interconnected? Of course, but the film’s structural approach also distances them from each other. It begins with Verril before detouring, quite heavily, into “Cruising’s” reception, as well as the leather scene, only mentioning the Mineshaft in passing. Further, the truncated runtime of 90ish minutes doesn’t leave enough time to fully explore and connect these threads.
It’s not often that we want longer films, but ‘Mineshaft’ might be the exception. This, of course, is not to say that Schwarz’s documentary is a misfire, but instead that what we are presented here is so fascinating and interconnected that a cleaner edit perhaps would’ve connected the dots in a way that Schwarz obviously sees it. As it stands, however, ‘Mineshaft is a fascinating primer into the Mineshaft, a knotty exploration of the legacy of “Cruising” and an empathetic portrait of Addison Verrill. [B-]
