The Serial Killer Who Was on ‘The Dating Game’

It’s a infamous freak second in daytime tv. On Sept. 13, 1978, one of many three competing bachelors on “The Courting Recreation” was Rodney Alcala, who turned out to be a serial killer; he was captured the next 12 months. (He was convicted of 5 murders, although it’s believed that he might have dedicated as many as 130.) It’s no joke — or possibly it’s a significant one — to say that Alcala had the seems to be and character of a Nineteen Seventies ladykiller. He was coiffed like one of many Hudson Brothers, with a chiseled grin redolent of Engelbert Humperdinck. He virtually beamed good vibes — together with some semi-submerged unhealthy ones, answering his “Courting Recreation” questions in a approach that was so assured it was…aggressive.

TV, after all, by no means received a lot kitschier than “The Courting Recreation.” I used to observe it as a child, marveling at the truth that all the present, with its Herb Albert-on-happy-pills theme music and its flower-power décor, was a form of leering, smirky put-on that made no nice effort to cover it. (It was the primary present I’d seen that appeared to be about the sleaze tradition of Los Angeles.) I at all times thought that the squirmiest second every week was when the bachelor who’d been chosen got here out from behind the barrier, and after giving the bachelorette that ritual well mannered kiss, the 2 would stand there, arms round one another, as aviator-framed host Jim Lang described what can be in retailer for them on their date (it will often be one thing alongside the traces of “Since you’re happening an expense-paid weekend to…Tuscon, Arizona!”), as in the event that they have been already a pair.

You can say that “The Courting Recreation” was “The Bachelorette” of its day. And the truth that a serial killer from the Ted Bundy faculty (outwardly “regular” and presentable, enjoying off his attractiveness to lure within the girls he would rape and homicide) as soon as landed proper in the course of it’s without delay a jaw-dropping piece of TV historical past, an occasion each ludicrous and horrifying, and a large metaphor that stated: For ladies who have been dwelling within the age of the sexual revolution, the courting sport was a much more harmful factor than it seemed like.

“Girl of the Hour” is Anna Kendrick’s true-life thriller about Rodney Alcala and this weird, only-in-America social-cultural-criminal episode. Kendrick directed the film (her first effort behind the digicam), working from a script by Ian McDonald, and he or she additionally stars in it as Cheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring actress who is usually putting out at low-budget film auditions when her agent hooks her as much as be a bachelorette on “The Courting Recreation.” Cheryl thinks the present is trash (and it’s), however it can give her an opportunity to be “seen.” The day she’s on the present, Rodney Alcala is without doubt one of the three bachelors (the opposite two are a doofus and a lounge lizard).

As a director, Kendrick leaps round in time via the ’70s, staging a variety of Rodney Alcala’s pickups and murders. Alcala is performed by Daniel Zovatto, who is aware of how you can lay on the soft-rock sincerity, however then his eyebrows will decrease and the smile will soften away, leaving you with a quiet smoldering anger. Rodney, in lengthy hair and a leather-based jacket, is a photographer, and that’s his bohemian cred — and his homicidal grift. This was a time when males wielding fancy cameras and an arty gaze promised to show girls into stars. Rodney, who likes his victims younger (generally underage), will get them to pose, which inspires them to let down their guard, and that’s when he goes in for the kill. These scenes are efficient so far as they go, although they aren’t staged with the form of advanced fascination that was there in “Extraordinarily Depraved, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” the Ted Bundy drama starring Zac Efron.

The center of the film is the “Courting Recreation” episode, which is staged with a form of kinky verve, although I felt as if Kendrick spends too many moments telegraphing what she needs to say. She grabs onto the metaphor of Rodney Alcala on “The Courting Recreation” and italicizes it. She makes clear that the present is a meat grinder, from the onscreen double entendres the bachelorette is assaulted with to the crudely hostile offscreen character of the host (Tony Hale), referred to as Ed Burke right here. And I believe it’s telling that Kendrick chooses to play Cheryl not because the flirtatious cuddlebug she seemed to be on the present — that was how the ladies have been directed to behave — however as a realizing, virtually defiant determine who’s not going to be anybody’s intercourse toy.

As Cheryl, who poses her canned questions, and eventually considered one of her personal (“What are women for?”), Kendrick is such actor that she holds you fully. But as a filmmaker, she turns the tables on “The Courting Recreation” by restaging it in an almost postmodern approach. What “Girl of the Hour” goes for isn’t some final period-piece authenticity. It’s attempting to deconstruct tv, together with the male aggression that may descend into violence, and to point out you ways the 2 work collectively.

There’s a lady within the viewers, named Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who feels a chill when she sees that Alcala is bachelor #3, as a result of she was pals with considered one of his victims; she tried to go to the police, however to no avail. (That mirrors what occurred: a terrific many tricks to the cops about Alcala, which he in some way evaded.) That is the weakest a part of the movie, although, as a result of the drama is without delay overly sketchy and on-the-nose.

The strongest a part of the movie occurs simply after the present, when Rodney cajoles Cheryl into becoming a member of him for a “date” (drinks at a dive bar) earlier than their official date in Caramel, Ca. Their duel of wits is queasy and, by the point it arrives at a car parking zone, scary. In actual life, Cheryl and Rodney by no means did go on their “Courting Recreation” date, as a result of she thought there was one thing off about him. And it’s satisfying, on the finish of the movie, to see Alcala get caught, outwitted by a sufferer who is aware of how you can play to his self-importance. But when “Girl of the Hour” captures a fluky second when American violence peeked via the façade of packaged American tv, the film doesn’t have a variety of resonance, as a result of it does all its connecting of that means for you.