The Serial Killer Who Was on ‘The Dating Game’

It’s a infamous freak second in daytime tv. On Sept. 13, 1978, one of many three competing bachelors on “The Relationship Sport” was Rodney Alcala, who turned out to be a serial killer; he was captured the next 12 months. (He was convicted of 5 murders, although it’s believed that he might have dedicated as many as 130.) It’s no joke — or possibly it’s a significant one — to say that Alcala had the appears to be like and persona of a Seventies ladykiller. He was coiffed like one of many Hudson Brothers, with a chiseled grin redolent of Engelbert Humperdinck. He virtually beamed good vibes — together with some semi-submerged unhealthy ones, answering his “Relationship Sport” questions in a method that was so assured it was…aggressive.

TV, after all, by no means bought a lot kitschier than “The Relationship Sport.” I used to look at it as a child, marveling at the truth that all the present, with its Herb Albert-on-happy-pills theme music and its flower-power décor, was a form of leering, smirky put-on that made no nice effort to cover it. (It was the primary present I’d seen that gave the impression to be about the sleaze tradition of Los Angeles.) I all the time thought that the squirmiest second every week was when the bachelor who’d been chosen got here out from behind the barrier, and after giving the bachelorette that ritual well mannered kiss, the 2 would stand there, arms round one another, as aviator-framed host Jim Lang described what could be in retailer for them on their date (it could often be one thing alongside the traces of “Since you’re occurring an expense-paid weekend to…Tuscon, Arizona!”), as in the event that they had been already a pair.

You might say that “The Relationship Sport” was “The Bachelorette” of its day. And the truth that a serial killer from the Ted Bundy college (outwardly “regular” and presentable, enjoying off his attractiveness to lure within the ladies he would rape and homicide) as soon as landed proper in the course of it’s without delay a jaw-dropping piece of TV historical past, an occasion each ludicrous and horrifying, and a large metaphor that stated: For girls who had been residing within the age of the sexual revolution, the relationship recreation was a much more harmful factor than it seemed like.

“Lady of the Hour” is Anna Kendrick’s true-life thriller about Rodney Alcala and this weird, only-in-America social-cultural-criminal episode. Kendrick directed the movie (her first effort behind the digicam), working from a script by Ian McDonald, and she or he additionally stars in it as Cheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring actress who is generally putting out at low-budget film auditions when her agent hooks her as much as be a bachelorette on “The Relationship Sport.” Cheryl thinks the present is trash (and it’s), however it’s going to give her an opportunity to be “seen.”

As a director, Kendrick leaps round in time by means of the ’70s, staging plenty of Rodney Alcala’s pickups and murders. Alcala is performed by Daniel Zovatto, who is aware of lay on the soft-rock sincerity, however then his eyebrows will decrease and the smile will soften away, leaving you with a quiet smoldering anger. Rodney, in lengthy hair and a leather-based jacket, is a photographer, and that’s his bohemian cred — and his homicidal grift. This was a time when males wielding cameras and an arty gaze promised to show ladies into stars. Rodney, who likes his victims younger (typically underage), will get them to pose, which inspires them to let down their guard, and that’s when he goes in for the kill. These scenes are efficient so far as they go, although they aren’t staged with the form of complicated fascination that was there in “Extraordinarily Depraved, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” the Ted Bundy drama starring Zac Efron.

The guts of the film is the “Relationship Sport” episode, which is staged with a form of kinky verve, although I felt as if Kendrick spends too many moments telegraphing what she needs to say. She grabs onto the metaphor of Rodney Alcala on “The Relationship Sport” and italicizes it. She makes clear that the present is a meat grinder, from the onscreen double entendres the bachelorette is assaulted with to the crudely hostile offscreen persona of the host (Tony Hale), referred to as Ed Burke right here. And I believe it’s telling that Kendrick chooses to play Cheryl not because the flirtatious cuddlebug she seemed to be on the present — that was how the ladies had been directed to behave — however as a realizing, nearly defiant determine who’s not going to be anybody’s intercourse toy.

As Cheryl, who poses her canned questions, and at last one in every of her personal (“What are ladies for?”), Kendrick is such a superb actor that she holds you fully. But as a filmmaker, she turns the tables on “The Relationship Sport” by restaging it in a virtually postmodern method. What “Lady of the Hour” goes for isn’t some final period-piece authenticity. It’s attempting to deconstruct tv, together with the male aggression that may descend into violence, and to point out you the way the 2 work collectively.

There’s a girl within the viewers, named Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who feels a chill when she sees that Alcala is bachelor #3, as a result of she was associates with one in every of his victims; she tried to go to the police, however to no avail. (That mirrors what occurred: an important many tricks to the cops about Alcala, which he by some means evaded.) That is the weakest a part of the movie, although, as a result of the drama is without delay too sketchy and too on-the-nose.

The strongest a part of the movie occurs simply after the present, when Rodney cajoles Cheryl into becoming a member of him for a “date” (drinks at a dive bar) earlier than their official date in Caramel, Ca. Their duel of wits is queasy and, by the point it arrives at a car parking zone, scary. In actual life, Cheryl and Rodney by no means did go on their “Relationship Sport” date, as a result of she thought there was one thing off about him. And it’s satisfying, on the finish of the movie, to see Alcala get caught, outwitted by a sufferer who is aware of play to his vainness. But when “Lady of the Hour” captures a fluky second when American violence peeked by means of the façade of packaged American tv, the film doesn’t have a whole lot of resonance, as a result of it does all its connecting of that means for you.