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The Hillside Strangler (2004)

Dir: Chuck Parello

America, the late 1970’s.
Kenneth Bianchi (C Thomas Howell) is an (adopted) Momma’s boy who works as a security guard in a local store.
Ken keeps trying to get into the Police but keeps getting turned down, something that eats away at him as he craves attention..

Bianchi moves to Los Angeles to stay with his Cousin Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro) who works as a high class auto upholsterer. Ken is instantly led into the L.A sleaze dens by the aggressive Angelo where women are just commodities to be traded and used.

Angelo is arrogant and cocksure, while Kenneth is awkward and nervous, needing Angelo to push him (and in many cases bully him) into ‘action’. Be that action of a sexual kind or simply getting a job.
The only time Bianchi gains confidence, and makes a success with women, is when he lies about himself and lets his make believe life lead him.

Bianchi eventually gets a job in a cleaning firm and also meets a women named Claire, lies about his life to keep her, and eventually she falls pregnant by him.
Not that this changes things for Kenneth who not only sets himself up as a (fraudulent) psychotherapist but also sets up a modelling agency with Angelo that in reality lures young women into a life of prostitution, with Angelo dishing out brutal punishments to any girl that complains or dares to leave.

Things go well for them until a local pimp moves in and closes them down.
Angered and frustrated at not fighting back against the pimp Angelo and Kenneth instead lash out at easier prey, the prostitute they believed sold them out to the pimp.
Urged on by Angelo, Bianchi strangles the girl and from then on the sexual kick and excitement they both felt during the murder is too much to resist, and more girls fall victim to the two psychos.……

 

Based on the true Hillside Strangler case Parello’s movie pretty much follows the real events (including the fact some of the victims were not just strangled but also underwent tortures like being electrocuted and injected with cleaning fluid) and does not shy away from the details of the crimes.
But it’s in the things left out that the film falls down.
Neither Angelo or Kenneth are portrayed as ‘nice’ people (especially the astonishingly unpleasant Angelo) but to leave out that two of their raped and murdered victims were a12 and 14 seems a dubious omission on moral grounds.
The biggest omission, though is actually one of the most interesting things about the case in that Bianchi, after his arrest, pretended to have multiple personalities to get an insanity plea (Howell mentions this extensively during his interview on the DVD in fact), something the film ignores completely.
The other omission is open to debate because of how the movie would play with it.
Chuck Parello and Stephen ‘Ted Bundy’ Johnston’s screenplay concentrates solely on the killers and leaves out the Cops on the case entirely (unlike an earlier TV version with Richard Crenna as the real life Detective on the case) which of course makes for a very different movie.
In a way it’s a far riskier move because it will try the patience if the killer(s) are not interesting enough or at least not as interesting as the other details of the case. And it has to be said that away from their murder spree neither man is particularly interesting or intriguing.

Don’t let this initial criticism put you off the film though, there are still many memorable moments to be had and the script (the odd bit of deranged black humour aside) plays it all with welcome sincerity.
The most noticeable aspect of the film is that it is populated by characters that are damaged goods of one kind or another and to varying degrees. From a sexually unhinged serial killer, to an agonised alcoholic mother, to a lonely young woman looking for someone to treat her right…everyone is damaged in some way, and it makes for a suitably bleak environment for Parello to move his two lead characters around in.
The movie has still got a modern day gloss that’s not as effective as the real period grime that made 70’s Grindhouse movies so unique and interesting, but luckily there is enough hard as hell unpleasantness running throughout the entire film that at least some of that Grindhouse grit comes through.

The first thing that smacks you around the head is the uncompromisingly harsh language.
As soon as Angelo appears the soundtrack explodes with profanity. But not your basic profanity, it’s brutally delivered profanity that is used by Angelo like a fist, battering those at the receiving end into submission.
It’s a stand-put performance by Turturro, that cleverly stays just the right side of believable, and he is obviously relishing such lines as “Nice box! Smells like cheese” (during sex with a sex show performer), “You owe me a plane ticket cunt” and the ever delightful “How’d yer like it if I hacked off your arms and shoved a live rat up yer snatch”? What a guy!
The foul mouthed, screaming highlight has to be between Angelo and his dying, drunken Mother. It’s an astonishing display of hate from Angelo and a desperate, rage filled show of a Mother’s devastated love for her Son that's now barely breathing. It’s a brief but spot on performance by Lin Shaye.

As well as the brutal language, the film contains some uncompromising murder and abuse scenes.
Some excellent performances by the actresses means that even when something specifically explicit is not being shown the all encompassing terror of the women that is being portrayed is genuinely disturbing.
Parello’s camera lingers as much on the women’s breasts as on their tear stained faces and although there is nothing explicitly gory or sexual, all the scenes are dirty enough in how they are crafted and the atmosphere that pervades them that this is easily one of the most exploitative (or honest) portrayals of a serial killer’s activities for a long while.
It would have helped that at the end of a particularly disturbing suffocation/strangling murder that Parello dropped the breast fetish for a few seconds though as the woman’s chest is clearly moving up and down even though Angelo has just implicitly informed us that she is dead.
Mostly though, the scenes of assault. rape and murder are expertly, and chillingly, crafted.

“They’re going to make a movie about you” declares Angelo to Bianchi in a moment of less than subtle irony, and one thing that at first made people take notice of this movie was that 80’s film brat C. Thomas Howell was essaying the role of Kenneth Bianchi.
Howell has had a pretty big fall from popular (“Soul Man”, “Red Dawn“) and critical (“The Outsiders“, “The Hitcher”) grace, but as Bianchi he has crawled back some of his profile and, in the less showy role compared to Turturro, also turned in a very well judged performance.
Bianchi was meant to be a coward when faced with anything more than a helpless woman, but was also very clever in how he would manipulate people, and Howell (looking suitably gaunt) does a good job at showing the many facets of Bianchi’s psyche; from failure to smart manipulator, from coward to homicidal rapist to even a would-be (though obviously doomed to failure) Father.
He is only let down by the fact that the screenplay gives him little to play with away from his own characters psychosis and again it’s an example of the fact that just maybe it would have been better if Parello had sometimes shifted away from Bianchi and Angelo to those hunting them.

Parello, who tuned in an unexpectedly interesting (if a far cry from the original) sequel to “Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer”, certainly has an eye for the seamy side of L.A, knows how to stage a disturbing exploitation scene and also knows how to handle actors, but his pacing is sometimes off and as such the film sags in the middle as we get less and less interested in the killers.
Ten minutes trimmed form the middle and moved to the end of the film would have helped flesh out the interesting real life episodes after the trial and certainly helped in fleshing out the fascinating aspect of the case involving a would-be saviour of Bianchi’s who went all out to try and get him released, a sequence that ends up very rushed in the finished movie.

Overall then “The Hillside Strangler” delivers a nicely sleazy and disturbing slice of pseudo 70’s Exploitation that’s thankfully played seriously, features very good acting by all concerned (with Turturro especially delivering a truly brutal performance) and is only let down by some slack moments and the fact that some of the most interesting aspects of the case were either ignored or skated over.