The Hillside Strangler
Director: Chuck Parello
Starring: C. Thomas Howell, Nicholas Turturro, Allison Lange, Lin Shaye, Molly Brenner, Aimee Brooks and Hal Cutler
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Release Date: TBC
Reviewed by: Pam Creais
Tartan films has gained a reputation for making films of quality and interest about serial killers to meet an insatiable public demand for movies dealing with the flipside of the American dream and society’s dark underbelly. With this latest outing director Chuck Parello examines the two year killing spree of Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, collectively known as the Hillside Strangler.
Kenneth Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) has long held dreams of becoming a law enforcement officer, despite being consistently failed as unsuitable on his many applications to various departments. He relocates to California to try his luck in a fresh environment, lodging initially with his cousin, Angelo (Nicholas Turturro), a brash and sleazy would-be ladies’ man whose ambitions outstrip his ability. Their low rent orgies with good time girls take a sinister turn when Angelo sees their set up as a business opportunity. After events take a bad turn the duo kill the prostitute that Angelo believes is responsible and murder soon proves a hard habit to break.
C.Thomas Howell takes the Bianchi role and plays him as a sad, easily-led underachiever, whilst Turturro’s Buono is a volatile and aggressive woman-hater whose dislike of the opposite sex spirals out of control when his dreams of becoming a underworld kingpin are thwarted. The film has an over-processed bleached out look that encapsulates the seedy side of the 70s perfectly, and the dark humour somehow works aside the squalid violence that at times makes for uncomfortable viewing.
The world in general seems to have an endless appetite for the activities of the disenfranchised and dispossessed, and a need to understand what makes certain individuals choose activities so beyond the boundaries of normal behaviour. Films like The Hillside Strangler go someway to answering these questions but ultimately it’s an area that remains open to continued speculation.
