1968 film by Richard Fleischer
The Boston Strangler is a 1968 American biographical crime thriller film directed by Richard Fleischer, based on the true story of the Boston Strangler and the 1966 non-fiction book The Boston Strangler by Gerold Frank. It stars Tony Curtis as Albert DeSalvo, the man who eventually confessed to being the Strangler, Henry Fonda and George Kennedy as lead investigators John S. Bottomly and Phil DiNatale, and Sally Kellerman as the composite character Dianne Cluny, one of the strangler's surviving victims. The cast also features Mike Kellin, Murray Hamilton, Hurd Hatfield, Jeff Corey, William Marshall, George Voskovec and William Hickey.
The film is one of four directed by Fleischer that are based on real-life murder cases—The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), based on Harry Kendall Thaw; Compulsion (1959), based on the Leopold and Loeb case; and 10 Rillington Place (1971), based on John Christie. It posits DeSalvo—the suspect who confessed to being the Strangler while in police custody—as being the perpetrator, and suffering from dissociative identity disorder (DID). In reality, the validity of DeSalvo's confession was disputed and later recanted, and he was never diagnosed with DID.
The Boston Strangler was released in the United States on October 16, 1968, by 20th Century Fox. It was a box-office success, grossing more than $17 million, but received mixed reviews from critics, with several deriding it as an exploitation film that feature a number of inaccuracies in its depiction of the actual crimes and of DeSalvo. Curtis was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Drama.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.