The Boston Strangler

Three years before making 10 Rillington Place (1971), perhaps the best true-crime film ever made, Richard Fleischer brought the infamous "Boston Strangler" to the big screen. The twisted tale of Albert DeSalvo makes for a fine film, part police procedural and part psychodrama; its only major sin is an overuse of split-screen camera tricks.

In the early '60s, Boston is terrorized by a serial killer who strangles and mutilates his victims - hence his moniker. At first he seems to have a clear MO - elderly women and nurses - but his killings prove increasingly random and his motives hard to divine. The Boston PD scours the city's underworld for the suspects, but despite bagging a seemingly endless procession of peepers, perverts, homosexuals and fetishists, the killings continue. Even after state Attorney John Bottomly (Henry Fonda) takes over the investigation, the Strangler avoids detection. Only when Albert DeSalvo (Tony Curtis), a seemingly mild-mannered repairman, is arrested for burglarly do the cops get a break.

The Boston Strangler is certainly a compelling film, but man is it depressing. Fleischer's portrait of 1963 Boston is extremely nihilistic: everyone is either a cynical cop, a sexual deviant or a helpless victim, a "sick" society going to hell in a handbasket. The police are competent, hard-working and thorough but still fail to get their man; perfectly valid leads steer them down blind alleys while DeSalvo keeps on killing. The cops might as well bring in the pompous psychic Hurkos (George Voskovec) for all the good their investigations do. This town could definitely use a Harry Callahan or Paul Kersey to clean things up, but this being based on a true story, none is forthcoming.

Edward Anhalt's script is fairly schematic, with two-thirds of the film devoted to the crimes and investigation, the last to DeSalvo's lengthy interrogation. In a neat conceit, DeSalvo remains off-screen until the half-way mark, though when he does appear there's no doubt he's the killer. The movie settles into repeated scenes of Bottomly grilling DeSalvo, long sequences that avoid becoming dull through expert acting and direction. The audience doesn't get any satisfaction out of DeSalvo's arrest: suffering from a split personality disorder, he's not fully responsible for his actions, and Fleischer and Anhalt walk a tightrope of neither damning nor absolving him. A final message clunks but the disquieting final shot ends the film on a satisfactory note.

Fleischer's direction is dependably solid, but he engages in some bizarre and problematic style flourishes. The most obvious is the heavy use of split-screen, a trick very much in vogue at the time. In some scenes this works, ably substituting a traditional montage with simultaneous actions - women reacting to the Strangler, dead bodies lurking behind closed apartment doors - but in others it seems like a cheesy gimmick; fortunately, it's phased out later in the film. More effective is the conceit of inserting DeSalvo (and Bottomly) into his half-remembered flashbacks.

Tony Curtis (Spartacus) gives a superb performance. Far removed from his pretty boy days, he's wonderful as a run-down man more pathetic than anything else. Henry Fonda gets a solid role, much better than the cameos and pay-check parts that characterized his '60s work. George Kennedy (Charade) and Murray Hamilton (Jaws) do nice work around the edges as Fonda's point-men. There's also a superlative supporting cast: Hurd Hatfield (The Picture of Dorian Gray) as a cultured homosexual, Jeff Corey (In Cold Blood) as a lawyer, William Hickey (Little Big Man) as a disturbed suspect and Sally Kellerman (MASH) as one of DeSalvo's luckier victims.

The Boston Strangler is a solid thriller. Yes, the dramatic flourishes are a bit overdone, but they don't seriously detract from a wonderfully compelling crime saga.