Tony Awful acting, terrible dialogue. Uses a shocking story to just show tits and bums, juvenile in the extreme. This pretends to portray a very horrific story, but uses it for it's own puerile needs.Far better has been done before, this belongs to the sexploitation genre.

writerasfilmcritic This peculiar movie simply didn't make sense. Here are two guys who seem to get as much "tail" as they want from several sexy young women, yet inexplicably they start to hate women for reasons that are superficially and inadequately explained. Bianchi is a slick talker who fakes his credentials as a psychotherapist yet repeatedly is rejected by various police departments when he applies to be a cop. Turturro's Buono is a menacing pig who works on cars for a living. On the side, the pair effectively force naive young girls into prostitution. Oddly, the girls seem to settle into the situation with only the initial coercion being required. Then a black prostitute sells Buono and Bianchi a list of johns that she stole from a black pimp. He retaliates by paying them a visit, threatening them, robbing them, setting their girls free, and thus destroying their "escort" business. Determined to get back at someone, anyone, Buono decides to kill the black prostitute. Other than that, there is no serious explanation provided for his sudden murderous resolve. She was a nice looking woman, too, with a beautiful figure, and it was hard to understand how they could snuff out her life so casually, despite the fact that she had indirectly endangered their lives. The scene in which Bianchi has sex with her in the back seat of the big car and then chokes her to death while Buono cheers him on from the driver's seat is probably the most chilling, disturbing, and realistic one in the movie. In fact, it's kind of shocking that "nice guy" Turturro, the young cop on NYPD Blue, could act out such a creepy scene so effectively. From it, we get the distinct impression that Buono is no stranger to murder, although Bianchi is portrayed as having real qualms even after he has indulged his taste for it. After that, the sick pair start to kill prostitutes simply for kicks, although Buono lamely justifies it by claiming that they are ridding society of bad people (whores). The real motivation for this gruesome spree is never made clear and the movie jumps from one murder to another and one event to another without bothering to transition the scenes very effectively. It's as if too much of the footage were edited out and what's left is a slightly confused montage. The killings themselves are gratuitous, both in their sick violence and their exposure of naked, busty young women. It quickly becomes uncomfortable to watch and increasingly unnecessary to the plot, but how can you tell such a sordid tale without showing at least some of that? Certain scenes, apart from the murders, are actually interesting and it's too bad there wasn't more of that and much less of the sadistic violence. Turturro is such a pig as Buono, while Bianchi is portrayed as a sobbing little whiner who is completely unbelievable as a lady's man OR a crazed killer, yet somehow he makes it work. However, why he keeps hanging around Buono, who threatens him repeatedly with guns and knives, is not adequately explained. The women in this movie, most of whom end up as victims, are depicted as total airheads. For some odd reason, some really sexy chicks are inordinately attracted to either Buono, the aggressive, menacing slob, or Bianchi, the dorky sob sister. They are perfectly willing to have sex with these two lost souls, who would rather kill them, instead. Once again, it didn't make much sense. As a whole, the flick is exploitive and twisted, but after all, it was YOU who rented it, so how can you complain? It's too bad the lady who played Buono's mom had just a cameo role. She was quite good. In fact, the argument between her and Turturro at the kitchen table was very entertaining and probably the movie's most interesting scene, initiating the campy, over-the-top style that became more predominant as we neared the conclusion. That's when this strange movie started to remind me a little of "Bloody Mama," a depressing flick about Ma Barker and her brood of incestuous sons, which starred Shelly Winters and a young Robert De Niro, among others. De Niro played the junkie son who camouflaged his works in a Baby Ruth wrapper in his shirt pocket. "The Hillside Strangler" is a very odd movie, too, and probably one that should not be distributed so freely because it just might give some unstable types unhealthy ideas. It was rated R, but as such, I think it deserved an X.

glyptoteque This is certainly a weird bag of mixed "sweets", and about 4 fifths of it tastes like manure, and by that I do not mean the murder-sequences. The director, Chuck Parello, doesn't seem to have a clue about what a good script entails, and he is extremely eager to consult "The Great Book of Clichés" at almost every turn. While the real life Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi probably were quite simplistic and pathetic, however under the ever watchful eye of Parello, they come off most of the time, as nothing but ridiculous caricatures. It is not a good sign when you actually find yourself laughing your head off at lines obviously meant to be menacing, but which on the contrary becomes truly great, unintentional comedy. There is so much hilarious dialogue going on here, that it's unfathomable, and it goes without saying, that this in the end will ruin the deep and unsettling impact Parello probably would have liked it to have. It could almost seem that Parello was hoping, in the future, that the film could get some sort of turkey-award, because many of the images on display here, are just beyond belief. After a woman has been strangled, and Buono checks for life-signs, confirming that she is gone, if you look closely, you can see clearly that she is still breathing! Now, that is what I call good acting, it's truly a feat of accomplishment not being able to do the simplest thing, to play dead. The Royal Shakespeare Company next, I assume? Then you have sequences that seem over-the-top unlikely(And trust me, they are many!!), like fex. when they lure one of the first girls to do some hooking for them. At first she seems genuinely scared, and the whole scene is quite believable, but after a little while she seems quite content being the whore of the house! How are we to interpret this, I wonder? Is she still in a state of massive shock, with the result that numbness has set in, leaving a deadened impression on her face, that could be mistaken for serene calm? Or has she really come to her senses, realising after some serious contemplation, that this new line of work really is the best carriere option for her? That these two psychotic madmen really were heaven sent? You are left with one last alternative, and in this context it is most likely the most plausible one I fear, that Mr Parello simply doesn't have a clue how to piece together images in a concise and believable manner. And concise is probably a foreign word for him, because he doesn't seem to quite know which type of film he is directing; am I directing a Italian gangster movie? Is it a comedy? Is it a movie about dancing? No, wait I'm actually directing a movie about two real-life serial killers!! Well, what the hell, let's just mix them altogether, it probably will turn out more believable that way! Since I've actually given it a 3, that could only mean that there actually were a few sequences that I found to be intense, compelling and disturbing. One of the first murders, I actually found to be one of the most unsettling I've seen in quite a while, and after watching horror films for about 16-17 years now, it goes without saying that I can watch almost anything. So congratulations Mr Parello, for having that brief moment of clarity! I also found some rewarding intensity in the scene where Buono is arguing with his mother, and for the most part I think the women playing the victims did some good acting, in that they seemed genuinely scared, and that they managed to evoke some pity on my part. As a conclusion though, the film is quite simply manure, with just a few bits of candy strewn on it for good measure. And of course, that is far from good enough. See "Bundy" or "Dahmer" instead.

Roland E. Zwick Is there anything more inscrutable and unfathomable than the mind of a serial killer? Probably not, yet, year after year, undeterred filmmakers attempt to come to grips with this elusive subject matter, usually with unsatisfactory results.Generally, serial killer stories are placed in the context of a police procedural, in which a crack homicide investigator searches for clues in the hopes of finding the culprit before he can claim his next victim. But, once in awhile, filmmakers will take a more serious approach to the topic, focusing more on the killer himself, his methods and his madness, as a means of trying to "open up" the psyche of such a person in the hopes of finding answers. "The Hillside Strangler" is in the second category.The so-called "Hillside Strangler" actually turned out to be TWO serial killers who, working in tandem, terrorized Los Angeles in the early 1970's. Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono were "cousins" who acted out their hatred of women by kidnapping, raping and slaughtering an assortment of innocent victims they picked out at random (they started with streetwalkers, then branched out to women in general). Bianchi was a loser "nobody" who found murdering helpless young women and terrorizing a whole city (albeit in anonymity) the only way in which he could achieve the status of a "somebody." Buono was a smalltime auto repairman who, through the murders, finally got the opportunity to act out his sadistic sexual fantasies on an epic scale. In fact, as portrayed in the movie, both men use the killings as the ultimate orgasm, confusing the destruction of the helpless with sexual fulfillment.The problem with a movie like "The Hillside Strangler" is that, no matter how serious it is in its intention and approach, the film is bound to feel exploitative in its darkest moments. Although this is definitely no sensationalistic rabblerousing gore-fest like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," after we've watched a half dozen or so innocent terrified young girls being essentially tortured to death, we still wind up asking ourselves what the purpose of the movie really is. Director Chuck Parello adopts a cool, detached, documentary-style tone throughout, but it still isn't enough to smooth us past the emotionally disturbing rough patches.That being said, there are a few quality elements in "The Hillside Strangler" provided one has a high tolerance for depictions of disturbing violence. The movie effectively shows just how easily two utterly amoral individuals can pass for rational and normal in the eyes of the outside world. Bianchi is particularly adept at leading a double life, going so far as pulling the wool over the eyes of his very own wife who has no clue about her husband's deadly nocturnal activities. C. Thomas Howell and Nicholas Turturro give complex, chilling performances as Bianchi and Buono, keeping us on the knife-edge of suspense through much of the movie. The film also does a good job capturing the look of the '70's, right on down to the polyester clothes, perms and ubiquitous moustaches that helped to define the era. The poorly lit, slightly grainy photography also gives the film the look of one of those low budget exploitation pictures of thirty years ago. (There is at least one inadvertent anachronism in the film: the skyline we see in some of the establishing shots is of Los Angeles today, not three decades ago).The screenplay by Parello and Stephen Johnston pays little heed to the detection aspects of the story, so much so that we never find out what it is that made the police suspicious of Bianchi in the first place. We see him being apprehended but have no idea what the clues were that led to his capture. This is a frustration oversight on the part of the filmmakers."The Hillside Strangler" deserves credit for at least trying to bring a more controlled, less sensationalistic approach to a topic that often gets thrown onto the trash heap of two-bit police dramas and slasher horror films. But, for all its good intentions, the film doesn't wind up revealing much about the psychotic mindset that we didn't already know before. Thus, the rewards are not sufficient compensation for the unpleasantness of sitting through so much of the movie.