The Boston Strangler

I'm from Boston and know people who were questioned about the murders. It was a little disappointing to see how this was put together. And I don't remember De Salvo having a foreign accent, the real De Salvo grew up in Massachusetts. Sure the actor looked a little like the real De Salvo, but his accent made the story seem fake. The overall feel of the movie was worse than a made for TV movie. The photography for the movie was very jumpy. The costumes for the time period didn't match very well.

If you are looking for something scary or gory, this is not it. It's more of a history movie you'd see in high school on the reel to reel during class. I didn't even watch the whole thing. Terrible.

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.

Some extra-dark version of Samuel L. Jackson spends over an hour berating an investigator with severe cystic acne scarring. Annoying full-length shots of women being overpowered and strangled without any real sexual violation, even though the killer(s?) are supposed to be sexually driven. At some random point, some Tim Gunn-type man takes over investigation, advised by his distracting bowties. Flashbacks to the most lame murders of the movie. Boston has an ugly skyline and contributes nothing to the film. Accents change as drama escalates. Random clichés such as "innocent until proved guilty" randomly uttered by cast. Acting on par with that of my first play in elementary school.

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.

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.