The Boston Strangler (film)
Encyclopedia
The Boston Strangler is a 1968 film based on the true story of the Boston Strangler
Boston Strangler
The Boston Strangler is a name attributed to the murderer of several women in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, in the early 1960s. Though the crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo, investigators of the case have since suggested the murders were not committed by one person.-First Stage...

 and the book by Gerold Frank
Gerold Frank
Gerold Frank was an American author and ghostwriter. He wrote a number of celebrity memoirs and was considered a pioneer of the "as told to" form of biography...

. It was directed by Richard Fleischer
Richard Fleischer
-Early life:Fleischer was born in Brooklyn, the son of Essie and animator/producer Max Fleischer. He started in motion pictures as director of animated shorts produced by his father including entries in the Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman series.His live-action film career began in 1942 at the RKO...

, and stars Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...

 as Albert DeSalvo
Albert DeSalvo
Albert Henry DeSalvo was a criminal in Boston, Massachusetts who confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", the murderer of 13 women in the Boston area. DeSalvo was not imprisoned for these murders, however, but for a series of rapes...

, the strangler, and Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...

 as John S. Bottomly, the chief detective now famed for obtaining DeSalvo's confession.

Plot

The first part of the film shows the police investigation, with some examples of the seedier side of Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 life, including promiscuity in the adult quarters of the city. The second part shows the apprehension of DeSalvo. The intention of Officer Bottomly and the law is to answer the question presented in the film's famous print ad:
Why did 13 women open their doors to the Boston Strangler?

Cast

  • Tony Curtis
    Tony Curtis
    Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...

     as Albert DeSalvo
    Albert DeSalvo
    Albert Henry DeSalvo was a criminal in Boston, Massachusetts who confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", the murderer of 13 women in the Boston area. DeSalvo was not imprisoned for these murders, however, but for a series of rapes...

  • Henry Fonda
    Henry Fonda
    Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...

     as John S. Bottomly
  • George Kennedy
    George Kennedy
    George Harris Kennedy, Jr. is an American actor who has appeared in over 200 film and television productions. He is perhaps most familiar as the convict Dragline in Cool Hand Luke , airline troubleshooter Joe Patroni in the Airport series of disaster movies from the 1970s and...

     as Det. Phil DiNatale
  • Mike Kellin
    Mike Kellin
    -Early life:Kellin was born Myron Kellin in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Sophia and Samuel Kellin, Russian Jewish immigrants. He was educated at Boston University and Trinity College...

     as Julian Soshnick
    Julian Soshnick
    Julian Soshnick was born on August 17, 1932 in Brooklyn, NY. Born and raised there, Soshnick graduated from high school in Manhattan at age 16. He then attended and graduated Brandeis University and the Boston University School of Law. Drafted in 1957 and shipped out to Germany, he served four...

  • Hurd Hatfield
    Hurd Hatfield
    William Rukard Hurd Hatfield was an American actor.-Biography:The son of William Henry Hatfield , an attorney who served as deputy attorney general for New York, and his wife, the former Adele Steele, Hatfield was born in New York City, and was educated at Columbia University before travelling to...

     as Terence Huntley
  • Murray Hamilton
    Murray Hamilton
    Murray Hamilton was an American stage, screen, and television actor who appeared in such memorable films as The Hustler, The Graduate and Jaws.-Early life:...

     as Det. Frank McAfee
  • Jeff Corey
    Jeff Corey
    Jeff Corey was an American stage and screen actor and director who became a well-respected acting teacher after being blacklisted in the 1950s.-Biography:...

     as John Asgeirsson
  • Sally Kellerman
    Sally Kellerman
    Sally Clare Kellerman is an American actress and singer known for her role as Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the film MASH , for which she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.-Early life:...

     as Dianne Cluny
  • William Marshall as Atty. Gen. Edward W. Brooke
    Edward Brooke
    Edward William Brooke, III is an American politician and was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican from Massachusetts in 1966, defeating his Democratic opponent, Endicott Peabody, 60.7%–38.7%...

  • George Voskovec as Peter Hurkos
    Peter Hurkos
    Peter Hurkos , born Pieter van der Hurk, was a Dutchman who allegedly manifested extra-sensory perception following a head injury and coma resulting from a fall from a ladder when he was age 30. During World War II he was a member of the Dutch Resistance against the Nazis and was imprisoned in...

  • Leora Dana as Mary Bottomly
  • Carolyn Conwell as Irmgard DeSalvo
  • Jeanne Cooper
    Jeanne Cooper
    Wilma Jeanne Cooper , best known as Jeanne Cooper, is an American actress best known for her portrayal of Katherine Chancellor on the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless...

     as Cloe
  • Austin Willis as Dr. Nagy
  • Lara Lindsay as Bobbie Eden
  • William Hickey
    William Hickey (actor)
    William Edward Hickey was an American actor. He was best known for his Oscar-nominated role as Don Corrado Prizzi in the John Huston 1985 film Prizzi's Honor, as well as the voice of Dr...

     as Eugene T. O'Rourke
  • Alex Rocco
    Alex Rocco
    Alex Rocco is an American actor. His roles have ranged from comedy to playing gangsters in Mafia movies.-Early life:...

     as Detective at Apartment of Victim #10
  • James Brolin
    James Brolin
    James Brolin is an American actor, producer and director, best known for his roles in soap operas, movies, sitcoms, and television. He is the father of actor Josh Brolin and husband of singer/actress Barbra Streisand.-Early life:...

     as Det. Sgt. Phil Lisi
  • John Cameron Swayze
    John Cameron Swayze
    John Cameron Swayze was a popular news commentator and game show panelist in the United States during the 1950s.- Early life :...

     as T.V. Narrator
  • George Furth
    George Furth
    George Furth was an American librettist, playwright, and actor.-Biography:Furth was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Evelyn and George Schweinfurth...

     as Lyonel Brumley
  • Tom Aldredge
    Tom Aldredge
    Thomas Ernest "Tom" Aldredge was an American television, film and stage actor.-Life and career:Aldredge was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Lucienne Juliet and W. J. Aldredge, a colonel in the United States Army Air Corps...

     as Harold Lacey

Reviews

When released film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 criticized the film's content, writing, "The Boston Strangler requires a judgment not only on the quality of the film (very good), but also on its moral and ethical implications...The events described in Frank's book have been altered considerably in the film. This is essentially a work of fiction 'based' on the real events. And based on them in such a way to entertain us, which it does, but for the wrong reasons, I believe. This film, which was made so well, should not have been made at all."

In the same vein, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

film critic Renata Adler, wrote "The Boston Stranger represents an incredible collapse of taste, judgment, decency, prose, insight, journalism and movie technique, and yet—through certain prurient options that it does not take—it is not quite the popular exploitation film that one might think. It is as though someone had gone out to do a serious piece of reporting and come up with 4,000 clippings from a sensationalist tabloid. It has no depth, no timing, no facts of any interest and yet, without any hesitation, it uses the name and pretends to report the story of a living man, who was neither convicted nor indicted for the crimes it ascribes to him. Tony Curtis 'stars'—the program credits word—as what the movie takes to be the Boston strangler."

More recently, film critic Dennis Schwartz discussed the film's style, writing, "What mostly filled the split-screen was the many interrogation scenes, where on one side was the suspect and interrogator in the present and on the other side the suspect and his interrogator in flashbacks. Fleischer eschews the graphic violence in the murders and aims instead to try to understand the killer through the script's bogus psychology. The big things the film tried didn't pan out as that interesting, as the flashy camera work counteracts the conventional storyline chronicling the rise, manhunt, fall, and prosecution of De Salvo."

Awards

Nominations
  • Golden Globe Award
    Golden Globe Award
    The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...

    : Best Motion Picture Actor - Drama, Tony Curtis; 1969.
  • Edgar Award
    Edgar Award
    The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...

    : Edgar Allan Poe Award, Best Motion Picture, Edward Anhalt; 1969.
  • American Cinema Editors
    American Cinema Editors
    Founded in 1950, American Cinema Editors is an honorary society of film editors that are voted in based on the qualities of professional achievements, their education of others, and their dedication to editing itself. The society is not to be confused with an industry union, such as the I.A.T.S.E...

    : Eddie, Best Edited Feature Film, Marion Rothman; 1969.

External links

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