 In the late 1970s, Brian De Palma wrote a screenplay based on Gerald  Walkers article "Cruising", but was unable to obtain the rights to  the material. Cruising, the story of a series of brutal murders in  the gay New York underworld, was subsequently adapted and directed  by William Friedkin, while De Palma fashioned some of the elements  from his own Cruising screenplay into Dressed to Kill. Both films  were released, to great controversy (and after numerous battles with  the MPAA to avoid X ratings), in 1980.