There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The Hillsiade Strangler starts as store detective & wannabe police officer Kenneth Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) decides to leave New York, fly to Los Angeles & stay with his cousin Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro). There Kenneth applies to be a cop but is rejected so together with Angelo he kidnaps two young girls Erin (Jennifer Tisdale) & April (Jessica Allegra) & force them into prostitution, all goes well until a local pimp & his heavies come round & put a premature end to the cousins nice little earner. Frustrated & angry Kenneth & Angelo cruise around & pick up a prostitute named Gabrielle (Kent Masters King) who told the pimp about them & murder her, both men enjoyed it & are soon addicted to posing as police officers, kidnapping, raping, abusing & murdering women. In the press they are dubbed as 'The Hillside Strangler'...Co-written & directed by Chuck Parello this is one in a number of films to portray real life serial killers over the past few years including Summer of Sam (1999) about the Son of Sam killings in New York, In the Light of the Moon (2000) about Ed Gein also directed by Parello, Dahmer (2002) about Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy (2002) unsurprisingly about Ted Bundy, Nightstalker (2002) about Los Angeles serial killer Richard Ramirez, Gacy (2003) about John Wayne Gacy, Monster (2003) which profiles female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007) about Ed Gein & The Zodiac (2005) & Zodiac (2007) which were both about the San Francisco bay killer of the same name. It seems that films about real life serial killers are all the rage, God knows why since how many of those films I have listed are actually any good? Well The Hillside Strangler certainly doesn't buck the trend as I think it's a piece of crap to be quite frank. The scripts plays it from the point of view of the two lead psychos, a lot of the original details of the case are retained although anyone not familiar with those details will not notice anyway, however there are a few things that the makers have changed like how the two girls forced into prostitution escape but I don't think it particularly matters. I'm not really sure who would enjoy a film such as The Hillside Strangler, the constant profanity & bad language really becomes annoying & distracting, the scenes in which the two cousins abduct, rape & kill their victims are very unpleasant to watch & to be honest the film bored me. At almost 100 minutes I found this very hard to sit through, the constant profanity gets irritating & since the entire duration of the film is spent following these two highly unlikable scumbags around it's difficult to find any sort of enjoyment here.The film is nowhere near as graphic as it would like you to believe, there is nudity but all the rapes occur off screen, the murders are relatively tame & don't feature any blood or gore & I think the reason why The Hillside Strangler is disturbing is because it's based on actual events which all decent human beings will find reprehensible. In reality between November 1977 & May 1978 the two cousins murdered 10 women, the two split up in 1978 & Bianchi then killed two girls on his own & was arrested soon after which Buono was implicated in the earlier killings & both were sentenced to life in prison in 1983. That six year period is what the film actually concentrates on as well as a bizarre real life incident about a female writer who Bianchi convinced to commit another murder in the style of the Hillside Strangler to try & make police think they had the wrong person in jail. In another bizarre fact the two actually stopped Catherine Lorre with the intent on abducting, raping & killing her but let her go after they found out she was the daughter of horror acting icon Peter Lorre! The film isn't scary & much of it's shock value comes from the fact it's based on true events rather than it's graphic content of which there is actually very little.Technically the film is solid, it doesn't really have a late 70's feel about it, I can't quite put my finger on why but I just don't think it did. The acting is alright, both C. Thomas Howell (looking like a cross between Ernest & Jim Carrey) & Nicholas Turturro (looking like a fat Raul Julia) make their character's very unlikable so I suppose they did what was required. No-one else is given much to do.The Hillside Strangler takes a notorious late 70's Los Angeles murder case & tries to make a character driven film out of it, personally there is next to nothing that I found enjoyable about The Hillside Strangler & should filmmakers really give scum like Bianchi & Buono more publicity & almost turn them into some sort of anti-hero? As far as I am concerned they should rot in jail in total obscurity. The film Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006) also focused on the crimes of Bianchi & Buono.

Except for victim names, this true-life story of the infamous serial killings in Los Angeles in the late 1970s is mostly factual, and is told from the POV of the two killers: Kenneth Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) and Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro). As such, the film functions largely as a character study of these two criminals. The script is structured as a series of events, in chronological order, beginning with Bianchi's life in upstate New York, where he started out as a petty thief.Although he apparently tried to live a reasonably normal life, Bianchi felt constantly rejected, especially in his repeated, unsuccessful efforts to join the police force. He tells his mom: "Whatever I do, nothing ever turns out right; sometimes I just want to find some tall building and take a big fall".His hook-up with Angelo Buono in Los Angeles proves fatal. Buono, a domineering, unctuous brute who haunts the tawdry, seedy areas of LA, persuades Bianchi to go into the hooker business. But that effort backfires as a result of one particular prostitute and as a result, the two men lose their "business". Seeking "payback", they lure into their presence, and then kill, a whole series of women, mostly street hookers, as a way to "settle the score".Their murder partnership calls to mind the symbiotic relationship between Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, in the film "In Cold Blood" (1967). It was the liaison, the merger of mindsets that ultimately led to the killings.Some of the scenes in "The Hillside Strangler" are quite graphic. They are hard to watch because the victims are portrayed as real people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the Director could have spent less time showing us the nude bodies of the victims, which strikes me as gratuitous and unnecessary.Both C. Thomas Howell and Nicholas Turturro give performances that are credible. Allison Lange, as Bianchi's girlfriend in LA, provides about the only semblance of humanity in this dark story. Toward the film's end, an effort to enact a copycat killing renders an interestingly strange plot twist that presumably really happened.The entire story is very depressing and disturbing. However, visual shock value notwithstanding, the film's presentation of that story is realistic and credible. It's not for the faint of heart. And the film's story has greater breadth than depth. But as a general overview of events and of the mindset of the two criminals, "The Hillside Strangler" is certainly worth watching.

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.

This was a pretty decent flick. It wasn't amazing or anything. It had a real dirty 70s feel to it though. Thats what I liked best. The film has dirty language and dirty characters, which I enjoyed. They drop some serious bad words in bad combinations and mistreat women pretty constantly. Its not a happy film. Its a little light on the horror and gore, but its not really focusing on that. It focuses more on what kind people the serial killers were. Namely dirty bad people. But I found myself enjoying it and have recommended it to like-minded individuals. If you like dirty and exploitative films, you'll enjoy this throwback.I give it an overall 6 of 10, but it will probably find its niche out there.