Fans of Zodiac and Seven should make time for this Tony Curtis serial-killer classic
Film Features Tony Curtis
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With the Denzel Washington thriller The Little Things hitting theaters and HBO Max, we’re looking back at other movies about detectives hunting serial killers.
The Boston Strangler (1968)
Long before Zac Efron showed he could use his chiseled good looks to hunt unsuspecting victims as real-life serial killer Ted Bundy in Netflix’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile, matinee idol Tony Curtis went homicidal in The Boston Strangler. Based on Gerold Frank’s book, and directed by the late journeyman Richard Fleischer, the 1968 thriller cast the Some Like It Hot star as Albert DeSalvo, who murdered 13 women throughout the Boston area in the early ’60s.
You don’t see Curtis until an hour in. Before that, it’s all Boston’s finest, rounding up Beantown deviants and often heading straight into dead ends. Led by special investigator John Bottomly (Henry Fonda), this crew of straight-faced, chain-smoking, highly problematic detectives and sergeants (which include those old stalwarts George Kennedy and Murray Hamilton) get to know their depraved suspects, like the serial sex addict (George Furth of Blazing Saddles) who bedded almost 500 women in six months or the suspicious character (future Prizzi’s Honor kingpin William Hickey) who takes women’s handbags and does god knows what with them. (These darkly comic moments are probably remnants of British playwright Terence Rattigan’s rejected draft, a bizarre comedy that—according to Curtis—alleged that the killer was legendary Hollywood producer/studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck.)
Working with cinematographer Richard H. Kline, visual designer Fred Harpman, editor Marion Rothman, and photographic effects expert L.B. Abbott, Fleischer makes the first half of Strangler visually busy. He often populates the screen with different angles of the same shot or various scenes making up one simultaneous montage. (It makes one wonder how this film played on television back in the day, when HDTVs and widescreen formatting didn’t exist and people were stuck with— gasp!—the dreaded pan-and-scan format.) As Fleischer told American Cinematographer, he went for this experimental, multi-paneled filmmaking because it suited a story of “simultaneous action,” and made it so he didn’t have to “cut back and forth in a conventional manner from one action to the other.”
By the time we get to the actual Strangler, things slow down considerably so that we can focus on Curtis. As it turns out, DeSalvo is a working-class Joe with a wife and two kids, who makes time between his various jobs to find his way into women’s apartments, either knocking on the door for some trumped-up reason or just straight-up breaking in. Even though it’s never been proven, the movie declares that the killer has a split personality, with the regular DeSalvo unaware of what the psychotic DeSalvo is doing. The rest of The Boston Strangler has Curtis going one-on-one with Fonda’s investigator, in an interrogation that drums up a lot of bad memories that DeSalvo would prefer hidden. Curtis, who already proved he had no problem going dark when he played the sleazy press agent in The Sweet Smell Of Success, impressively turns up the repressed emotion and caged intensity, while Fonda is all steely, stern verve.
As Kurt Loder once said about Blue Velvet, The Boston Strangler is a laugh-out-loud horror show, an icy thriller with surprising moments of gut-busting humor. It’s also littered with familiar faces: Sally Kellerman, Alex Rocco, William “Blacula” Marshall, even a very young James Brolin. Fans of David Fincher’s murderous opuses Seven and Zodiac might get a kick out of this ’60s-era serial-killer movie, with its beleaguered authorities chasing false lead after false lead before they eventually find the culprit, who turns out to be more methodical (and more handsome) than they expected.
Availability: The Boston Strangler is available to rent or purchase from Amazon, Google Play, Apple, YouTube, Microsoft, Fandango Now, DirectTV, and VUDU.
28 Comments
The Boston Strangler case is… a weird case because its both solved and kinda not? DeSalvo confessed to everything and was eventually killed in prison, but a lot of people felt he confessed for attention. But then DNA proved he killed at least one Strangler victim. Yet they can’t prove he killed all of them. Utterly bizarre.
Fans of Zodiac and Seven should make time for this Tony Curtis serial-killer classicSome Like it Hot?
serial-killer classicSome Like it Hot?
That same year No Way To Treat A Lady came out. Rod Steiger, George Segal and Lee Remmick. Its a movie about a serial killer and Steiger’s over the top campy performance is just fun to watch. He is like the bizarro boston strangler.
I can watch Steiger overact all day. The man chews scenery to the point that Al Pacino and Nicolas Cage feel he should tone it down a bit.
Sergio Leone’s strategy was to make him re-do a scene a trillion times to wear him down. Only when utterly exhausted he was performing a bit believably.
I guess Leone made him do it over and over until he was completely Pawnbroken.
Ah, the same technique applied to William Shatner on Star Trek II by Nick Meyer.
Ok. I really don’t want to see the first take of “Khaaaaan!”.
The Pawnbroker is both dignified and a little over the top. Great performance, love the man.
That is one wonderful, crazy-ass piece of film. Kudos for recommending it.
The Boston Strangler is one of my favorite films! The crazy editing, intensely cold and deranged performance from Tony Curtis, the methodical investigation. It really was ahead of its time.
After watching this film I noticed “Richard Fleischer” as director. It made sense-the editing remided me of “Fantastic Voyage”, a very underrated sci-fi not-yet classic that he also directed.
From the preview, this film looks absolutely stacked with familiar actors.
My parents, bless them, took us to very few kids movies and everything they wanted to see so I actually saw this at the drive-in as a tyke and still vividly remember it as being very creepy. It was a big deal at the time for Tony Curtis to play the killer (as well as the devil in “Rosemary’s Baby”) at the time. I don’t think it helped him branch out that much but you have to give him credit for trying to break the pretty boy mold that he was fast growing out of. Also, there was always something about Curtis that seemed vaguely unsettling so it all works. Well worth a look.
BAD choice, Mom and Dad!!
He didn’t play the devil in “Rosemary’s Baby.” He was the voice of an actor on the phone who went blind so Rosemary’s struggling actor husband could get a big role.
Thank you. That was driving me crazy.
Is it okay for me to say that is one of the worst trailers I’ve ever seen?
How about this one? 🙂
Tony Curtis is spectacular in that movie. It’s a performance that pointed the way to great work by 70’s actors like Nicholson, De Niro, and Pacino…and that’s not something you would expect out of Tony Curtis!
If you haven’t seen his performance in the “Sweet Smell of Success”, you don’t know what you’re missing. Oscar worthy. OK, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time, si I’m somewhat partial, but still…hot damn.
I’ve seen it many times. He’s terrific. I’m not belittling his skill, but playing a tortured serial killer was a heavy dose for any actor back then. He wouldn’t be my first choice! (Everything about Sweet Smell of Success is great.)
That article you linked has the most ridiculously Hollywood ideas in it. Zanuck says Tony Curtis is too attractive to play the lead, so they ask Warren Beatty and Robert Redford first. Are they kidding?
Those ugly fucks!
For me, the reason Zodiac is so good isn’t the killer at all, it’s the close examination of how obsession can tear a life apart. It’s less a cat & mouse game like this movie or Se7en, and more a cat scratches itself to death game.
“Fans of David Fincher’s murderous opuses Seven and Zodiac might get a kick out of this ’60s-era serial-killer movie”Nonsense. You might as well recommend Gorillas in the Mist to King Kong fans.
Thanks to Saturday Night Live, whenever I see/hear Tony Curtis’ name I think of Tom Hanks saying “Wow, Tony Curtis!”