DIRECTOR: Gordan Douglas

BOTTOM LINE

: Frank Sinatra does the best he can under the circumstances playing a policeman investigating the deaths of several gay men in New York City. However, the awful script by Abby Mann – doing for homosexuals what he did for Jews in “Judgement at Nuremberg” – and the mediocre direction by Gordon Douglas put the kibosh on everything.

William Windom plays the type of gay character that makes every adolescent gay boy want to jump off a bridge. Awful, but worth seeing as a pre-Stonewall period piece. The underperformance of “The Detective” relative to “Rosemary’s Baby” played a major part in the Farrow-Sinatra breakup.

POST TITLE: Twenty-Seven Queer Films 1967-1976. Queer Cinema Comes Out.

CATEGORY: My Favorites

SUBCATEGORY: Queer Film

STREAMING: Amazon Prime and Apple TV+