The Strangler (1970)

• Year: 1970
• Released: 13 Sep 1972
• Country: France
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199175/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_strangler
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: French
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Crime, Drama
• Runtime: 93 min
• Writer: Paul Vecchiali
• Director: Paul Vecchiali
• Cast: Jacques Perrin, Julien Guiomar, Eva Simonet
• Keywords: depression, detective, suffocation, hysteria, murder, loneliness,

	6.5/10
	100% – Critics
	false% – Audience

The Strangler Storyline

Unhappy women are being murdered by Emile (Jacques Perrin), a psychotic young man suffering from the delusion that his acts are mercy killings. The detective (Julien Guiomar) assigned to track down the killer resorts to seriously unorthodox and even unethical methods to get his man. In one instance, he impersonates a psychologist on a TV show he and Emile appear on together and attempts to provoke Emile into revealing himself.—Clarke Fountain, Rovi

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The Strangler Movie Reviews

Beautiful, Stupid Movie

The only way the plot of this movie is acceptable is if the viewer thinks that it’s all through the deluded eyes of the killer. Women gratefully submit to his murder, usually with peace, sometimes with love. It’s absurd. I can see maybe one woman actually being sick and wanting to die, but it just goes from victim to victim with the same unrealistic pattern.

Then the detective on the case acts like a low-key fan boy though he’s a man in late middle age who loses sleep over cracking the case, once he meets the strangler he seems fascinated by his narcissistic ramblings and befriends the serial killer while running from the police with the perpetrator!

Unless this is meant to be a black comedy making fun of people who romanticize serial killers (that is a possibility though if so it’s VERY dry) the plot is incredibly stupid. It’s not a giallo, there’s no mystery.

There’s a film with Liz Taylor from the mid-1970s called Driver’s Seat/Identikit that spoofs giallos with a mentally ill woman dressing up and planning her own murder in Italy but that flick while weird is brilliantly constructed. On the other hand L’etrangleur feels like a pretentious inside joke I’m not in on.

I love the atmosphere though, very beautiful film.

Killer

Émile (Jacques Perrin) has an interesting reason for being a killer. He sees what he does as a public service, taking unhappy women away from this world with his white scarf. Inspector Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) is on the case but the ways that he goes after the killer are just as morally suspect. There’s also Anna (Eva Simonet), a gorgeous woman who feels that she’s the next victim. Maybe she even wants to be that person. And then there’s the thief (Paul Barge) who lurks at each scene and takes what cash and trinkets are left from each dead woman.

Directed and written by Paul Vecchiali, this giallo comes from the same year as Argento’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. It may not have the same visual madness as that film but it does have a villain who looks like a hero, a child of a man damaged by seeing a murder when he was young using the same knit white scarf that he uses to snuff out lives today. The women that he murders would have just killed themselves regardless, he reasons on the phone to Dangret, so he was saving them. The breakup that Anne has just emerged from has left her feeling that life is worthless; she volunteers to Dangret to be the lure.

Unlike most giallo, we know who the killer is from the start. Yet each kill is so planned, so precise, such a murder set piece as the women give themselves to Émile. He isn’t getting any sexual thrill from killing these women, unlike so many black gloved killers. These are mercy killings. It seems like the person he really wants is the cop.

Unconventional and off-beat but still likable giallo effort

Living in the middle of Paris, a detective sets out to stop the string of murders being committed by a savage killer strangling women to death with a special series of white scarves, and when he finds his effort fruitless in stopping his rampage resorts to increasingly more unorthodox and illegal means to bring him to justice.

This was a somewhat intriguing if off-kilter giallo effort. The main focus here is on setting up the atmosphere and presence of the situations where the killings are based on the setup allowing him to provide every kind of means necessary to be in the right place at the right time to strike which is pretty much the main way of getting the detective going in the proceedings. The ensuing investigation reveals that the psychological neurosis at the heart of the film is all rather cleverly handled with the series of reveals making sense as a psychological profile for who he is and why he’s doing what he’s doing which is somewhat unorthodox from the traditional stalk-and-slash efforts that this type of film usually appears to be but is still fun enough for what it is. However, the fact that this one is so stylized and unconventional is also a major detriment to the film as a whole. The murders, though frequent, are lamely executed with the victims putting up no amount of discomfort or stress at the proposition of being killed and instead seeming to unnaturally pose in sensual positions that take a lot of the sting out of the situation. This may not sit well with those expecting a series of suspenseful stalkings or violent strikes for the death scenes, as instead of this or even an investigation into the identity of the one doing these crimes the fascination rests on inconsequential means and outside forces that make the film somewhat of a slough to get through and might not be the most enticing for hardcore genre fans.

Today’s Rating/PG: Violence and Language.