The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968)

Loathing serial killer films as much as I do, I had no high hopes for The Boston Strangler. But it reminded me of nothing so much as M (Fritz Lang, 1931). It's not quite up to the level of that greatest-film-ever contender. But I'm completely astonished that it comes as close as it does. The Boston Strangler is one of the very finest feature-length Hollywood films of the 1960s and it has single-handedly kicked off a Richard Fleischer obsession. 

The gimmick here is Fleischer's use of split-screen and multiple images within the frame which some critics adjudge a dated device. Instead, it's a moral triumph along the lines of the famous track back in Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock, 1972) or the lack of walls in Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003), i.e., it resists the temptation of stargazing at the serial killer by centering on the city/populace as a character. Indeed, Fleischer refuses to focus on Albert DeSalvo, the titular murderer, (a career performance from Tony Curtis) until exactly an hour in. Boston is as much, if not more, the subject of the film as the strangler. The split screen ventilates each murder so that the viewer cannot ignore the immediate socioeconomic context or overindulge in gazing at violence. An ethos of care pervades the film, reminding us that it takes a village to create a safe environment for us all. 

Far from a gimmick, the split screen structures that ethos. Fleischer spends the first half of the film on four suspects with varying degrees of sympathy including a glimpse into an in-fighting queer community with Dorian Gray himself (Hurd Hatfield) as a debonair gay man enraged at how the police comb the gay bars whenever a unsolved sex crime terrifies the city. Henry Fonda and George Kennedy are on board as detectives trying to outpace the strangler. But Fleischer never stays on even these potential heroes for long as when he tracks back to catch two other detectives (Mike Kellin and Murray Hamilton) crunching facts to assist in the investigation. Desperate to capture the murderer, all four are at an airport to meet the wacky psychic Peter Hurkos (George Voskovec) who is afforded his own five minutes of screen time despite the fact that his premonitions lead nowhere. Most astonishingly, there's a fascinating literalization of the split screen when Fonda is interviewed on television, the busy footage of his office forming a frame within the frame of the broadcast. And I cannot even begin to process all the talk about eminent domain between Fonda and Attorney General Edward W. Brooke (William Marshall). 

Plenty of students have given me serial killer scripts to critique. I will strongly suggest they watch this complex, intoxicating film before writing their second draft.

The Boston Strangler: A