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The Strangler, 1964
Leo (Victor Buono) is an eccentric, resentful lab technician who compulsively attacks and murders women as an outlet for his dysfunctional relationship with his cruel mother (Ellen Corby). As a team of detectives starts to close in on Leo, he becomes determined to finally free himself of his mother’s grasp and find a woman to run away with.
Despite some redundant moments, this horror-thriller manages some chilling moments and surprisingly well-developed secondary characters.
A lot of horror movies live or die, so to speak, by their villains. And by that metric, this film is not all that fantastic. Leo is a character we’ve seen far too many times: a man whose life has been ruined by a domineering mother, unable to form normal friendships or romantic relationships, and only able to express himself through pervy peeping and violence. Heck, the film even gives him a doll fetish so that we can get creepy shots of female dolls bent out of shape and staring emptily from the floor after a murder.
So the killer is meh. Not only in terms of his mythology, but also in terms of what it’s like to spend time with him. Leo is incredibly smug, and there are far too many scenes of the police questioning him and Leo smarmily talking his way out of any traps they lay. These scenes go on too long and end up being a bit grating.
But where this film did really surprise and impress me was in the cast of secondary characters, and specifically the women who are Leo’s victims. Yes, the first victim is a classic case of the killer (and the camera) ogling at a lady undressing before she is cruelly dispatched by Leo. But from there forward, the women we meet are remarkable for being both likable and realistic.
First we meet Clara (Jeanne Bates), a nurse who is helping to care for Leo’s mother. Leo sees victimizing Clara as a way to hurt his mother, but there’s also clearly some resentment there for the way that his mother praises and depends on Clara. Clara is just . . . so normal. She’s a woman who is good at her job, empathetic, and friendly.
We also meet a woman named Barbara (Diane Sayer) who works at an amusement park that Leo frequents to buy his dolls. While Barbara at first seems a bit glib and sarcastic, she speaks kindly to Leo. When she unintentionally upsets him---by mimicking a doll voice---she misreads his distress and believes he’s sad because he messed up the game. She kindly offers him a doll prize to cheer him up.
Finally, we meet Tally (Davey Divison), another amusement park worker on whom Leo has a big crush. Like Barbara, Tally is friendly and conversational with Leo. She seems like a nice person, but she also sets a boundary when Leo is too forward with her. Leo tries every play from what we’d now call the Pick-Up Artist playbook (love bombing, guilt tripping, etc), and Tally holds her ground and deflects him. When the police want to use her as bait, she’s like . . . no. She apologizes for not being brave enough, but she just wants to get out of town. It’s very, very relatable.
I don’t know, something about this movie really grew on me, and I’m not sure it’s because of what the movie was actually trying to do. Something about how profoundly normal all these women were, and how they got hurt or tangled up in violence because this man had a messed up childhood that has zero to do with them. I liked all of these women, but they aren’t Mary Sues. It touches on the horror that you can be a normal person just trying to be nice and go about your business, and some guy who is mad at women can totally swoop in and mess you up.
Again: I don’t think that this was actually on purpose. The extended sequences of Leo cleverly dodging the police shows that the movie was trying to center him and his exploits. But what ends up happening is a sort of accidental portrait of the normally one-dimensional victims of your run of the mill “mommy never loved me” killer.
The Strangler, 1964
Leo (Victor Buono) is an eccentric, resentful lab technician who compulsively attacks and murders women as an outlet for his dysfunctional relationship with his cruel mother (Ellen Corby). As a team of detectives starts to close in on Leo, he becomes determined to finally free himself of his mother’s grasp and find a woman to run away with.
Despite some redundant moments, this horror-thriller manages some chilling moments and surprisingly well-developed secondary characters.
A lot of horror movies live or die, so to speak, by their villains. And by that metric, this film is not all that fantastic. Leo is a character we’ve seen far too many times: a man whose life has been ruined by a domineering mother, unable to form normal friendships or romantic relationships, and only able to express himself through pervy peeping and violence. Heck, the film even gives him a doll fetish so that we can get creepy shots of female dolls bent out of shape and staring emptily from the floor after a murder.
So the killer is meh. Not only in terms of his mythology, but also in terms of what it’s like to spend time with him. Leo is incredibly smug, and there are far too many scenes of the police questioning him and Leo smarmily talking his way out of any traps they lay. These scenes go on too long and end up being a bit grating.
But where this film did really surprise and impress me was in the cast of secondary characters, and specifically the women who are Leo’s victims. Yes, the first victim is a classic case of the killer (and the camera) ogling at a lady undressing before she is cruelly dispatched by Leo. But from there forward, the women we meet are remarkable for being both likable and realistic.
First we meet Clara (Jeanne Bates), a nurse who is helping to care for Leo’s mother. Leo sees victimizing Clara as a way to hurt his mother, but there’s also clearly some resentment there for the way that his mother praises and depends on Clara. Clara is just . . . so normal. She’s a woman who is good at her job, empathetic, and friendly.
We also meet a woman named Barbara (Diane Sayer) who works at an amusement park that Leo frequents to buy his dolls. While Barbara at first seems a bit glib and sarcastic, she speaks kindly to Leo. When she unintentionally upsets him---by mimicking a doll voice---she misreads his distress and believes he’s sad because he messed up the game. She kindly offers him a doll prize to cheer him up.
Finally, we meet Tally (Davey Divison), another amusement park worker on whom Leo has a big crush. Like Barbara, Tally is friendly and conversational with Leo. She seems like a nice person, but she also sets a boundary when Leo is too forward with her. Leo tries every play from what we’d now call the Pick-Up Artist playbook (love bombing, guilt tripping, etc), and Tally holds her ground and deflects him. When the police want to use her as bait, she’s like . . . no. She apologizes for not being brave enough, but she just wants to get out of town. It’s very, very relatable.
I don’t know, something about this movie really grew on me, and I’m not sure it’s because of what the movie was actually trying to do. Something about how profoundly normal all these women were, and how they got hurt or tangled up in violence because this man had a messed up childhood that has zero to do with them. I liked all of these women, but they aren’t Mary Sues. It touches on the horror that you can be a normal person just trying to be nice and go about your business, and some guy who is mad at women can totally swoop in and mess you up.
Again: I don’t think that this was actually on purpose. The extended sequences of Leo cleverly dodging the police shows that the movie was trying to center him and his exploits. But what ends up happening is a sort of accidental portrait of the normally one-dimensional victims of your run of the mill “mommy never loved me” killer.