The Boston Strangler

Harrowing, low-key dramatisation of the serial killer's reign of terror in Boston in the early 1960s. [07 Aug 2004, p.53]

A film of two halves - and not only because of its use of voguish split screen. The first, filmed faux-documentary style, is a grim police procedural featuring Henry Fonda's grizzled detective. In the second, Tony Curtis puts in a nuanced performance, playing against type as the real-life serial killer Albert DeSalvo, who killed 13 or more women in their homes. [16 Oct 2010, p.26]

This semi-documentary account of the terror in the Boston of the early Sixties sparked off by the serial killer Albert de Salvo has a creditable central per-formance from Tony Curtis and an admirable suppor-ting one by Henry Fonda as the chief investigator for the state attorney general. [12 Aug 2007, p.14]

Curtis gives a careful performance, but can breathe little life into this expurgated cliché. Read full review