The Night of the Strangler

I was always kind of curious to see this 70s horror thriller with Micky Dolenz from The Monkees top-billed. Well, it's more bad thriller than horror, and Dolenz is the worst actor in the cast-which is saying something. "Strangler" has plenty of other problems, too, perhaps the least among them being that nobody gets strangled. It's a murder mystery set in the South, yet none of the characters who are supposed natives has a regional accent-not even the bad guy who talks about Black people and those damn "Yankees" like he's in "Mandingo."

That guy is Dan (James Ralston), the supercilious terror of a wealthy family who's stolen his fiance from his brother (Dolenz), and unleashes both the racist invective and the slapping machine when he finds out their sister (Susan McCulloch) is pregnant by an African-American boyfriend she plans to marry. Soon those last two people have been murdered, and the trail of corpses keeps extending because rageaholic Dan, who ordered at least one of them killed, neglects to pay his hired-assassin bill. So eventually various people are killing various other people.

In mood and (lack of) style more like a bad low-budget 70s cop thriller than a horror movie, "Strangler" (which had a lot of other titles before they settled on this utterly irrelevant one) lacks atmosphere, tension, and even the zest to make much of its fairly lurid plotline. Indeed, the bad-movie fun we should be having is further dampened by the film's linguistically dated anti-racism message, which feels pasted-on for a long time, then turns out to be the labored whole point here.

To put it kindly, this isn't a good or serious enough movie to pull off that kind of moral lecturing. In the end, "Night of the Strangler" doesn't prove anything more than that earnest but misplaced good intentions can kill whatever enjoyment is to be had from a cheesy movie. Well, and also that the over-the-top mugging that made Micky Dolenz a good Monkee makes him a very bad dramatic actor.

There are seeds of a good film here in a story about a man, The Monkees' Micky Dolenz, who disowns his sister after learning she is pregnant with boyfriend's baby because her boyfriend is black. The sister is later found murdered, which leads Dolenz and a black priest to investigate the murder, which has been disguised as a suicide, trying to find an individual with a peace-sign belt buckle who they suspect is the culprit. There could have been some interesting commentaries on race relations with this kind of a set-up, but the film is basically a cash grab exploiting the real-life Boston Strangler, who still at-large, and following a big budget Hollywood production a few years before about the Boston Strangler. Never mind that no characters are actually strangled and the story has nothing to do with that case. It's a super cheap production without any real scares or suspense, so there's not a lot to recommend outside of the novelty value of seeing Micky Dolenz is a very un-Monkees-like role. Well, he is still a bit of a 1960s hipster/hippie, but he plays a much darker character than his Monkees Micky character. Overall, "The Night of the Strangler" is a forgettable quickie low-budget picture that offers a darker role for Micky Dolenz, but is a missed opportunity for murder mystery about race relations.

"Night of the Strangler" obviously isn't the type of movie to win prizes, but I would like to hand out one special kind of award, though, and that is the prize for the film with the most inaccurate and misleading title ever! Admittedly it sounds cool, as well as appealing to horror fanatics, but not a word of the title makes any sense. Night? The events in the film take place in a span of more than a year! Strangler? There's shooting, drowning, death by venomous snake bite, stabbing and a bizarre sort of arrow-shooting device, but not a strangulation in sight! If I had to give an apt title, it would probably be something like: "The random slaughter of a whole bunch of innocent people". Come to think of it, that actually sounds awesome!

Enough with the ranting already, because I honestly enjoyed this obscure and extremely low-budgeted horror/thriller quite a lot! The plot is very original, truly unseen, and - with a healthy dose of imagination - can even be considered as a Blaxploitation effort! Set in New Orleans, homestead of director Joy N. Houck Jr. And one of the most beautiful cities in the world (at least according to yours truly), the film starts with a rich white girl announcing her engagement with a black man to her two brothers. The oldest brother, Dan, is a filthy racist pig and threatens to kill both her and her boyfriend. The younger brother Vance tries to defend his sister, but without much success. Shortly after, the black fiancé is shot dead by a sniper in New York. A year later, and back in New Orleans, the girl - Denise - is drowned in her bath by a vicious killer dressed in black, but he makes it look like suicide. From then onwards, "Night of the Strangler" turns into a bizarrely compelling and unusual type of slasher/murder mystery. While the black town's priest attempts to make peace between the estranged brothers Dan and Vance, a number of vicious murders plagues the community.

What makes this movie so harsh, and simultaneously so intriguing, is that the murder victims are all innocent and very sympathetic people, while the loathsome ones remain alive! Vance (played by none other than Mickey Dolenz of the pop band "The Monkees") is a jealous and aggressive guy, and Dan is the most hateful and disgusting racist thug I've ever seen. But they remain standing, whereas all the friendly characters die painful and cruel deaths. The identity of the killer can be guessed, if you are an experienced slasher-fanatic, but the mystery around his/her persona and motivations are elaborated quite effectively, I must say. The pacing is occasionally sluggish, but the film never gets boring. Definitely recommended.

Watch out!...this early 1970s anti-racist mystery has more murders than the mafia. I mean I watch giallos on a level that most people wouldn't consider sane and I haven't seen a body count like this outside of a slasher flick from at least ten years later. That's not a good thing, I'm not a gore hound, and the sheer level of murder that people get away with in this cheesy flick in order to make the end "work" is laughably absurd.

People are just dropping like flies from beginning to end despite the victims being regular average folks on college campuses in broad freaking daylight and in the upper middle class white suburbs of New Orleans.

To top it all off, one of the Monkees - Mickey Dolenz, looking just as much like a Monchhichi doll as ever - is a main character yet never once breaks into song. AND...the "night of the strangler" never actually happens, unless you count a drowning. There are however an abnormal number of Asian snakes and poison darts.

Probably the most well-rounded film I've seen from thriftbudget auteur Joy N. Houk, NIGHT OF THE STRANGLER touches on Southern U.S. racial tensions in an otherwise boilerplate whodunit which some may regard as a slasher genre prototype(take note that the "strangler" of the title kills in a variety of ways...none of which are by strangling!). The story in play recounts two at-odds brothers imputing one another in the suspicious deaths of their interracially intimate(and pregnant) sister and her lover. Roused suspicions result in more killings and a muster of potential offenders as the mystery snowballs to a sufficing, though slightly deflating, "surprise" denouement.

While the film never really manages to camouflage its third-string foundations, it works well enough as basal entertainment despite a few flat stretches and uneven scripting(and it features a fun go-go groovy psychedelic opening theme played on some old Farfisa-type organ). MONKEES bandmember Micky Dolenz provides a satisfactory performance, and the rest of the cast follows suit(although, to no derogation of the performers, their roles aren't exactly what one might call "demanding").

A tenantable B film for the general votary of secondary 70s cinema, though far from a crucial one. 5/10