Even though, supposedly, Alber DeSalvo wasn't the Boston Stranger, this R. Fleischer late 60's film makes a pretty good case (and at the time everybody bought). That doesn't really matter. It's a well-paced "docu-melodrama" about a notorious serial killer in Boston in the early sixties. Anyway, Henry Fonda (who I love as an actor) is surprisingly bland as a top official as is George Kennedy as a Main detective. All of the social misfits and suspects they question and harrass, all of the actors are good (especially Bill Hickey - famous acting teacher who (in the movie) likes women's shoes) and Sally Kellerman is effective in a small role a few years before M.A.S.H.
But Tony Curtis is disturbingly ice-like and unhappy (for a change) and with very few lines of dialogue conveys a complicated man. Very good editing as well, although I HATE the split-screen imagery which is used constantly in a very superfluous way. Buy the time this "plot-line" gets moving, you're in for demented futility on the part of the investigators....which makes it seem more real (even in the 60's). There are dubious intentions all around, but that doesn't mean LOGIC will reign true (as far as capturing the lead actor in a captive way), but it does open up the possibility of insolent arrogance once these "detectives" but somebody after "messing with" everybody in Boston, because paranoia was more acceptable than professionalism. It doesn't really matter. As a movie, it rolls, it stalls, it scares you, and it ultimately has repellant passivity, which was unfortunate for Tony Curtis as an actor because he might have been nominated in '68 (in a tough field), but the putrid flavor of detectives seeking out suspects turns this into an exploitive film with a false and unkempt morality base, but that's plot stuff anyway...but that is the script (the weakest part of the film), but it's well worth delving into.
But Tony Curtis is disturbingly ice-like and unhappy (for a change) and with very few lines of dialogue conveys a complicated man. Very good editing as well, although I HATE the split-screen imagery which is used constantly in a very superfluous way. Buy the time this "plot-line" gets moving, you're in for demented futility on the part of the investigators....which makes it seem more real (even in the 60's). There are dubious intentions all around, but that doesn't mean LOGIC will reign true (as far as capturing the lead actor in a captive way), but it does open up the possibility of insolent arrogance once these "detectives" but somebody after "messing with" everybody in Boston, because paranoia was more acceptable than professionalism. It doesn't really matter. As a movie, it rolls, it stalls, it scares you, and it ultimately has repellant passivity, which was unfortunate for Tony Curtis as an actor because he might have been nominated in '68 (in a tough field), but the putrid flavor of detectives seeking out suspects turns this into an exploitive film with a false and unkempt morality base, but that's plot stuff anyway...but that is the script (the weakest part of the film), but it's well worth delving into.