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).
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