RICHARD FLEISCHER'S NEO NOIR BIOPIC 'THE BOSTON STRANGER'

Year: 1968 Rating: **

Richard Fleischer's Police Procedural biopic, using the multi-screen effect, only works until Tony Curtis is revealed as the real life killer, Albert DeSalvo, who, at the time this movie was made, was thought of as having multiple personalities...

When filming started DeSalvo had slyly escaped from the mental institution where he was to spend, most likely, the rest of his life; and what's truly insane is the authorities thought a husband with two children and a full-time job would kill eleven women without knowing exactly what he was doing, and how or why he was doing it...

The most effective scenes occur within each crime, sans the culprit, adding a mysterious element. Meanwhile, Henry Fonda makes a literally weak/passive lead protagonist, replacing comparably effective and edgy detective George Kennedy, who started out on the killers' trail: one that eventually hits a prolonged dead end, and, progressive in the worst ways, THE BOSTON STRANGLER makes a psychic seem logical, a psychologist completely infallible, and this particular madman a victim. And a terribly uninteresting one at that.

Female Victims Movie Poster for Richard Fleischer's THE BOSTON STRANGLER