The Hillsiade Strangler starts as store detective & wannabe police officer Kenneth Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) decides to leave New York, fly to Los Angeles & stay with his cousin Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro). There Kenneth applies to be a cop but is rejected so together with Angelo he kidnaps two young girls Erin (Jennifer Tisdale) & April (Jessica Allegra) & force them into prostitution, all goes well until a local pimp & his heavies come round & put a premature end to the cousins nice little earner. Frustrated & angry Kenneth & Angelo cruise around & pick up a prostitute named Gabrielle (Kent Masters King) who told the pimp about them & murder her, both men enjoyed it & are soon addicted to posing as police officers, kidnapping, raping, abusing & murdering women. In the press they are dubbed as 'The Hillside Strangler'...
Co-written & directed by Chuck Parello this is one in a number of films to portray real life serial killers over the past few years including Summer of Sam (1999) about the Son of Sam killings in New York, In the Light of the Moon (2000) about Ed Gein also directed by Parello, Dahmer (2002) about Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy (2002) unsurprisingly about Ted Bundy, Nightstalker (2002) about Los Angeles serial killer Richard Ramirez, Gacy (2003) about John Wayne Gacy, Monster (2003) which profiles female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007) about Ed Gein & The Zodiac (2005) & Zodiac (2007) which were both about the San Francisco bay killer of the same name. It seems that films about real life serial killers are all the rage, God knows why since how many of those films I have listed are actually any good? Well The Hillside Strangler certainly doesn't buck the trend as I think it's a piece of crap to be quite frank. The scripts plays it from the point of view of the two lead psychos, a lot of the original details of the case are retained although anyone not familiar with those details will not notice anyway, however there are a few things that the makers have changed like how the two girls forced into prostitution escape but I don't think it particularly matters. I'm not really sure who would enjoy a film such as The Hillside Strangler, the constant profanity & bad language really becomes annoying & distracting, the scenes in which the two cousins abduct, rape & kill their victims are very unpleasant to watch & to be honest the film bored me. At almost 100 minutes I found this very hard to sit through, the constant profanity gets irritating & since the entire duration of the film is spent following these two highly unlikable scumbags around it's difficult to find any sort of enjoyment here.
The film is nowhere near as graphic as it would like you to believe, there is nudity but all the rapes occur off screen, the murders are relatively tame & don't feature any blood or gore & I think the reason why The Hillside Strangler is disturbing is because it's based on actual events which all decent human beings will find reprehensible. In reality between November 1977 & May 1978 the two cousins murdered 10 women, the two split up in 1978 & Bianchi then killed two girls on his own & was arrested soon after which Buono was implicated in the earlier killings & both were sentenced to life in prison in 1983. That six year period is what the film actually concentrates on as well as a bizarre real life incident about a female writer who Bianchi convinced to commit another murder in the style of the Hillside Strangler to try & make police think they had the wrong person in jail. In another bizarre fact the two actually stopped Catherine Lorre with the intent on abducting, raping & killing her but let her go after they found out she was the daughter of horror acting icon Peter Lorre! The film isn't scary & much of it's shock value comes from the fact it's based on true events rather than it's graphic content of which there is actually very little.
Technically the film is solid, it doesn't really have a late 70's feel about it, I can't quite put my finger on why but I just don't think it did. The acting is alright, both C. Thomas Howell (looking like a cross between Ernest & Jim Carrey) & Nicholas Turturro (looking like a fat Raul Julia) make their character's very unlikable so I suppose they did what was required. No-one else is given much to do.
The Hillside Strangler takes a notorious late 70's Los Angeles murder case & tries to make a character driven film out of it, personally there is next to nothing that I found enjoyable about The Hillside Strangler & should filmmakers really give scum like Bianchi & Buono more publicity & almost turn them into some sort of anti-hero? As far as I am concerned they should rot in jail in total obscurity. The film Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006) also focused on the crimes of Bianchi & Buono.
Co-written & directed by Chuck Parello this is one in a number of films to portray real life serial killers over the past few years including Summer of Sam (1999) about the Son of Sam killings in New York, In the Light of the Moon (2000) about Ed Gein also directed by Parello, Dahmer (2002) about Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy (2002) unsurprisingly about Ted Bundy, Nightstalker (2002) about Los Angeles serial killer Richard Ramirez, Gacy (2003) about John Wayne Gacy, Monster (2003) which profiles female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007) about Ed Gein & The Zodiac (2005) & Zodiac (2007) which were both about the San Francisco bay killer of the same name. It seems that films about real life serial killers are all the rage, God knows why since how many of those films I have listed are actually any good? Well The Hillside Strangler certainly doesn't buck the trend as I think it's a piece of crap to be quite frank. The scripts plays it from the point of view of the two lead psychos, a lot of the original details of the case are retained although anyone not familiar with those details will not notice anyway, however there are a few things that the makers have changed like how the two girls forced into prostitution escape but I don't think it particularly matters. I'm not really sure who would enjoy a film such as The Hillside Strangler, the constant profanity & bad language really becomes annoying & distracting, the scenes in which the two cousins abduct, rape & kill their victims are very unpleasant to watch & to be honest the film bored me. At almost 100 minutes I found this very hard to sit through, the constant profanity gets irritating & since the entire duration of the film is spent following these two highly unlikable scumbags around it's difficult to find any sort of enjoyment here.
The film is nowhere near as graphic as it would like you to believe, there is nudity but all the rapes occur off screen, the murders are relatively tame & don't feature any blood or gore & I think the reason why The Hillside Strangler is disturbing is because it's based on actual events which all decent human beings will find reprehensible. In reality between November 1977 & May 1978 the two cousins murdered 10 women, the two split up in 1978 & Bianchi then killed two girls on his own & was arrested soon after which Buono was implicated in the earlier killings & both were sentenced to life in prison in 1983. That six year period is what the film actually concentrates on as well as a bizarre real life incident about a female writer who Bianchi convinced to commit another murder in the style of the Hillside Strangler to try & make police think they had the wrong person in jail. In another bizarre fact the two actually stopped Catherine Lorre with the intent on abducting, raping & killing her but let her go after they found out she was the daughter of horror acting icon Peter Lorre! The film isn't scary & much of it's shock value comes from the fact it's based on true events rather than it's graphic content of which there is actually very little.
Technically the film is solid, it doesn't really have a late 70's feel about it, I can't quite put my finger on why but I just don't think it did. The acting is alright, both C. Thomas Howell (looking like a cross between Ernest & Jim Carrey) & Nicholas Turturro (looking like a fat Raul Julia) make their character's very unlikable so I suppose they did what was required. No-one else is given much to do.
The Hillside Strangler takes a notorious late 70's Los Angeles murder case & tries to make a character driven film out of it, personally there is next to nothing that I found enjoyable about The Hillside Strangler & should filmmakers really give scum like Bianchi & Buono more publicity & almost turn them into some sort of anti-hero? As far as I am concerned they should rot in jail in total obscurity. The film Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006) also focused on the crimes of Bianchi & Buono.