The Detective (1968) Director Gordon Douglas' frank and adult-oriented, socially-conscious, neo-noir crime drama, with themes of police brutality, homosexuality, and corruption was based on the 1966 best-selling Roderick Thorpe novel. The dark crime drama's star Frank Sinatra had just finished another seedy private eye film, 20th Century Fox's caper Tony Rome (1967), and was planning on soon making its sequel Lady in Cement (1968). Its tagline was: An adult look at a police detective. With the adoption of the MPAA ratings system on the immediate horizon in late 1968, The Detective was able to push various taboo topics farther than ever before. The film was controversial for its portrayal of homosexuality (and its repression) and a female's sexual sickness known as nymphomania (it was one of the first to deal openly with these two subject areas, although has since been considered slightly offensive and dated), the use of the words "penis" and "queer," and the character of the detective'...
