Taglines: “Come in.” He did. Thirteen times.
The Boston Strangler movie storyline. In 1962, elderly women are being strangled to death in their homes in the metropolitan Boston area. Panic starts to ensue not only in the general population, but also within the police forces in the Boston area, they who start to apprehend and question every known sexual criminal.
Things for the police departments start to get out of control when the victimology is extended to younger women with subsequent stranglings. To show the public that the commonwealth is taking the matter seriously, the state attorney general appoints law professor John S. Bottomly to lead a multi-jurisdictional task force to apprehend the perpetrator.
Bottomly feels ill equipped to do so. But he and his team come across two leads: one being a victim, Dianne Cluny, who survives her strangling, and two being a man named Albert DeSalvo being detained for a seemingly unrelated crime. Bottomly notices that DeSalvo, who is institutionalized as he is diagnosed with a possible case of dissociative identity disorder, has an injury matching one that Cluny inflicted on the strangler.
Beyond his mental disorder, DeSalvo seems like a decent man. Regardless, Bottomly wants to find out conclusively if DeSalvo is indeed the strangler, even if he will never be tried for the crimes, and even if it causes DeSalvo possible permanent injury to his psyche.
The Boston Strangler is a 1968 American biographical crime film loosely based on the true story of the Boston Strangler and the book by Gerold Frank. It was directed by Richard Fleischer and stars Tony Curtis as Albert DeSalvo, the strangler, and Henry Fonda as John S. Bottomly, the chief detective who came to fame for obtaining DeSalvo’s confession. Curtis was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his performance. The cast also featured George Kennedy, Murray Hamilton and Sally Kellerman.
The Boston Strangler (1968)
Directed by: Richard Fleischer
Starring: Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, George Kennedy, Jeanne Cooper, Sally Kellerman, William Hickey, Leora Dana, Lara Lindsay, Austin Willis, William Marshall, Elizabeth Baur, Carole Shelley
Screenplay by: Edward Anhalt
Cinematography by: Richard H. Kline
Film Editing by: Marion Rothman
Set Decoration by: Stuart A. Reiss, Walter M. Scott, Raphael Bretton
Art Direction by: Richard Day, Jack Martin Smith
Music by: Lionel Newman
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: October 16, 1968
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