John Huckert | Hard / 1998

force of hate

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Huckert and John Matkowsky (screenplay), John Huckert (director) Hard / 1998

 

Calling to mind such previous cop films such as William Friedkin’s 1980 film Cruising and David Fincher’s 1995 Seven, John Huckert’s Hard concerns a gay serial killer who specializes in young boy hitchhikers and hustlers. The killer, a handsome, rugged man who might attract most young gay boys searching for a kind of father figure, Jack (Malcolm Moorman), as Los Angeles Times reviewer Kevin Thomas describes him:

 

“…is a gay man’s nightmare. Rugged and handsome, he’s physically a fantasy figure come to life, but he’s also possessed of a psychopath’s fearlessness. When he comes on to a man in a bar in his insinuating yet forceful way, he has little reason to expect much resistance. Jack is an insatiable seducer but is in the grip of such intense internalized homophobia that he feels compelled to kill his lovers; in this way he has much in common with Jeffrey Dahmer as an attractive yet lethally self-hating gay man.”

 

    But gay self-hatred is not limited in this film simply to the villain. Young police detective Raymond Vates (Noel Palomaria), just awarded his badge, is also gay, but is terrified in revealing his sexuality to his fellow detectives, and with good reason. His fellow officers, Hendrickson (Steve Andrews), Jackson (K. D. Jones), Dhyun (Ken Narasaki), and Dominguez (Steve Gonzales) seem obsessed with homophobic slurs, checking out each other’s asses, playing out games of swish behavior, and in general describing to themselves how they believe a queer man thinks and behaves.

     Even worse are men like the morgue technician who when he substantiates that a male body had engaged in anal sex is only too happy to describe them as a “condition corrected,” the police as well arguing that the killer is only helping them clear the streets of their kind. Late in the film, even the murderer poses the question to Raymond, how do you think I’ve gotten away in killing and torturing all these boys? The police just look the other way.

     Moreover, Raymond has just only recently left his own wife and son, coming out after what can only have been his own deep personal doubts and suffering. He finds it almost as difficult to kiss another man as does Jack. And although he’s found a loyal, willing, and truly loving friend in the gay bartender Doug (Aaron Zaffron), Raymond prefers to go home with rugged construction workers such as the man he first picks up in the film who turns out to really be a San Diego cop, himself an expert at spotting others trying to hide their true avocations and inclinations. As Doug asks him, what’s harder for you, trying to keep the cops from knowing you’re gay or hiding the fact from the gays that you’re a cop? After the cop who’s just had good sex with him tries to kiss him, only to have Raymond turn away, he provides the rookie with some good advice. “I was afraid to when I first came out. Sex is a wonderful fantasy, but it’s the kiss that makes it real.”

     Sex is not such a wonderful fantasy, however, for those who encounter Jack. Even as Raymond and the oldest and most respected detective in their midst, Tom Ellis (Charles Lanyer) who’s been assigned as Raymond’s partner, check out Jack’s first Los Angeles victim—we’ve already seen him rape and probably kill a poor teen hitchhiker in the desert—already, as the Los Angeles Times critic puts it, “His gaze rests upon Palomaria’s character Raymond, a rookie homicide detective. Later on, at a gay bar, when Jack recognizes Raymond as one of the cops at the crime scene, he comes on to the policeman.”

     Raymond and Ellis are at this particular bar just to ask if anyone’s seen the boy in the picture, the most recent of Jack’s victims. Jack denies having seen him, but pretends that he might have some knowledge of the area, encouraging Raymond to leave his name and number. The detective gets a late-night call to meet him in the bar, only to be told that Jack has brought him out in the night under false pretensions. Arguing that he knows Raymond must be gay, he proclaims his sexual interest in him, Raymond trying out his best performance of denial. But with a sociopath like Jack, it doesn’t work. As critic Michael D. Klemm, writing in Outcome nicely summarizes the scene:

 

“Jack intuits that Ramon is secretly gay. Like two dogs trying to establish who is the alpha male, the two men enact an elaborate mating dance with Jack calling Ramon a ‘homophobic gay cop’ and Ramon trying, quite violently, to deny the mutual attraction. Inevitably, he takes Jack home. Their intense sex resembles a wrestling match as both demonstrate dominance. Then, to his horror, Ramon wakes to find himself handcuffed and tied to his bed.”

      Forced to call in sick and turning again to Doug for help, he demands, in what almost seems to be an insider’s camp film reference, “I need you to come over and bust my door in” (in To Kill a Mockingbird, if you recall, Mayella Ewell calls in the black man Tom Robinson to “bust up my chifforobe.”). Doug complies, but is almost arrested by Ellis, who has come to personally check on Raymond after his strange phone call.

     Even worse than discovering his partner is gay and has been subject to some S&M fiend, they discover that Jack is the murderer himself when they find Raymond’s detective badge in another young victim’s mouth. Jack has now totally involved Raymond in his crimes and intends to engage him personally in a battle of homosexual opposites, perhaps in an odd self-hating homophobic slur, an attempt to show others that Raymond is not so very different from him. In order to save himself from a murder charge, the rookie detective is forced to admit what really happened and come totally out of the closet.

       Certainly, the other cops are ready to believe the worst about their cohort, now all except Ellis and the Captain (Bob Hollander) turning against Raymond, not only verbally abusing him in the morning shower and shaving session, but physically beating him, the police Captain looking on without being able, so he justifies it to himself, to interfere. Once more Raymond has only his loyal friend Doug to help him salve his wounds.

       Jack has already completely involved another figure—a bisexual married man, Andy (Michael Waite)—picking him up in a bar for sex and bringing him home to stay on as a friend, exposing his own pre-pubescent son, his wife, and himself to the whims of the sociopath.

       Because of his open acceptance and strange love towards him, Jack basically spares Andy—if you can describe raping his son and arranging for his wife to return at the moment when Jack is fucking him, assuring that his marriage is destroyed, as representing a kind of lenience. But then compared with the chambers of horror Jack has created for street boys in an old theater basement under the Fletcher Street Bridge, his treatment of Andy and his family is absolutely beneficent.

      He finally takes Andy himself down into the dark chambers, attempting to get him involved in the slow stabbing and wounding of the victims that he inflicts; but when Andy refuses, he lets him go, as well, eventually, as the boy he was hoping Andy would help him further torture. By this time, we perceive, its Raymond he really wants to visit the chamber.

      Finding the released boy, and through him Jack’s hideout, Ellis refuses to let Raymond go after him, taking on the job himself. But when he doesn’t return, Raymond is forced to enter that hell. Jack has knocked out Raymond and dangles another boy before the detective, threatening to drop him to his death if Raymond doesn’t join him in his games. He drops the boy even before Raymond can try the gun he has given him, its cartridge empty. What follows is Jack’s long justification for his actions, his argument that he is saving these boys from the suffering and torture which has gone to make up the beast he has become. Unwanted at home, most often because of their sexuality, hated by most of society, their welfare ignored by the cops, these boys will only suffer, he proclaims, and in killing them early, he is saving them from that future.

      Frankly, in a film which up to this point has been filled with tough and believable language, Jack’s statements and Raymond’s almost meek-sounding arguments against his horrifyingly cynical view of life are almost trite and quite stagey. Only Jack’s belief that none of his police cronies, called to the site, will show up, seems plausible. When finally a single female police officer arrives, ironically, Jack’s bluff is over. He puts a rifle to his own head and releases the trigger, becoming the same kind visual horror into which he has turned so many others throughout the film.

    The most moving part of this otherwise excellent movie, are its final scenes, as Ellis returns Raymond his badge, the detective pondering leaving the police force forever. He asks: “Hey Lucky (Ellis’ nickname), where do you think all the hate comes from?” Lucky turns back as he is about to leave, answering, “I don’t ask myself that question anymore.” A few seconds later Raymond (real name Ramon) bursts in tears over all the hate he has witnessed in past few weeks. Raymond, it appears, has finally turned into a human who needs to ask that question and forgive even himself. And perhaps he can now express his true thanks to Doug for having helped him through the most outrageous events of his life. But we do hope he will remain a detective if only to help counter all that hate he perceives.

       One of the last scenes of the film, repeats the very first scene, as we observe a young soldier boy, who looks somewhat like the Ramon before he became a Raymond, heading out of the city, being picked up by a man who looks not so very different from Jack. I find that scene a little hokey, but perhaps we need reminding that those who destroy and hate are always there and never cease in their terrible actions against the civilized human race.

       Hard is not a great movie, but is most certainly a powerful and moving film worth far more attention than it has received. The movie is now hard to find (my viewing copy was a Netflix oldie, a mailer that will soon be put out of commission), with many of its sexual scenes having been sanitized and even a scene in which Raymond is seen removing a condom cut. Klemm asks the inevitable question: “So... full frontal male nudity during torture is okay, but not during a scene that promotes safe sex? Tell me what's wrong with this picture.”

 

Los Angeles, June 11, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).