October True Crime: The Hillside Strangler (dir by Chuck Parello)

Posted on October 28, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2004’s The Hillside Strangler opens with a woman stepping into a dressing room with several tops. She removes all of the tags. Then she puts all of them on and finally covers them with the sweater that she was wearing when she first stepped into the dressing room.

What she doesn’t realize is that she’s being watched by a security guard named Kenneth Bianchi (played by C. Thomas Howell, with a thin mustache). Bianchi isn’t the type of security guard who relies on cameras. Instead, he sneaks around in the store’s heating ducts and stares down into the dressing room. Bianchi manages to get out of the duct quickly enough to stop the woman as she walks out of the store. He takes her back to his office and orders her to remove each layer of stolen clothing while he watches.

Agck! Seriously, as a former teen shoplifter, this scene totally freaked me out. Beyond the creepiness of seeing Bianchi in the air ducts, this scene also captures the authoritarian mindset. As soon as we see Bianchi, we know that his job is about more than just a paycheck to him. His job is about wielding power and giving orders. Wearing his uniform, Bianchi feels that he’s untouchable.

Bianchi dreams of being a real cop but the Rochester Police Department rejects his application to join because his test scores were too low. Sick of having to listen to him whine, Bianchi’s mother sends him to Los Angeles so that he can stay with his cousin, Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro). Maybe Angelo can knock some sense into him. Maybe Angelo can teach him about being a man.

Instead, Angelo soon gets as tried of Bianchi as everyone else. Still, he is impressed when Bianchi orders a fake diploma from Colombia University and sets up a practice as a sex therapist. When Angelo attempts to set himself up as a pimp, he makes Bianchi is partner. When Angelo and Bianchi fail at being pimps, they start picking up women and strangling them. Angelo and Bianchi start out by stalking sex workers but soon, they’re using a fake LAPD badge to prey on anyone that catches their interest.

Based on the true crimes of Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, The Hillside Strangler is a grim and frequently trashy film, a portrait of two misogynists who can only feel confident when they’re hurting others. Bianchi is the type who wears a t-shirt that reads, “Official Local Sex Instructor.” Buono has a doormat that reads, “Italian Stallion” and a sign on his wall that announces, “Candy is Dandy But Sex Won’t Rot Their Teeth.” Turturro and Howell give two disturbing performances as two losers who feed on each other’s sadism and anger. Bianchi is desperate for Bouno’s approval. Buono finds Bianchi to be annoying but he still enjoys being the younger man’s idol. Would Bianchi and Buono have committed their crimes if they had never met? The film leaves you wondering. As a viewing experience, it’s effective and disturbing.

In real life, Angelo Buono died in prison in 2002. Kenneth Bianchi continues to serve his life sentence.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Single White Female 2: The Psycho (dir by Keith Samples)

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

13 years after the release of the first Single White Female and a countless host of imitations, an official sequel was released straight-to-video in 2005. Subtitled “The Psycho,” (because apparently, Jennifer Jason Leigh was totally stable in the first film), Single White Female 2 tells the story of what happens when one roommate becomes obsessed with the other. It all leads to murder and sexual infidelity and sudden hairstyle changes.

Maybe you’re thinking that this sounds exactly like the first Single White Female. And, okay, there are some similarities. But just consider some of the differences!

1. In the first Single White Female, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character grows obsessed with Bridget Fonda after moving into Fonda’s apartment. In Single White Female 2, Tess (played by Allison Lange) becomes obsessed with Holly (Kristen Miller) after Holly moves into Tess’s apartment. See, this time, the psycho has her name on the lease. HUGE DIFFERENCE!

2. In the first Single White Female, the plot is set in action after Bridget Fonda discovers that Steven Weber cheated on her. In the sequel, the plot is set in motion by Holly’s original roommate, Jan (Brooke Burns), seducing a client who Holly was also sleeping with. Again, that’s a huge difference and it also leads us to wonder if maybe Holly just sucks at choosing roommates.

3. In the first Single White Female, Jennifer Jason Leigh played an unstable bookstore employee. In the sequel, Tess is a nurse who has a history of killing people who she feels would be happier dead. In other words, Tess is a psycho with a mission.

4. In the first Single White Female, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character hung out in a sleazy S&M club. In the sequel, Tess actually performs on stage.

5. The first Single White Female actually looked like a real movie whereas the sequel has the flat and rather bland look of a film shot for and on video.

6. In the first Single White Female, you could understand why an insecure person would want to steal Bridget Fonda’s identity. In the sequel, Holly’s identity doesn’t seem to be interesting enough to justify trying to steal.

7. In the first Single White Female, Jennifer Jason Leigh gave a performance that inspired both fear and sympathy. In the sequel, Tess is just your typical straight-to-video movie psycho. There’s no indication that she could have ever been anything other than a straight-to-video movie psycho.

8. The first Single White Female was a good film, almost despite itself. The sequel is rather dull.

So, I guess my point here is that, if you want to watch a movie about a roommate stealing someone’s identity and getting a new haircut, the first Single White Female is the one to go with. The sequel doesn’t really add anything worthwhile to the story, nor does it improve on it in any way. Give some credit to Brooke Burns, who plays Holly’s untrustworthy ex-roommate and who, at the very least, seems to understand the type of movie in which she’s appearing. Brooke Burns gets the worst lines but she at least seems to be having fun delivering them. Otherwise, it’s best just to forget about this sequel.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Christina’s House (dir by Gavin Wilding)

Posted on October 2, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 2000 straight-to-video film opens with a shocking and effectively violent scene in which an innocent girl scout is yanked into a dilapidated house and bludgeoned to death. There’s even a slow-motion shot of crushed cookies falling to the floor. It’s excessive, tasteless, and so ludicrous that it actually makes you think that Christina’s House could actually be, if nothing else, an enjoyably self-aware exploitation film.

Unfortunately, everything pretty much goes downhill after that scene. The rest of the film deals with Christina (Allison Lange), a teenage girl with an annoying father named James (John Savage), an annoying brother named Bobby (Lorne Stewart), an annoying boyfriend named Eddy (Brendan Fehr), and an annoying admirer named Howie (Brad Rowe). That may sound like a lot of annoying people for one person to deal with but Christina actually manages to be even more annoying than all of them. Absolutely no one in this film comes across as being someone with whom you would want to be trapped in a murder house.

Anyway, Christina’s mom has been institutionalized in a Washington mental hospital so James, has rented out a nearby house. (Naturally, it’s the same house where that girl scout was previously killed.) James appears to be almost absurdly overprotective of and strict with Christina but it’s also possible that he might just be an asshole in general. He’s certainly not happy that she’s dating Eddy, who is the local bad boy and who does stuff like hang out on the roof at night. James would probably be happier if Christina was dating Howie, who has been hired to help fix up the house. Howie’s so respectful and such a hard worker. He’s a man who really knows how to handle a hammer.

Christina, however, has other things on her mind. For one thing, young women are being murdered and the creepy sheriff (Jerry Wasserman) keeps coming by the house and asking strange questions. Add to that, Christina sometimes thinks that she can hear someone or something in the attic. Of course, every time that she tries to investigate, her father comes out of his bedroom and yells at her.

(It could just be that James doesn’t want his daughter spending her nights wandering around in her underwear and searching for a vicious killer, in which case James probably has a point. Still, he’s kind of a jerk about it.)

Who is the murderer? Is it Eddie, Bobby, or Howie? Or could it maybe be James? What if the sheriff’s somehow involved? Well, don’t worry! The identity of the murderer is revealed about an hour into this 90-minute film and it’s exactly who you think it’s going to be.

If not for the extremely odd performance of John Savage, this film would be totally forgettable. Savage was the film’s “prestige” actor, a performer who previously appeared in films like The Deer Hunter, the third Godfather, Do The Right Thing, and The Thin Red Line before finding himself in Christina’s House. John Savage attacks the role of James with all of the ferocity of an actor who has gone from co-starring with Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken to playing second fiddle to Allison Lange and Brendan Fehr. Savage yells every line and glares at his co-stars with the fury of a man on a mission of vengeance. As a result, both the actor and the character that he’s playing come across as if they’re always just one annoyance away from putting his fist through a wall. James may be written as an overprotective father but Savage plays him as being a borderline sociopath. It’s such a totally inappropriate and misjudged performance that it becomes oddly fascinating to watch. It takes a great actor to give as entertainingly bad a performance as the one given by John Savage in Christina’s House.

With the exception of Savage’s over-the-top theatrics and Jerry Wasserman’s memorably creepy turn, the rest of the cast is largely forgettable. The problem is that, as written, most of the characters are fairly unlikable and you really don’t care whether they die or not. When the killer eventually trapped Christina and Bobby in their new home, I found myself more worried about the house than either of them.

Christina’s House is available on YouTube and sometimes, it shows up on late night television. (I saw it on This TV.) It’s pretty dumb but if you’re fan of good actors bellowing in rage, you might want to watch it.