Brief review: "The Boston Strangler: The Untold Story"

Distributor: Genius Products/Weinstein Company



A poorly constructed look at the search for a serial killer (or killers) terrorizing Boston during the 1960's, The Boston Strangler: The Untold Story has some interesting points and decent performances but the slapdash nature of how the film progresses does its best to kill any momentum gained from them.

Writer-director-producer (hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he also catered) Michael Feifer has made a killing (pun intended) from true crime films based on infamous serial murder cases. This film marks his third such endeavor after "Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield" and "Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck" and still awaiting release are "Bundy: An American Icon" and "B.T.K." All of them were written and filmed in a one year span, a fact Feifer is clearly proud of based on his comments on the commentary track for this film. Let's not forget his other 2008 release, "Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest," hitting DVD August 5. The budgets for each film ranged from $1 to $2.5 million dollars and the scripts were cranked out in five days or less by Mr. Feifer. Based on his results with The Boston Strangler: The Untold Story, I'd suggest he take at least a few more days to polish his scripts because this one stunk.

Between June 1962 and January 1964, the city of Boston was stalked by the Strangler, who killed and sexually assaulted 13 women, each found strangled with stockings. The man who confessed to these murders was Albert De Salvo (David Faustino). The real killer was never found as it became pretty much a done deal that De Salvo was in it for the fame and was really just a small-time crook. As presented here, the facts of the case are jumbled, to say the least.

Feifer decides to show a large amount of restraint in his dramatization of the events of the case. The level of violence is about on par with an episode of "Criminal Minds" on CBS, probably even less graphic. There is only one scene where blood is shown and the single rape in the film is only briefly hinted at. The problem quickly becomes boredom as Feifer jumps forward and backwards in time at about 10-minute intervals, leaving scenes half-finished and subplots dropped right and left. We meet De Salvo's wife and hints at their troubled marriage but after a single scene, she is never seen or heard from again. The same could be said for the lead detective's (Andrew Divoff) home life as he too is having problems with his wife. His whole character reeks of poor writing, as he is just the latest example of the cliched overworked detective who questions anything and everything. If the film had decided to sensationalize things a bit, perhaps the film wouldn't play so dry and dull throughout.

That said, the performances are decent from the entire cast. Especially surprising was David Faustino, best known for playing "Bud Bundy" on the 1980's sitcom "Married...with Children. He's very convincing as De Salvo, playing up the charming con artist aspect of the character with aplomb. Kostas Sommer is almost as good as his cellmate who convinces him to confess to the murders after he's been arrested for unrelated crimes. Divoff suffers a little because of the bland character he plays but he still brings respectability to the role.

The Boston Strangler: The Untold Story is a narrative mess of half-developed plots and slapdash writing but the acting is good enough to recommend the film to true crime buffs.