© 2008 William Ahearn
In the realm of serial killer movies, Richard Fleischer’s 1968 production of “The Boston Strangler” should be considered a lost classic. Because the first part of the film is shot in split screen (sometimes the screen is divided five times), it wasn’t received well on television or as VHS and rarely seen over the last few decades. With the advent of DVDs and larger home screens, “The Boston Strangler” can now be viewed as the filmmakers intended.
The Boston Strangler case – 13 women murdered over 19 months from 1962 to 1964 – became the touchstone of modern serial killer investigation. The governor of Massachusetts created a multi-jurisdictional task force to centralize the evidence and information collected by the various police departments. The investigation also secretly used a psychic. What would change serial murder investigations in the future was that The Boston Strangler investigation was where the notion of the criminal profiler became an investigatory tool.
Criminal profiling began in earnest with New York City’s Mad Bomber. For 16 years during the 1940s and 1950s, someone had been planting small bombs in railway stations, movie theatres, phone booths and various other places. Dr. James Brussels, a criminal psychiatrist, was brought in to the investigation and criminal profiling moved from abstraction to reality. For more on Brussels and The Mad Bomber, go here. For a brief history on criminal profiling, go here. Brussels also worked on The Boston Strangler case.
Based on Gerold Frank’s book, The Boston Strangler, Hollywood faced numerous hurdles getting this story to the screen. It is an extremely complicated real life case in which many of the mythologies of serial killers were formulated. It is also a bizarre case in that Albert DeSalvo – identified as The Boston Strangler – was never convicted of a single murder although he spent what was left of his life in prison on other charges. For more on this case, go here, read Gerold Frank’s book, or go here.
The film stars Henry Fonda, George Kennedy and Tony Curtis (in an odd but effective casting choice as Albert DeSalvo), and is one of the best serial killer procedurals yet made. Many of The Boston Strangler’s victims lived on the edge of a gay Boston community, and there are some jarring – but not unexpected – reactions of the police investigators to the lifestyles they encounter in the neighborhood. If nothing else, it’s a realistic look at the Boston police circa 1968.
“The Boston Strangler” is the first modern serial killer procedural and a really fine flick.