This peculiar movie simply didn't make sense. Here are two guys who seem to get as much "tail" as they want from several sexy young women, yet inexplicably they start to hate women for reasons that are superficially and inadequately explained. Bianchi is a slick talker who fakes his credentials as a psychotherapist yet repeatedly is rejected by various police departments when he applies to be a cop. Turturro's Buono is a menacing pig who works on cars for a living. On the side, the pair effectively force naive young girls into prostitution. Oddly, the girls seem to settle into the situation with only the initial coercion being required. Then a black prostitute sells Buono and Bianchi a list of johns that she stole from a black pimp. He retaliates by paying them a visit, threatening them, robbing them, setting their girls free, and thus destroying their "escort" business. Determined to get back at someone, anyone, Buono decides to kill the black prostitute. Other than that, there is no serious explanation provided for his sudden murderous resolve. She was a nice looking woman, too, with a beautiful figure, and it was hard to understand how they could snuff out her life so casually, despite the fact that she had indirectly endangered their lives. The scene in which Bianchi has sex with her in the back seat of the big car and then chokes her to death while Buono cheers him on from the driver's seat is probably the most chilling, disturbing, and realistic one in the movie. In fact, it's kind of shocking that "nice guy" Turturro, the young cop on NYPD Blue, could act out such a creepy scene so effectively. From it, we get the distinct impression that Buono is no stranger to murder, although Bianchi is portrayed as having real qualms even after he has indulged his taste for it.
After that, the sick pair start to kill prostitutes simply for kicks, although Buono lamely justifies it by claiming that they are ridding society of bad people (whores). The real motivation for this gruesome spree is never made clear and the movie jumps from one murder to another and one event to another without bothering to transition the scenes very effectively. It's as if too much of the footage were edited out and what's left is a slightly confused montage. The killings themselves are gratuitous, both in their sick violence and their exposure of naked, busty young women. It quickly becomes uncomfortable to watch and increasingly unnecessary to the plot, but how can you tell such a sordid tale without showing at least some of that? Certain scenes, apart from the murders, are actually interesting and it's too bad there wasn't more of that and much less of the sadistic violence. Turturro is such a pig as Buono, while Bianchi is portrayed as a sobbing little whiner who is completely unbelievable as a lady's man OR a crazed killer, yet somehow he makes it work. However, why he keeps hanging around Buono, who threatens him repeatedly with guns and knives, is not adequately explained.
The women in this movie, most of whom end up as victims, are depicted as total airheads. For some odd reason, some really sexy chicks are inordinately attracted to either Buono, the aggressive, menacing slob, or Bianchi, the dorky sob sister. They are perfectly willing to have sex with these two lost souls, who would rather kill them, instead. Once again, it didn't make much sense. As a whole, the flick is exploitive and twisted, but after all, it was YOU who rented it, so how can you complain? It's too bad the lady who played Buono's mom had just a cameo role. She was quite good. In fact, the argument between her and Turturro at the kitchen table was very entertaining and probably the movie's most interesting scene, initiating the campy, over-the-top style that became more predominant as we neared the conclusion. That's when this strange movie started to remind me a little of "Bloody Mama," a depressing flick about Ma Barker and her brood of incestuous sons, which starred Shelly Winters and a young Robert De Niro, among others. De Niro played the junkie son who camouflaged his works in a Baby Ruth wrapper in his shirt pocket. "The Hillside Strangler" is a very odd movie, too, and probably one that should not be distributed so freely because it just might give some unstable types unhealthy ideas. It was rated R, but as such, I think it deserved an X.
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