The Boston Strangler

This is a movie that works around a detective taking the confession of "the strangler." 90% of the movie is between the detective and the strangler talking. We are taken briefly through each of the murders, perhaps too briefly. There are a couple sections in the movie towards the end where it jumps ahead in time way to quick. It feels like the director decided to just finish the movie and wanted the quickest way there without resolving much of anything. So while you may have been into the story you feel cheated by the abrupt ending.

It is apparent that it is a low budget film but thats not all that important since there are few scenes that are not the confession scenes. I would assume that is why the director failed to go into detail with the murders individually (to cut costs). As a suspense it is OK... an interesting watch. If you don't expect a lot from the movie you won't be disappointed.

...it won't hurt you to see this movie.

It follows the conventional pattern of the persistent detective against the clever quasi-genius murderer, but in this case the detective is not willing to prove the guilt of a murderer trying to evade it, but rather the contrary.

Nothing spectacular in this film, but nothing so dreadful either. You won't remember this movie after you see it... ...but you won't feel you completely waste your idle time either.

The story is supposed to develop along many years, with the core in the sixties, a soft twist by the seventies, and a short epilogue by the beginning of the new millennium. But I have to confess that it looks to me as at least the eighties all the time, no way at any point the viewer will even consider that any of the action takes place in the sixties. Even more, if they tell you that it's contemporary it won't be hard to believe so. So there you have one weakness of this movie: lack of temporal credibility.

It's based on the true case that gives its name to the film, and the murdered represented here is actually the one accused, sentenced and killed in prison. The movie respects this but adds doubt about his culpability. This is the core of the plot and the reason-tyo-be of this movie.

Surpraisingly the third credited character (the beautiful and supportive detective's wife) the delicious Camille Lannan was not included in the profile. I've sent the update to make justice to this subtle beauty!

I've always had a thing for 'serial-killer-murder-movies', so of course i jumped at the chance to view this one. I'm sure that it has it's qualities, but the music... holy cr... I mean, c'mon. There's this underlying synth-thingie that becomes more or less audible depending on what's being said. That may work in some cheezy horrorflick... but it really put me off this one. Sad but true.

I found myself listening more to the "crescendos" of the music rather that what was being said. So.. i cannot honestly say that I've seen the movie.

Am i being picky? mayhap, but since i could not get past the (sort of) music, there was little or no treasure for me in this one. :(

Right off the bat I noticed the same thing another reader mentions... the longish, styled 70's haircut the lead detective is sporting. NO police force allowed hair like that in 1965! Also annoying is the fact it is set in Boston, yet I hear ZERO Boston dialect! If you listen carefully there are a lot of phrases that didn't come into vogue until at least the 90's. I realize this is being nitpicky.. but c'mon these were obvious and very easy fixes. Who writes this junk anyway? The frequent night shots of the Boston skyline (same shot repeated over and over) were also annoying. If the set pieces matched the actual time frame I might have boosted this up a notch.

This is perhaps the worst movie I have ever tried watching. I only did about 25 minutes before I turned it off. It reminded me of a high school play. The actors seemed as if they were reading off of a teleprompter, the music was way overdone, they kept using the same crime scene photo over and over and over.... Everything was so cliché'. Don't waste your time watching this. You would do better to just read the story on the internet. I wish I had looked at the IMDb rating before I chose this movie. The cover looked very interesting, plus what a story line. But it failed miserably. I have never heard of any of the actors, I now know why. And I can't recall ever hearing of the director before.