While one part of the CinemaScope screen shows a group of chattering old ladies, the other part shows a registration of an autopsy on a victim of the Boston Strangler. The serial killer, who was regarded as a respectable husband and father and a diligent factory worker during the day, had in the hours of darkness often set his sights on elderly ladies. In this horror film, loosely based on a series of murders in the early 1960s in the USA, the split personality of Albert Henry DeSalvo (a sinister Tony Curtis) is portrayed with what was then a very modern split-screen technique. DaSalvo confessed to 13 murders and in 1973 he was himself murdered in his cell, but there’s still some doubt as to whether he really was the Boston Strangler.
This film was made using a new widescreen system based on CinemaScope. This was how the film industry – after 3D film and Cinerama – again tried to fend off the attack by television.
Film details
- Country of production
- USA
- Year
- 1968
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2010
- Length
- 116"
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
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