Featured Actress: C. Thomas Howell - 2004 was a good year for the Hillside Strangler. There were two movies made about them, and yes the Strangler was a "them" rather than a "him". I haven't seen the other one, but this version is down, dirty, and nasty. It focuses on the killer and their victims; very little is shown about the police efforts to find and capture them.
For those that are unaware, two cousins in 1978 kill a hooker for revenge after she rats them out to a gang for starting a competing escort service. They rape and kill her, and then decide it's kind of fun, and start taking revenge on other hookers, then finally just women in general. This kept on for two years, and they collectively became known as "The Hillside Strangler".
The director said his intent was to not glamorize or glorify the killers, and in that he certainly succeeded. C. Thomas Howell and Nicholas Turturro made these characters about as unlikeable as possible, and the brutal rape and murder scenes in the Unrated version make this an extremely unpleasant movie to view. They made a crime film, but what they got was a horror film.
