Hillside Strangler (Unrated) (Ws)
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Product details
Actor: C Thomas Howell, Nicholas TurturroEdition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 96 minutes
Release Date: 2004-11-09
Audience Rating: Unrated
Publisher: Tartan Video
Studio: Tartan Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Hillside Strangler (Unrated) (Ws)
Movie Review: REPELLENT TRUE CRIME FILM...
Summary: 2 Stars
This a a true crime film that shows the killing spree engaged in by two sociopathic cousins, Kenneth Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) and Angelo Buono (Nick Turturro), who indulged in a killing spree of young women in Los Angeles during the nineteen seventies. All I can say is that both of these actors must have been hard up for money for them to have acted in this tawdry film.
This film sheds little light on what motivated these two cousins, Kenneth and Angelo, to behave as they did, though it does provide some tantalizing glimpses. Kenneth was adopted and certainly seemed to have had an odd, clinging relationship with his adopted mother. Angelo had a totally dysfunctional relationship with his mother, Kenneth's adopted mother's younger sister, whom Angelo may have even tried to kill at one time. Both these sisters seemed to have had behavioral issues.
Interestingly enough, Kenneth was a police wanna be who, thankfully, kept having his law enforcement job applications rejected by various agencies for one reason or another. He sometimes worked as a security guard. When his rejection by a law enforcement agency for a job proved to be too much for him, his mother sent him packing from Rochester, New York, to live with his cousin, Angelo, an auto mechanic in Los Angeles.
Kenneth would thankfully also be rejected by law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. While in Los Angeles, he masqueraded as a Columbia University trained psychotherapist. Yes, our sicko killer would actively counsel others, which would provide a surprise twist in the end. He would also manage to form a relationship with a nice woman who found his disgusting cousin, Angelo, repellent, as he made her feel uncomfortable as he made me feel.
Together, Angelo and Kenneth would form go on to establish a house of prostitution, getting prospective clients from a list of names that Kenneth bought from a prostitute. When that unsavory business venture is shut down by competing pimps who object to what they see as a poaching of their clients, Angelo decides to exact revenge by killing the prostitute who sold them the list of clients. This would the first of their many kills, and the beginning of the cousins' end.
Spouting scatological references at every turn, referring to women in pejorative terms and treating them with overt contempt, physically and verbally, at every opportunity, Angelo is totally primal, without redeeming value as a human being. Killing women as a past time was not a great leap for Angelo. For Kenneth, it would provide the opportunity to impersonate a police officer for the purpose of lulling his victims into a false sense of security, before going in for the kill.
Under Angelo's tutelage, the weak and whiny Kenneth would blossom into a lustful, eager killer. Angelo, who was already a full blown sociopath, needed no prompting. The police would go on to dub the handiwork of these two fiends as being that of "The Hillside Strangler", as the police did not realize that two individuals were involved, until after Kenneth, the weaker of the two, was apprehended.
I confess that I have seldom have seen a more repellent character in a film than that of Angelo. He is so disgusting that I was embarrassed for Nick Turturro and surprised that an actor of his reputation would undertake a role that had such little redeeming value. C. Thomas Howell, looking unusually cadaverous, fares a little better, as his character, while unsavory and pathetic, is not quite as disgusting of that of Turturro's.
This film pulls out all the stops in reaching for the lowest common denominator. With profanity, vulgarity, and nude, large breasted women getting killed at every turn, this unrated film does its best to totally disgust the viewer. In this it succeeds, verging on the pornographic, at times. The problem is that it does little else. The film provides too little insight or background to show how such horrible human beings came to be. In the end, the film results in being merely repellent, making the viewer feel unclean for having seen it.
Summary of Hillside Strangler (Unrated) (Ws)
Based on the true story of the Hillside Strangler, who terrorized Los Angeles in 1978 and 1979. What no one knew was that the brutal serial sex killings were the work of two men who were cousins. A frank, no-holds-barred account of this chilling, true story.Drama Video
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