Tony Hale, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto
“WOMAN OF THE HOUR” My rating: B (Netflix)
95 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Actress Anna Kendrick makes a way-more-than-adequate directing debut with “Woman of the Hour,” a chilling retelling of one of American pop culture’s more bizarre incidents.
Kendrick’s subject is serial killer Rodney Alcala, who in the middle of a long murder spree appeared as a contestant on the “Dating Game” TV show.
Ian McDonald’s screenplay cleverly exploits two plot threads. In one, struggling actress Sheryl (Kendrick) attempts to navigate the treacherous waters of 1970s Hollywood. The casting agents are asses, her semi-clumsy neighbor (Pete Holmes) is putting the moves on her, and she’s running out of money.
So when her agent lands her an “easy” gig on “The Dating Game” she can hardly refuse.
Interwoven with all this are incidents from the murderous career of Alcala (a skin-crawling Daniel Zovatto), who uses his camera and charming personality (he could give Ted Bundy lessons) to lure in insecure, homeless and otherwise vulnerable women.
The central chunk of the film is the “Dating Game” broadcast, in which Sheryl, figuring she has nothing to lose, infuriates the show’s host (Tony Hale) by ignoring the “script” and going rogue, asking of her three unseen suitors questions designed to explode their macho poses.
Guess which of the three is chosen by our leading lady.
If a scriptwriter had dreamt all this up you’d probably sneer. The fact that it is all based on fact gives “Woman of the Hour” skin-crawling intensity.
Alcala was finally caught, thanks to the smarts of one of his intended victims, a runaway perfectly played by Autumn Best.
Rodney Acala died in 2021 after 40 years in prison. Authorities believe he may have been responsible for more than 100 murders.
Ingrid Torelli, David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon
“LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL” My rating: B- (Hulu)
93 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Found-footage horror went global with “The Blair Witch Project” and has been a staple of the genre ever since. Now we have “Late Night with the Devil,” which purports to be the unedited videotapes of a TV talk show featuring an honest-to-God demonic possession.
Writers/directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes have come up with a fiendishly clever setup. On Halloween night in 1977 a struggling late night network TV talk show (it can never catch up with Carson) has as its guests a debunker of the paranormal (think the Amazing Randi) and a teenage girl only recently rescued from the satanic cult that raised her.
The debunker (Carmichael Haig) is a sneeringly pompous rationalist. The girl (Ingrid Torelli) exhibits no particular personality…at least until her psychologist guardian (Laura Gordon) attempts an on-air hypnosis session, at which point all hell literally breaks loose in the TV studio.
Overseeing the mayhem is host Jack Delroy (K.C. native David Dastmalchian), a man struggling not only with mediocre ratings but also with the recent death of his beloved wife.
Aside from a couple of jump scares “Late Night…” didn’t particularly terrorize me. But I was absolutely mesmerized by the filmmakers’ recreation of a time and place.
Everything about this production — from the set’s pastel rainbow design to the interplay between the host and his second banana (Rhys Auteri), the attitudes of the on-stage band members, the onscreen graphics, the vintage equipment, the themesong — feels absolutely dead on. It’s like taking a trip in a time machine.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 