Here's a movie that did thrill. The Boston Strangler. I'd never heard of it, and stumbled on it quite accidentally. Its a terrific cast with Henry Fonda and George Kennedy and Tony Curtis in a really, really dark and demanding role where he usually persisted with comedy roles, hero roles or romantic leads - with the occasional debonair villian. But there's nothing redeeming about this part - an evil serial killer. His performance is electric and captivating.
Without wanting to ruin anything, the first half of the film is a chronology of the murders. The film opens with a promise that it is a true reflection of events. Not inspired by actual events or an interpreatation of recorded facts. So you kind of feel close to the day as the police go down one dead after another and one innocent victim's death is portrayed in some of the more remarkably shot scenes of the age. The cinematography is quite unusual with lots of picture-in-picture stuff and innovative editing that takes what a lot of films did in the late sixties that little bit further giving the haunting murder scenes an extra spooky and harrowing edge. Always, Tony Curtis is brilliant, clinical and apparently unmoved.
The second half of the film deals with Curtis after he's captured and charts Fonda's efforts to get him to confess. Its psychologically quite compelling and leads you exploring in your own mind how would that scenario feel. As Curtis - or rather Alberto Desalvo - increasingly comes to first suspect then realise that an alternative personality within him might be responsible for the crimes, its thoroughly moving and disturbing. There's even one scene where a tear slowly appears and rolls down his cheeks as the penny drops and he begins to mime out one of the crimes. How would it feel if you lost faith in who you were and your knowledge and awareness of what you had and hadn't done. The visits from his wife and child are equally upsetting.
The movie - however - leaves you feeling quite convinced that this is what happened. He did it. Thats it. So I did some research and its quite intrigueing...even today it remains inconclulsive whether he did or not. The theory being that in fact the Police Department used him to collate a whole host of different, hitherto unsolved murders. Its worth reading about. He died eventually in Walpole prison in 1973 stabbed to death by assailants unkown.