Product Description

Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 06/27/2006

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99593 in DVD
• Brand: Genius
• Released on: 2004-11-09
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Customer Reviews

REPELLENT TRUE CRIME FILM...
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.

Did Angelo Buono really act like Joe Pesci?
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.

Needed more of Bianchi's psyche
I was so repulsed after watching this film that I felt like hopping into a steaming hot shower and scrubbing down with an S.O.S. pad.

If this film accurately depicts how they treated their victims, how they spoke to them, etc., then these were two of the most revolting humans ever to have crawled out of the ocean.

But I had problems with the movie itself. Bianchi's character development seemed like snapshots. We didn't know why - and this was, in my mind, the most essential part of the film - he went from having an interest in psychology and a desire to be a police officer, to a depraved, deranged killer. We saw him move from one person to the next, but there was never any reason why. Angelo was Angelo from the beginning, and it was no surprise to me that he got ticked off and wanted to start killing people. He started out bad, and there really wasn't anywhere else for him to go but down. However, that wasn't the case with Bianchi. He might have been slimy and dishonest, but he was very different from Angelo.

Instead of spending so much time showing us images of what was basically soft-core porn, the filmmakers could have dug into Bianchi's brain. It's a shame that they thought nudity more important.