Hillside Strangler (Unrated Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Did Angelo Buono really act like Joe Pesci?
Review: Filmed with what actually appears to be a budget and a little bit of style THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER stands head and shoulders above the influx of cheap serial killer biopics that have infested the video store shelves the last few years. Unfortunately it's still not all that good.

There's plenty of mean spirited violence and nudity, but what I would like to know is why these two vile, deranged, worthless individuals acted the way they did. What ignited their immense hatred for women?

When the movie opens Bianchi is already an evil security guard who moves in with his womanizing, abusive cousin in California. They start forcing women to be hookers. That falls through so they start killing...and that's it. Kill, kill, kill until they're arrested and the movie abruptly ends leaving me with more questions than when the movie began.

If you're a sadist looking for nothing but the "highlights" of these two sickos crime spree then this is the movie for you. If you're looking for something with depth and maybe a little insight then read a book. I hear "The Hillside Strangler" by Ted Schwarz is good. Also "Two of a Kind: The Hillside Strangler" by Darcy O'Brien got some good reviews.


Rating:
Summary: Oddly Curious "Henry" Wannabe
Review: In John McNaughton's brilliant and bone-chilling "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", loosely based on the true-life exploits of Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole, two deeply sick & troubled men go on a murderous crime-spree, their targets being primarily prostitutes. Same story here, only with a shockingly gaunt, mustachioed C. Thomas Howell as Kenneth Bianchi and Nick Turturro as his sadistic, sexually-deviant cousin Angelo. Howell is adequate as the seemingly-wimpy and unsure Bianchi, but Turturro's performance is downright primordial. His character is so hateful and so disgusting and so vile, it's ALMOST a chore to sit through. I mean, Turturro plays a BRUTAL sonofabitch in this film. He does make a very convincing psychopath. The great Lin Shaye has a scene-stealing cameo in a showdown scene with Turturro that's worth the entire 90 minutes of this gruel-fest. The direction by Chuck Parello ("Henry 2: Mask of Sanity") is fairly pedestrian but there are glimpses of hope that, with a few more productions under his belt, he could become an indie horror helmer to be reckoned with. I must say, I was most impressed by the actresses in this movie (Including Natasha Melnick from "Freaks and Geeks" who, indeed, appears topless). I mean, they really went the distance and endure some pretty harrowing and physically strenuous scenes as victims of torture and death at the hands of Bianchi and Buono. I'm not sure how closely the events of the true story are adhered to cinematically in this version, but the tone of the film very rarely flirts with exploitation. It's more an indifferent and somewhat FLAT approach to telling the true story of the "Hillside Strangler" murders. I think I would have preferred a little more back story and psychological insight into the characters. The film's characters switch gears so frequently that you really never get a grasp on what motivates them to do the horrible things they do. I would have appreciated at least a HINT of where these homicidal tendencies came from. Did we learn ANYTHING from Bianchi while incarcerated?

Rating:
Summary: Exploitation without Substance...
Review: The Hillside Strangler is based on the horrific events of the cousins Kenneth Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) and Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro), which took place in Los Angeles during the late 1970's. The two cousins went on a murderous journey as they killed for pleasure, and power.

Angelo desired to become a police officer as he applied to the police force. However, the police rejected Angelo's application, as they deemed him to be unfit to be an officer. In order to get a fresh start Angelo moves to L. A. where he again applied to become a police officer, and again he they rejected him. This turned Angelo to illegal activities as he practiced psychiatry in a private clinic. When Angelo arrived to L. A., he received help to get started by his cousin Bianchi, a mechanic, and together they began to explore their perversions as they turned into pimps. However, when their business went bad, vengeful anger grew and they sought someone to vent their anger on. This was when the two cousins turned into raving serial killers that murdered for pleasure in order to satisfy their twisted appetites power and subdue desire to see others suffer.

Hillside Strangler is a brutal film that occasionally borderlines pornography as it depicts the cousins' exploitations. Interested viewers might be curious, but the story does not fulfill any curiosity, or cinematic value. Viewing Chuck Parello's film is almost criminal as it provokes feelings of partial responsibility being a spectator to what the cousins are doing. Besides the exploitative narration, the film does not have much to offer as it continues to the end with meaningless murder, until they get caught. Thus, Hillside Strangler leaves the audience with an empty cinematic experience as it has only opened a void that requires something of substance.

Rating:
Summary: I was there!
Review: The mark this movie hits is the fear that these two degenerates caused to a community. Believe me when I say that Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard were filled with the walking scared, the hiding, and the I don't know how to feel people during the late seventies. I was nineteen, twenty years old, living and working on the Boulevard during the "Hillside Strangler" days and I'm serious; fear was rampant and the movie captures it fairly well. The scenery is perfect; the old establishments, "Deep Throat" on the marquee, the Gold Cup cafe, and a glimpse of the old Hollywood Barber College; perfect. I had to do a composite drawing on the younger bastard. When I talked to the other witnesses that were involved with the eighth killing, all I experienced from them was distrust, fear, screams, and an overall sick feeling. Catching the bastards was a landmark in my life. I recommend this movie for its attempt to lead us into the sick, demented minds of the deranged, as well as providing us with a moment in time when Hollywood was on the edge of panic.
Remember, the community thought the killer[s] was a cop. Who were we to trust? Watching your backside was the norm every night on the Boulevard and this movie brought back some real scary memories. If this movie can disturb me, I'd say it will disturb you. So, if you like to watch disturbing realism, plug this DVD into your player, turn down the light, pour a cognac, and hold onto your baby because the scare is creeping just around the corner. BOO!

Rating:
Summary: REPELLENT TRUE CRIME FILM...
Review: 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.