(There may be Spoilers) Covering the period of December 20, 1968 to October 11, 1969 when the notorious Zodiac Killer, Marty Lindsey, made his grand entrance into crime history together with the likes of Jack the Ripper and as of now some forty years later he's, if alive, still out there with as much as 40 victims on his police rap sheet. Terrorizing the San Francisco Bay area The Zodiac seemed to come out of nowhere stalking lovers lanes and deserted parks and city streets murdering some five people and seriously injuring two more in the ten month rampage that's depicted in the movie.
When it becomes apparent that a string of attacks in and around town are that of the same person Vallejo police chief Frank Perkins, Philip Baker Hall, puts his best man on the case Inspector Matt Parish, Justin Chambers, who by the end of the movie "The Zodiac" suffers a total emotional breakdown from the stress of trying to trap the elusive killer who seems to always be one step ahead of him and the Vallejo police department. Zodiac taunts the police FBI and even Naval Intelligence with the US Navy having a base outside of town, with one of its civilian worker a mechanic being a prime suspect in the case. Zodiac does that with cryptic and chilling letters sprinkled with strange and undecipherable astrological symbols giving evidence of his crimes that only he and the police that are investigating them know of.
We get a whole line of BS in the movie from so-called crime experts to what's driving this faceless killer from him being crazy and sexually frustrated to having not gotten any Christmas presents when he was a little boy. But they all turn out to lead to a dead end with the killer being anything but insane but actually as smart as a fox and as quick and deadly as a black panther who strikes in the dead of night,and even in the daytime, and then after finishing his gory work disappears into thin air.
Being a true story the movie does not have a happy ending with The Zodiac not only getting away with his crimes but not even being unidentified as he vanished, together with his socking murders, from the public eye as mysteriously as he appeared. Sending letters to the police and newspapers of his "exploits" as late as April 1978 Zodiac bragged about how he hopes that Hollywood would one day make a good and interesting movie about him so he could see his name up in lights in movie marquees all over the country. Zodiac must have missed seeing the 1971 movie, that was made when he was still at large and active, "Dirty Harry".
In the move Clint Eastwood plays the San Francisco police inspector "Dirty Harry" Calanhan. Harry's adversary was a kill crazy psycho, played by Andy Robinson, who murdered a number of people and then taunted the SFPD with phone calls of his crimes as well as sending them weird astrological symbolic ladened letters. The psycho killer sign the letters Scorpio which incidentally is one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
When it becomes apparent that a string of attacks in and around town are that of the same person Vallejo police chief Frank Perkins, Philip Baker Hall, puts his best man on the case Inspector Matt Parish, Justin Chambers, who by the end of the movie "The Zodiac" suffers a total emotional breakdown from the stress of trying to trap the elusive killer who seems to always be one step ahead of him and the Vallejo police department. Zodiac taunts the police FBI and even Naval Intelligence with the US Navy having a base outside of town, with one of its civilian worker a mechanic being a prime suspect in the case. Zodiac does that with cryptic and chilling letters sprinkled with strange and undecipherable astrological symbols giving evidence of his crimes that only he and the police that are investigating them know of.
We get a whole line of BS in the movie from so-called crime experts to what's driving this faceless killer from him being crazy and sexually frustrated to having not gotten any Christmas presents when he was a little boy. But they all turn out to lead to a dead end with the killer being anything but insane but actually as smart as a fox and as quick and deadly as a black panther who strikes in the dead of night,and even in the daytime, and then after finishing his gory work disappears into thin air.
Being a true story the movie does not have a happy ending with The Zodiac not only getting away with his crimes but not even being unidentified as he vanished, together with his socking murders, from the public eye as mysteriously as he appeared. Sending letters to the police and newspapers of his "exploits" as late as April 1978 Zodiac bragged about how he hopes that Hollywood would one day make a good and interesting movie about him so he could see his name up in lights in movie marquees all over the country. Zodiac must have missed seeing the 1971 movie, that was made when he was still at large and active, "Dirty Harry".
In the move Clint Eastwood plays the San Francisco police inspector "Dirty Harry" Calanhan. Harry's adversary was a kill crazy psycho, played by Andy Robinson, who murdered a number of people and then taunted the SFPD with phone calls of his crimes as well as sending them weird astrological symbolic ladened letters. The psycho killer sign the letters Scorpio which incidentally is one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.