Episode 758: The Strangler (1964)

Buonopalooza rages on with Victor Buono front and center in The Strangler (1964). One of his rare leading roles, Buono embodies Leo Kroll, a smothered man-child whose repressed rage against women spills into murder. Loosely modeled on the Boston police department’s profile of the Boston Strangler—and hitting theaters mere months after Albert DeSalvo’s confession—the film walks a fine line between crime drama and exploitation, delivering Buono at his creepiest. Mike is joined once again by Otto Bruno and Tim Madigan to dig into this twisted artifact of ‘60s true-crime cinema.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
I was wondering, how can I get a message out
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Speaker 3 (00:12):
Yeah?

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No, thanks, what a cesspool. That's about as awful as
X these days. But then I realized, oh gosh, I'm
a man with a microphone. I can actually put this
message out at the beginning of the next episode of
the podcast. So here I am. I am getting ready
to do another ego fest. This is Ego Fest fifteen.

(00:33):
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Speaker 1 (02:19):
Oh jeez, boat, it's showtime.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
People say good money to see this movie when they
go out to a theater. They want closed sodas hop
popcorn in no monsters in the projection booths.

Speaker 5 (02:32):
Everyone for ten podcasting isn't boring?

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Dot it off?

Speaker 6 (03:16):
What about the doll in her apartment could be a fetish?
Fetish fetish can be anything any non sexual object that
incites erotic feelings.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
In this case of all the Strangler based on the
terrifying crime wave that has gripped Boston and spread across
the country.

Speaker 7 (03:38):
That makes number eight for the Strangler.

Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yeah it looks not money starring Victor Buono. The shock
sensation of whatever happened to Baby Jane has the most baffling,
the most horrifying criminal in a decade.

Speaker 6 (03:53):
There wasn't rape, no evidence in maltreatment after death.

Speaker 4 (03:58):
No woman is safe as long as the Strangler lives
and roams at will.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
There are a lot of people who don't laugh at
me anymore.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
They don't laugh at anymore.

Speaker 8 (04:23):
Please go away, I'll go.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
A strange, shocking being of unpredictable emotions. No one knows
when or where he will strike again, or who will
be his next victim.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Welcome to the projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White
Chimney once again, is mister Otto Bruno?

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Oh I'm sorry? Does that me? Mike? Thanks? I'm sorry
you woke me up. How you doing?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Mike also joining us as mister Tim Madigan, Greetings, I'm
a man with a milk fetish.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
I don't even want to know what he means, y'ah,
you'll soon find out.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Buono Palooza continues What They Look At Victor Bono's first
and few leading roles, The Strangler, released in nineteen sixty four,
Bueno plays Leo Kroll, a pathetic mama's boy in the
mold of Norman Bates who takes out his aggression against women,
and a story modeled after the Boston Police Department's profile
of the Boston Strangler and released just a few months

(05:49):
after the confession to the murders by Albertusalvo. In other words,
this is pure exploitation. We will be spoiling this film
as well as the Albert Tsalvo case as we go along.
So if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off
the podcast and come back after you've seen the film. So, Otto,
when was the first time you saw The Strangler and
what did you think?

Speaker 5 (06:09):
It was a few years back, maybe three four years ago.
And of course if I saw it that recently, it
means I watched it because of mister Maddigan's obsession, and
I guess partly with my own obsession with Victor Buono.
And I was, quite honestly, I was impressed by it.

(06:31):
Like you said, it's actually one of only two films
basically headlined, and the other one was is it called
the Butcher or something?

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I saw it under the title meat is Meat, but
normally known as the Mad Butcher. Oh, the Mad Butcher
is the best butcher in Vienna.

Speaker 5 (06:50):
That one makes this look like Academy Award level materials.
So I was actually happily surprised with this movie. And
I think Buono's performance is actually quite good. He doesn't
play it over the top or anything. I think he
gives an actually really interesting, nuanced performance. Again, at this

(07:14):
point in time, it's not anything new to any of us.
It's certainly not anything we haven't seen on.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Television a million times, even in all these years since
it came out.

Speaker 5 (07:26):
But now I thought, for being a low budget picture,
I thought it was quite good, quite honestly, And Tim,
how about yourself?

Speaker 3 (07:34):
The best of my knowledge, I first saw it about
two weeks ago when I was in Otto's basement and
the two of us watched it together, but it did
remind me of The Mad Butcher or Meat His Meat,
which is almost a parody of this film. I don't
think that was deliberately the case, but in both cases

(07:57):
it struck me as what a tragedy that Victor Bono
did not star in more film, in both cases of
a higher quality, because he's an outstanding actor, and particularly
with The Strangler when we'll talk more details soon about
the other actors, but a lot of them just seem

(08:19):
to be phoning it in or whatever the equivalent is.
But he gives it as all.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
I believe in those days you would telegram it in telegram.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
Wait a minute, believe it or not. They did have
phones in nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
No, I believe it.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
And there's even a couple of phone calls in here.
So yeah, no, definitely, especially having to call your mom
and let her know that you're not coming to the
hospital tonight. I saw this one for the show, had
never really heard of it before. I had seen The
Mad Butcher and absolutely loved it and was surprised and
maybe a little disappointed we weren't doing that one. But
I was glad to see The Strangler it was, yeah,

(08:56):
very classy compared to the med Butcher as classy. This
film can be got some lovely black and white cinematography,
very flat as far as the lighting goes. This looks
a lot like a television episode more than a movie
at times. We are not talking Hitchcock here. I likened
him to Norman Bates and it's yeah, the cinematography is

(09:20):
not up there with what mister Hitchcock was doing. This
feels very much almost like a fly by night, real
quick production. There's a couple standout shots though, like the
very first real shot of the movie, once we get
past the opening scroll and the king thing that's under
the credits, which really recalls to me Whitechapel with the

(09:40):
figure and the buildings and everything. But you start with
and I don't know why, it's a woman's eye, but
a woman looking and then you see a reflection. It's
very much a post effect of this woman undressing in
the eyeball. And then you cut into the movie and
you see our first victim, and man, oh man, these

(10:01):
ladies they die quickly, very quickly.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
You're right.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
It was like very very little fight was put up
against although to be fair, Wono was an imposing figure
and these most of.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
The women in this are not equal to him in
that respect.

Speaker 5 (10:22):
Certainly, by the way, when you talk about the flatness
of the look of this film and comparing to the Hitchcock,
I did look as I'm sure you both probably did
as well.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
At the credits of the director, it is his name Topper.

Speaker 5 (10:39):
Topper, Yes for Topper, And I think it's safe to
say from whatever we can garner from IMDb and sources
like that, that this was probably the best film he
ever met, So let that speak for what it will.
But yeah, again, it was definitely not an a production

(11:00):
by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
And Tim said the acting.

Speaker 5 (11:04):
Maybe that's where the poor acting comes in that these women,
maybe the director told them, don't let your death scene
last more than three seconds.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Maybe the best film that he did, but not the
most well known. Oddly, the most well known film he
did was from nineteen sixty one with War as Hell,
and that only is because of the footnote in the
Kennedy assassination. That's the movie that was playing when Oswald
went into the theater to hide from the cops. But
he also did Soul Hustler, which I remember watching because

(11:37):
William Bonner is in there. William Bonner, who played who
went by the name of Jack Miehoff in Black Shampoo,
one of my most favorite movies. So that one stars
Fabian as a purring pot smoking, wandering singer who becomes
a tent show preacher.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah, maybe you could start a new podcast six Degreeze
of Black Shampoo see bitch all to eventually lead back
to that. And I always thought William Bonner was Billy
the kid's real name.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
I think that's William Bonnie. This movie definitely shines whenever
Bono is on screen, and it suffers when he's not.
The police procedural that goes along with this film kind
of bless me a little flat, especially, I just don't
care about these cops at all. I think David McLean's
kind of a snooze. No wonder you're sleeping when I
did your intro at all.

Speaker 5 (12:27):
It's really more like a television detective show. But they're
not very good detective. I feel like I said it
to Tim at the time, something like, why aren't they
if there's suspicions of them, why aren't they even This
was because I think at the end they finally I
don't even think they tail him. I think they're just
staking out the amusement park thin. But if you're so

(12:52):
suspicious of them, why aren't you even tailing him at all?
And yeah, they seemed like really just not good cops,
not very efficient cops.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
So they make dragnets seem upbeat.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
These guys are really sad that there have been I
think our first murder victim is the eighth murder victim,
so they've definitely been kicked around a little bit. They
have no leads, nothing to go on, so maybe that's
why they're so depressed.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
And that's why I mentioned about the milk fetish, because
there's a psychiatrist or psychologist later talking about anything can
be a fetish, and then you watch them they're constantly
drinking milk. I didn't know if that was a subtle
nod by the director, just coincidental, but it's like, what's
up with all this milk? Drinking a mother's milk? Perhaps

(13:45):
they're getting very freudy in here. It does have a
CD look to it, so, which is appropriate for the film.
As you say, Mike, it's an exploitation film, like a
lot of these sort of films. We talked earlier about
films like Who Killed Teddy Bear? It's just filmed around
the same time you want to take a bath afterwards.

(14:06):
It's just and not only is.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
This exploiting the Boston strangler case, but it also feels
like it's cashing in on whatever happened to Baby Jane,
taking Victor Bono out of that movie. Keeping the doll
thing we talked about the dolls of Baby Jane in
the previous episode, but giving him this doll fetish type
object where he transfers it's almost a literal transfer, like

(14:31):
he's holding the doll and then he reaches down and
touches to close the eyelids of his first victim, and
it's almost like this transference of energy. Now I have
you my little darling type of thing with this doll,
and he strips off the doll, strips off. I love
how the dolls have nylons on them, their stockings.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
I'm like, goshim and I talked about that.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah, And it feels so much like this is Victor
Bono if he had gone back home to his mother
in Baby Jane. She's not merely the herod in that
she is in this one, but he hates his mother
in Baby Jane, at least in the book Edwin Flagg
just cannot stand her at all. And this one, Oh
my gosh, this mother character just so awful. And speaking

(15:14):
of Hitchcock, I seem to remember that she was the
person that managed the didn't you manage the hotel where
Kim Novak was staying in Vertigo. I'm pretty sure that
Grandma Walton was in that.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
She was the second movie that Ellen Corby and Victor
Bono were in, because they were both in Four for Texas. Also,
we don't know if they formed any kind of an
allegiance or not. But she I thought she's excellent as
a really unpleasant mother. Oh she was a terrible mother. Yeah,
she was. Particularly as you mentioned, she was Grandma on

(15:49):
the Walton, so you can't help. But it's almost like
the dark side of Grandma Walton.

Speaker 5 (15:54):
Grandma Walton could be a bit of a feisty old
brod Leo, your.

Speaker 8 (16:00):
Mother nearly died, my heart, Leo, it nearly gave out,
and you didn't come.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
What happened?

Speaker 8 (16:12):
I don't know, dear.

Speaker 9 (16:14):
They won't tell you what really happened.

Speaker 10 (16:16):
I fainted and it was like there was a knife
in my heart. That's all I remember.

Speaker 8 (16:24):
And if Clara hadn't found me right away and given
me a hypol I would have died Leo right then.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Very lucky.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Most of all, what do we remember, Tim? I remember Mama,
isn't she? And I remember Mama as aunt, Yeah there
as Aunt Trina. I didn't remember that she was. And
I remember Mama, yeah she was.

Speaker 5 (16:50):
She plays like the more meek of Irene Dunn's sisters,
but she's got a pretty pretty substantial role. And I
remember Mama, so that certainly is definitely the opposite of
this character. I think Grandma Waltman never totally trusted her,
but and Mike, you are correct, she was. She was

(17:11):
the proprietor of the McKittrick Hotel in Vertigo, and.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
You know that whole Walton family. I mean they were
filled with a bunch of comedies. You had Will Greer
and Ralph Wade in there, and they're both the blacklist
that if memory serves, I didn't know.

Speaker 5 (17:27):
I did not know about Ralph Waite, but definitely Willneer
was blacklist, no question about that.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
One bad influence on John Boy for sure.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Talking about six degays of separation, my very limited connection
with any Hollywood fame. My mother's first cousin was an
actor named Joe Connley who got a one time role
in The Waltons as a storekeeper, and I guess was
Earl Hamner liked him so much that he made him

(17:58):
a regular character. I got so every I forget what
day of the week The Waltons was on, but we
always had to watch it, and as soon as it appear,
my mother would say, there's cousin Joe.

Speaker 5 (18:09):
I know what day it was on because I didn't
watch it because it was on the same day as
Flip Wilson and then later on the same day as
Barney Miller was on Thursday nights.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
You gotta have some loyalty there.

Speaker 5 (18:20):
Yeah, Thursday Nights on CBS.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
We must have switched over because I know I watched
Barney Miller too. So we only had one TV in
those days, and we have a VCR or anything.

Speaker 5 (18:32):
Because Barney only lasted I think in the early slot
for maybe a year or so, because then they moved
it to a later slot. And I'm pretty sure that
The Waltons were always on from eight to nine, but
your cousin Joe was in one hundred and seventy two
of the two hundred and twelve episodes, and he.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Wrote his autobiography published by the Great Bear manor Preudz.
That's full circle. It all comes around. I wonder if
it's just a coincidence Bono's casting in this role, or
was it perhaps because of being at Whatever Happened to
Baby Jane? Because you say there is a definite connection

(19:11):
with the mother obsessed, very od person who seems to
have a lot of women problems.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
I don't know how much stock I want to put
into the audio commentary for this. It was David Delvall
and David Dakoto David Dakota who did a talking cat
and Sorority Babes at the Slameball bull Rama. I trust him,
I don't necessarily trust del val And he was saying
that after Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, where he was

(19:43):
nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, that he was
very picky about his roles. Of course, he worked with
Alberts again and for from Texas, but then wasn't taking
a lot and got paid big time to be in
this movie. I guess as Asian was turning down a
lot of stuff, but then they offered him the right price.
What Dalval quoted was two hundred thousand dollars, which in

(20:07):
nineteen sixty four money is huge. I just somebody just
calculated one hundred and ten thousand dollars in nineteen sixty
four money and it was like close to a million.
So I can't even imagine how much two hundred thousand
dollars was at that time. Got himself a house, got
his mother or house, because Victor Bono definitely loved his mother,

(20:29):
and that's one of the things that I think plays
well in this whole idea of the mother fixation. And
we are I mentioned Norman Bates and I'm going to
keep mentioning him. I even mentioned him in the last
episode because I just feel like this was also a
psycho exploitation film. Not only are we talking about Baby Jane,
but then also the Boston strangler and adding psycho to it.

(20:52):
Thank god, we don't have the psychiatrist at the end
coming in Simon Oakland and explaining everything to us. But
we've got the psychiatrist, the milk obsessed psychiatrists, as you mentioned,
who is there. Oh yeah, people can go skitzo. And
I'm like, what I'm very professional here, doctor, what.

Speaker 7 (21:09):
About the doll in her apartment?

Speaker 6 (21:11):
I've broken.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
A toy.

Speaker 6 (21:16):
Could be more than a toy, could be a fetish, fetish.
It's not uncommon transference of emotion from one thing to another.
Fetish can be anything, any non sexual object that incites
erotic feelings, whether it sticks, stones, piece of clothing in
this case of doll, what's a belt?

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah? Thanks.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Later, when the Buono character is being interrogated, he tells
the psychiatrist, Oh, I love your work. You work in
abnormal psychology.

Speaker 5 (21:52):
What I thought was kind of sad and certainly a
reflection of our own culture and the prejudices that are
probably built within. But Buono is nominated for this Academy
Award and what essentially is his first role in a film,
and it's a major Hollywood film, and then this was

(22:16):
the best that they could offer him after that, I
thought was disappointing. And of course, when you talk about
Victor Buono and Anthony Perkins, okay, they're both a playing
mother obsessed psychos. But the difference was there was a
time in the fifties where you know, Anthony Perkins was

(22:40):
being put forth as a general sex symbol or a
general leading man, which of course they would never consider
Buono four because of his girth and his balding, had
all the whole thing. And it's too bad because he
was again I think his certainly on film. I don't

(23:02):
think his talent was ever really tapped, quite honestly on film.
I think he did some things on television later on
that at least showed you what a brilliant comedian he
could book, a brilliant comedic actor that he could be.
But I thought it was sad that this was the
best that they could come up with for him after

(23:25):
getting an Academy Award nomination. And this is obviously a
small budget picture, which by the way, makes me highly
doubt he could have gotten two hundred thousand, because the
film itself doesn't look like it costs more than five
hundred thousand.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Maybes drop a few zero, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
There were a lot of things in that Devell commentary
that was just like, what, I don't think you're right here,
And then they just kept repeating himself like crazy the
whole thing. DeSalvo confessed, but DNA evidence and blah blah blah.
He said that three four times during the whole thing.
I was like, oh my gosh, Okay, once is enough.

(24:04):
Twice maybe just to bring it home, but like three,
four times, yeah, just let's move on to another topic. Please.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Going back to the opening, you don't need a spoiler
alert because you see what is the bonos characters named
Leo Kroll Leo kill the eighth victim. We learned later
immediately it's him, And I thought it could have been
better if this was more like like the Lodger, where

(24:32):
he's a suspect and then it turns out it's not him,
because many people have said Laird Krigard, there are other
people of similar build who had a good career who
did play dramatic role. But by knowing immediately it's him,
then you know, it takes obou, it takes a mystery out.

(24:54):
Maybe we need Colombo then we could have and he
could have then let us all know how he figured
it out, that these cops, almost by hampenstance, figure out
he did, and they don't even protect the last victims.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
They give her the cigarette lighter with the microphone in it,
which is like the best microphone in the entire world
that picks up every noise in her entire apartment.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
And promising her they weren't. Let's just plan a microphone
on her and not tell her. This is a big guy.

Speaker 5 (25:26):
And these women, almost all of them are small, petite women.
So yeah, the lighter, what good is that going to do.
By the time you get there, he could have easily
broken her neck without even breaking a sweat. When they
show us right from the get go that he's the murderer,
it also signals to you that, yes, this is not

(25:48):
a mystery, this is not a suspense story. Really, it's
a psychological portrait. You're going to be a character study,
if you will, of this troubled mind.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
And he doesn't even kill that many people. Throughout this film,
I think we've got our first victim. We've got the
nurse that's taking care of his mother. We've got his
mother by having a heart attack when he finds when
she finds out that the nurse is dead. And then
the one blonde lady who's working with Tally who because

(26:23):
we haven't said to the audience yet, he loves to
go into a local arcade and play ring toss, and
he pretends that he comes into town once in a while,
that he's this important businessman rather than working in a lab,
which I think is an interesting profession, but they don't
really explore it that much. I'm like, oh, oh, he

(26:43):
could be making something or doing something with this stuff,
but no, there's really nothing very remarkable that there's actual
an African American lady who works with him, the one
with the hat pen. But yeah, really he kills the
seven beforehand, and then in this movie one, two, three,
maybe four if you want to consider his mother as well.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
His fellow lab worker there. I thought that scene was
very interesting when she talks about the hatpin and other
ways she would try to protect herself, and I thought
that was foreshadowy.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Same once you talked about the acid that some ladies
would carry. I'm like, oh boy, that's going to be horrific.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
He yeah, and then nothing comes of it. It's interesting
interplay with them. He's just seems blase or not paying
attention to her, but presumably he's picking up like, oh oh,
I better be carefully right. Some women might actually, especially
now that I've killed eight of them, there might be
some that are actually they do something to protect themselves.

Speaker 5 (27:49):
They don't explore the fact that he works in a lab.
They don't tell you what he works on or anything.
And you're right, I didn't even think of it. But
they could have made it a lot more interesting, Like
he could have been a researcher working on some kind
of drug that would save people's lives while at night
he's going out and taking people's lives.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Even that would have been something.

Speaker 5 (28:14):
And the whole idea that, Yeah, as Tim just said,
you're bringing up the acid all this and you think
it's going to lead to something and it doesn't. Oh,
the writer, although the writer had certainly a bigger and
more impressive resume than the director. But maybe I think
this might have been earlier in his career, this particular film,

(28:36):
because he went on, Hey, the guy who wrote this,
I think his name was Bill Bollinger or something. He
went on to write some Cannon episodes, So he's got
to be talented.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Waiting for another heavy person.

Speaker 5 (28:48):
I loved Frank Cannon. He was one of my favorites. Whoever,
I don't think he was.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
The writer also wrote two episodes of Kolchak The Night Soccer.
He wrote Firefall and Primal Screen and yeah, he wrote
Canon Ironside, an I Spy episode. Yeah, this guy was
all over the place. I love it.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Run for your Life.

Speaker 5 (29:11):
I don't think Bono ever did do it Cannon, although
it certainly would have been in He should have.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
He should have.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
You imagine the promo for then with Cannon on one
side and Bono on the other. That would be awesome.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
Now, I wonder, getting back to the writer, there's dark
humor in the film, but I don't know if it
was intentional or not. Like we're saying when the one
doctor says, whatever, you don't tell your mother that the
nurse she loves his day, you got a bad heart,
net would kill her. And then when the nurse when
he learns that she had saved his mother's life, and

(29:47):
the mother's going on and on. But if not for her,
I'd have been dead. And you see a fresh ships.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
I thundy, I really yeah. I laughed as well. I'm
just like just him trying to hold that back.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Oh it was her, That's like the Victor buono is
Otto was mentioned. We know his comedic roles, and I
thought that this is very funny. That was foreshadowing to
the Third Light and to the mother.

Speaker 5 (30:15):
Yeah, I know that was put up right up on
a tee, don't tell her about the nurse could kill her.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, you can tell how awful this mother is because
she's got pictures of herself all over her house, including
right over her own bed. I'm like, what what kind
of ego maniac are you?

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Lady?

Speaker 5 (30:33):
When we first see that scene with all the pictures
of her in there, I didn't realize right away that
it was her room because and then you, I'm like, oh, okay,
because at first I thought, oh, is it his room
and he's got this weird but no, it was like
you say, it was her room, and I and you
just love when she basically says him like, no one

(30:53):
would love you except me?

Speaker 3 (30:55):
That rant is just oh for brutal, that was rough, man, What.

Speaker 10 (31:02):
Would any girl want you for?

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Come over here?

Speaker 10 (31:10):
Come on, nah, face facts, son, you're not good looking,
you're fat. You know very well yourself that some people

(31:30):
think you're funny.

Speaker 8 (31:34):
Please, Mama, Even as a little boy, nobody liked you,
and except for me, nobody's loved you. And you haven't
any money and women want money, and don't you forget it?
Why you barely make enough of a salary to keep
a good looking hussy and.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Stockings that I don't after paying your hospital bills?

Speaker 9 (31:58):
Son, can we just talk? Why do you have to argue?

Speaker 2 (32:05):
And when she says some people think you're funny, I'm
just like, oh, you mean gay? Okay.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
It was a code, that's what they had to do.
The relationship there empathized with them. But again because right
at the beginning he's the strangler. That's why I said
if there was some ambiguity as so whether or not
it really was him, would have made it I think
a more interesting film.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Especially that he passes the lie detector no problem, has
no problem answering all the cops questions. It kind of
reminded me of Ed Norton in Primal Fear, where you
get convinced through the whole thing that he's this innocent
victim and then find out he's this criminal mastermind towards
the end of the film.

Speaker 5 (32:46):
Isn't that kind of interesting too? In nineteen sixty four
to present a lie detector test that and to show
the audience that, yeah, you can beat a lie detector
test if you have no motions, no guilt or whatever. Again,
because it's twenty twenty five, we've seen so much just

(33:07):
via our television, come into our living room, during our lifetimes.
We know that there are sociopaths and psychopaths out there
who have absolutely no feeling for what their actions.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
Do to other people. Boy do we know that? So
I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 5 (33:29):
I thought maybe some people in the audience at that
point in time in nineteen sixty four would actually be
confused by that, because again on TV, they never showed
anything like that that. I remember light detective tests. By
the time I was watching all those detective shows in
the seventies. What was the point of using a lie
detector because it wasn't admissible in court, so they.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Rarely did it, but if they were able to do it,
of course, that reminded me, speaking of TV cop shows
in the seventies of Arthur Dietrich on Barney Miller when
he was given the lie detector test that I was like.

Speaker 11 (34:03):
Your real name is Arthur P. Dietrick and the P
stands for I was never told where we were more
in sergeantsy sorry to remember it. It was long long ago,
the galaxy, far far away. On a kidding, I know

(34:32):
you are, Yeah, that's the problem.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
We always said on our show that he was an alien.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
So I mean, we know he was at the end
of the future.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Oh that's for sure. Yeah, you're the Arthur D.

Speaker 5 (34:44):
Prick Richard Libertini. You people are very lucky.

Speaker 7 (34:48):
Well, young man, I'd like to get a base reading here.
Could you say something, just say anything. The first thing
that comes to mind, I killed a bunch of people.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
One at the beginning, when he's first questioned by the
police and he says, we don't yet know about his
home life, and says, my mother is an invalid. And
then when we see him in his home when he
goes home, you just expect she's going to be there,

(35:20):
and then suddenly, wait, no, she calls, how come you're
not visiting me in the hospital. That allows us to
realize he's a good liar because later he says, I
never said I lived with her. I just said she's
an invalid.

Speaker 5 (35:34):
He does make it seem because he says, I don't
go out my wife or my mother is an invalid,
So he makes you think that she lives with him.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
And do you have an alibi? It seemed to imply
my mother is an invalid. She thinks that I was
all so she guess to that, but obviously she couldn't,
so that that was good giving. This is a very
clever guy.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
It's very interesting. So you say that your mother is
an invalid, so he eventually kills his mother's nurse, like
we were saying again a tie into the DeSalvo case
with or the Boston Strangler case, I should say, with
killing of a nurse. There are a lot of nurses
that were killed in Boston or worked at the hospitals.
Doesn't kill her with a stocking this time, which was

(36:21):
also the Boston Strangler's weapon of choice for quite a
few of his victims. So blending fact of the fiction
a little bit here with this a lot of fiction
or just a few knots to fact. But I love
how the doll. She happens to have a doll this nurse,
and it is one of these dolls that says mama.

(36:41):
So when he hears the mama come out of the
doll's mouth, it really triggers him and he throws this
thing against the wall. Did you notice how much dust
these guys put on this baby doll when they're dusting
for prints. It looks like Tony Montana just had an
accident of it was crazy.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
That might explain a lot about those cops there it
just seemed, you know what a wonderful coincident and said,
because he destroys his doll and they get thinking, hey,
maybe this guy's got a doll fetish. Actually, Ottaw and Eye,
we had to go back to the beginning of the
film because we thought that when he was peeling off
the stockings and underclothing of the little doll, he was

(37:23):
leaving them at the scene of the crime. But then no,
he was doing that in his home and then putting
the naked dolls in a drawer in the dust drawer there, Yeah,
which made it even more far fetch about why would
they think this guy he threw this doll real hard
and maybe he's again he's got a doll fetish.

Speaker 5 (37:43):
Exactly, because it's not like they had found dolls at
the other sites.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
That he brings his own dolls to these crimes is
pretty interesting, and it almost seems like the excuse is
when he gets a doll, then a murderer happens because
he does the ring toss at the beginning. I guess
there's not a tie directly between that. There definitely is
when the who is a Barbara the other blonde that
works at the Ring toss game. She ends up giving

(38:11):
him a doll and really is cutting close to home
with some of the things that she's saying, and he
gets pretty upset and it's okay, now I've got this doll.
I guess I can follow this girl home and kill her. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
I felt bad for her. I liked her as a character.
She had a lot of moxie.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
She did have moxie.

Speaker 5 (38:30):
Yeah, Victor Boro hates spunk, or I should say Leo
Kroll hates spunk?

Speaker 12 (38:35):
You got spunk?

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Is there a Freudian element of that ring toss too?
I wonderful?

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Oh, I so was thinking that.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Yeah, we never actually see him successfully tossed the ring.
I would have liked to put Victor to the test there,
let's see he actually do that.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
I think we see it at least an insert shot
with the first time he's.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Still yeah, But we don't see him flinging it.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
No, you never see a medium shot with both his
hand and the ring that the landing over one of
those pegs.

Speaker 5 (39:07):
I felt cheated. You two are reprobates. I grew up
with a Disney sort of mind. I don't think of
these things.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
I was wondering, is who was just being made for
did it appear and drive in? Because on the one hand,
the victims are all in their lingerie when they're killed,
so there's a little cheesecake element, but it's not. There's
no nudity. Even when the last one is killed coming
out of the shower, you don't see anything, and I

(39:38):
guess you wouldn't have in those early years there. But
who again, who's the audience for this? Well's to see
this movie other than us? Victor Bono completist Ellen Ellen
Krby completed this.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Perhaps I don't want to sound the conspiracy theorist, but
I'm wondering. I guess that this was running into some
censorship problems, and I'm wondering if it's because the studio
was such a small independent studio versus the last movie
we watched was that Warner Brothers. So Warner Brothers, I imagine,

(40:12):
could get away with some more things than a small place.
What is this allied artist and something like that. Probably
they were like, no, you can't do that, can't have this.
And going back to that del Vall commentary again, he
kept saying that it was Buono that was insisting that
there'd be no nudity in this film, and I'm just like, no,

(40:32):
I don't think that's correct at all. The may had
butcher on, I'll tell you that if your main star
objects to nudity, which I don't believe he did, but
if he had, you just shoot insert shots. Okay, here's
one for you, Victor, and now all right, we'll see
you later, and then you shoot it again with less
clothes on and do it with a body devil. There's

(40:55):
definitely what we've seen a lot of actresses have sex
scenes that they weren't a part of whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
And again it starts out with the first victim taking
her clothes off and getting down to broad panties what
have you, and hate you to think, oh, here we go.
It's starting off with what's gonna what are we gonna
see later? And I said, no, but all you're going
to see.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, it is very team of super super team when
it comes to this, the murders are team to Speaking
of Hitchcock again, think about the strangling scene and frenzy
and just how long that goes on for and how
disturbing the victim looks afterwards. It's so sanitized this whole movie. Yeah,

(41:41):
I can't see the raincoat crowd getting involved in this
one at all is Yeah, I probably see more in
commercials these days.

Speaker 5 (41:49):
But once you also agree, like you mentioned Frenzy, that's
nineteen seventy two, so that's eight years later. I always
note to my classes around the time that the MPAA
instituted the letter codes and stuff, I think you saw
a lot of stuff like really quickly, Like it ramped

(42:13):
up very quickly in terms of what they showed, not
like it was a gradual moving into showing newly here,
showing a little more violence here. When they got that
green flag, they just I think it was quite a list.
Like we say, this is eight years before. Yeah, it's

(42:35):
it's not graphic, it's not it plays everything safe, but
it's creepy.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
It is disturbed, and I think a lot of it
has to do with almost acting. You get a census
is a tortured soul. It's you get the sense that
he could have been different, it wasn't inevitable. And of
course when you see his mother again, guys, you got
a lot of issues. That's why I mentioned earlier. It

(43:03):
stays with you. I've seen a lot of movies or
after its completely forget the blood, remember anything about the
plot that one. It's been two weeks or so since
we've seen and I didn't need to rewatch it. I
think I pretty much remember, at least remember a lot
of milk drinking.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Anyway, I'm trying to remember in nineteen sixty four, I
want to say, like Blood Feast was out around the
same time, maybe Faster pussy Cat was around the same time.
I know things like Eyes without a Face, Peeping Tom,
like those that already come out, But of course they
are foreign films. They live by different rules and American films.

(43:41):
But it feels like this. It just feels television most
of the time. As far as just the level of tillation.
I think even about like John Gavin or Janet Lee
in Psycho and It's okay. Her with her bra on
is more tutilating to me than these ladies who were
taking off their clothes. I don't know. And you mentioned
who killed Teddy Bear, like you said that's a sleazy film.

(44:05):
I feel like that one was far more exploitative than this.
This feels so sanitized, even though we have him murdering
think multiple women.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
We didn't see the first seven, so that might have
been really bad. But when you mentioned Peepee Tom. It's
a good point because that is that's another very disturbing
film where he sympathized with his murderer, particularly once you
learned what had been done to him by his father,
and the same relationship where you see him seemingly reaching

(44:36):
out and at least somewhat having a chance to have
an actual interaction with the member of the opposite sex.
So those brief scenes when you know the strangler is
at the ring toss and we as the audience, know
he's attracted to the young woman, but he doesn't want
her to know, and he that's really very interesting.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
When he goes from zero to sixty with her so fast.
It's just oh, so, well, yeah, my mom's dead, so
I wanted to marry you. Whoa, hey, we haven't even
gone out one date here, Leo. Like cool your jets,
And I do like the framing of some of those
shots where there's the lattice work and they're looking at
each other through the lattice work and it's basically like, hey, Leo,

(45:23):
this is forbidden fruit. You're never going to be able
to cross this divide here.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
And when he wanted to give her his mother's ring,
ohing what he had done to his mother and his
mother's nurse.

Speaker 5 (45:34):
It's that is creepy, the whole part of you feeling
bad for him, even though you know right away that
he's a murderer. So that's tough enough to pull off
as it is, but I felt so bad from them, thinking,
come on, dude, before, when your mother was harping on you,

(45:56):
you would come to this place for a moment of
peace or try to capture a moment of real life
with a woman and someone who would be nice you.
She was being nice you just because you were a customer.
Maybe she thought, oh, you're really good at this and
thought that was somewhat interesting.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
But then, like you said, Mike, I almost had a
problem with that because.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
It seems so stupid that he didn't seem that detached.
Obviously he was a psychopath, but that doesn't mean that
you're you're clueless and he just you're right you talk
about you said it perfectly. He went from like zero
to sixty, and it was come on, that's no. How

(46:40):
could you think she's gonna say, oh, yes, let's get married.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
I was waiting for you to ask when she does
turn him down, it's interesting too. How quickly he then
goes to the threatening even beyond the stalk or okay,
now your days are numbered effected. So again it shows
the acting range that Bono had.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
I wanted to go back to that lie detector scene
one more time, just because I love the way that
is shot, and I really like the whole thing of
him being behind I guess it's one way glass and
the two cops are outside talking about him while he's
framed between them, and you've got the lamp kind of
connecting their heads almost, that whole scene of him there

(47:26):
with this kind of little grin on his face while
the two cops are outside just talking about what it
creep this guy is, and just that he has no
idea that they're talking about them, but I feel like
he has a feeling he knows they're watching, kind of
like Norman at the end of Psycho, they're always watching.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
That seems plausible. And of course he's been interrogated before too.

Speaker 5 (47:48):
Oh yeah, yeah, and he's wonderfully quietly contemptuous of them.
He's like poking them like I know it, you know it,
but you can't do foup it oval.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
And that's the best part of this movie. For me,
it is like when he is just kind of lording
it over them, Hey, you guys can't catch me at all.
I am just completely full of proof. I never leave
any proof at these crime scenes. And then, of course,
like you said, it's the doll that becomes is undoing
and kind of to jump to the end real quick
and we can come back a little bit later. But

(48:23):
when the girls says, oh, there's this real creep here
earlier and he was asking about this and talking about that,
and she's telling that to one of the detectives, I
was just like, oh, he's not gonna believe her now,
because that seems to be the thing with so many
movies where it's somebody's saying something, especially a woman, and
they're just like, okay, yeah, that's interesting, so all right,

(48:44):
i'll see you later. But this guy actually acts on it,
which is pretty remarkable.

Speaker 5 (48:50):
And one hand, she's not real concern. Then she is
real concerned, and she's just gonna leave town. But if
you didn't want to leave town, whatever the case is,
why would you leave her at all at that point
if you're that convinced that this guy, which by that time,
because doesn't he give that cop a description saying he's

(49:13):
this big guy, so they know it's him, the illustrator.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
He should get an a raise in all the prize
money from the drawing of Victor Bono that he does.
It's a remarkable likeness.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
So, like you said, Mike, yeah, so we'll just drop
you off.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
And because at first she doesn't even agree to the
lighter or do they sneak dead on her, I don't
read it.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
They drop it off in the apartment and then she
looks at it and she's like, I don't know what
this is, then throws it into the suitcase, then covers
it up.

Speaker 5 (49:44):
And yet, as you said, you could still hear everything, not.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
When it's covered up, but before that, you could hear anything.
Her tiptoeing across the floor, a mouse farts, it's all
being picked up on there. But you throw a couple
pairs of pants over it or whatever, and nobody's going
to ever hear it again.

Speaker 5 (50:03):
When I said, he was being quietly contemptuous, and he's acting, yeah,
you're not going to catch me. I never leave any
clues or anything behind. And I didn't know of really
much of anything about the Boston strangler case before.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
This, so I read a little bit about that.

Speaker 5 (50:21):
And again, because it's made in nineteen sixty four, obviously
they're not going to do this.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
But he doesn't sexually assault any of them.

Speaker 5 (50:31):
They don't even intimate that he does.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Oh that Bono does.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Right, that Bono does.

Speaker 5 (50:36):
I'm saying, And whereas we know the Boston strangler murders,
those women were sexually assaulted. That's another Obviously, again, whether
it was for the time that the movie was made,
but obviously that you're going to leave less clues behind
because even if there was no DNA evidence back then

(50:58):
that you could use site they didn't know how to
to recognize those things. Then at least you're still doing
last And all he does he comes up usually behind
these women, and by the time they see him, it's
too late. So all he has to do is just
strangle them and that's it. So he doesn't really have
to Now, they never tell you how he's able to

(51:21):
get in all of these apartments without he Again, he
doesn't look like Nuriev, so I don't know how did
he does he? Is he a professional locksmith or how
is he doing that? That part They never I don't
think they ever really tell you.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
That well, you think they might hear him creeping up
on him too, he was.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
I would assume in an old apartment, you might hear
when a three hundred pound guy is slowly come making
his way towards.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
You, probably panting. We saw him sweat. But getting back
to the Boston strangler case, so this movie was made
before there was anyone arrested. It came out and around
the time Dissolvo was arrested, and there's still ambiguities about that,
but I wonder if that is part of the exploitation.

(52:13):
We know there's this strangler going around, doesn't say it's
in Boston, but people would have been aware. And let's
get this movie out fast, and since nobody knows who's
doing it, we'll just create this mother obsessed, doll obsessed
fetish guy. And it reminded me is I think Mike

(52:33):
knows very well. There were a lot of similar movies
made before the Mansons were arrested. But we know these
horrible crimes happened, we don't know who did it, So
let's get some movies out there fast to capitalize on
us ultimably other crimes too of such nature. Wasn't the
TV movie for Kojak.

Speaker 5 (52:54):
The pilot film for Kojak wasn't that kind of a
reference to the Manson murder. I think it was called
the I think it was called The Marcus Nelson Murders.
It was a made for TV movie, came out like
in seventy four, seventy three or seventy four. Yeah, and
it was essentially a pilot because it had Tedy Savalles

(53:16):
in it, and it's pretty much I don't know if
he goes by the name of Kojak or not, but
it's absolutely the same character for all intents and purposes.
And that was, Yeah, that was if I remember correctly,
they walk in on this very grisly murder and it
makes you think of the Manson stuff.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Yes, the Marcus Nelson Murderers. Kojak TV pilot from March eighth,
nineteen seventy three, So you're on the money.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
My front.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Telly Savalas was Lieutenant THEO Kojack. I did not know
his first name was his brother in that one. Oh,
I wouldn't be surprised. He seemed to always get his
brother and stuff Stavros.

Speaker 5 (53:58):
If you watched the joh you knew his name was
THEO because Dan Fraser, who portrayed the Captain Frank. I
can't remember what Frank's last name was, but he always
called them THEO, so that's how you knew his first name.
But yeah, I remember that movie, and yeah, that's a
good point, Tim. I never even really thought of it.

(54:20):
But that's very much like Manson Manson.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Delise Winder of opportunity to get these movies in the theater,
at the drive ins or wherever before anybody really knows
who the actual murder is her were.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah, I kind of ruined it because I think DiSalvo
confessed in January of sixty four, and then this came out,
I want to say, April first, nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Yeah, I wonder that had the box office oull you
want to exploit that fear and it's peak interest.

Speaker 5 (54:55):
But then at the other hand, did they purposely because again,
from what I read about the Strangler Boston Strangler murders,
that's different from this. Now again, like you say, we
only see what four murders or three murders.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Three murders and then his mother.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
Yeah, so we see three murders.

Speaker 5 (55:17):
The nurse was an outlier, but the other two are
young women and you, and I believe they make you
think when they're when the cops are talking early on,
that it's all young women, whereas apparently the Strangler victims,
the real Boston Strangler victims, were not all young women.

(55:37):
They were women of all ages, going from twenties to eighties.
I believe there was one that was even eighty.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Something, all ages. And then also that he want to
say at least one of his victims was black, which
was very interesting because normally you kill within your own race.

Speaker 5 (55:54):
And obviously he didn't. He certainly didn't the victor or
Leo Kroll in this movie as Tim or you. Someone
mentioned earlier he worked with an African American woman and
he didn't hurt her, and he obviously must have seen
her on a daily basis.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
He probably knew enough, and he'll mess with her. She'll
take a headpin and stick. Yeah, she's tough. He's like
coffee here, she.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Had those razor blades in her hair.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
King George's girl found that out very quickly.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
I don't like coffee, but I'd like coffee. She'll cream you.
Imagining that mother obsessed killers. I emailed the two of
you earlier as just reminded of and No Way to
Treat a Lady from nineteen sixty eight, which you've got
Rod Steiger, even by his standards, overacting about somebody who

(56:48):
mother obsessed and killing older women, and then each time
he puts on an increasingly bad accent. But that George
Seagull is Rod Steiger doing a bad accent. It's hard
to believe. I know you got. But then George Siegel,
you see he's being handpacked by his mother and he's

(57:08):
the one going after this guy. So there's some odd
connections between the Strangler and No Way to Treat a Lada.
I'm sure what's it, ATel, but I.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
Think sixty eight was when the Tony Curtis Boston Strangler
movie came out, so they're still making obviously you mentioned earlier.
Wasn't there a more recent one? I think the latest
one was twenty twenty three, so they're still beating that horse.

Speaker 5 (57:33):
Well, I would just like to just a moment go
off on a small tangent, and that is Mike expressed
to us via the email that he might not be
the biggest Rod Steiger fan in the world. And it
struck me because when I was a younger, movie fan.

(57:55):
I was very reluctant to say anything negative about someone
who was supposed to be heralded. Is this great artist
of whatever, whether they were a director or writer, actor
or whatever. And then of course as I get older,
I certainly don't. I'm not encumbered by that fear anything.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
But it's interesting.

Speaker 5 (58:16):
I've never been crazy about Stuger either, but I never
really put a finger on and of course what it
is he is. He's from that Marlon Brando James Dean,
that tortured actor mold where every move they make it's

(58:38):
just feels like they're like they're cutting their wrists open
and bleeding out to get this performance. And whether you
want to call it scenery chewing or deep method, it
does take you out of stuff a little bit. You
didn't see that from Victor here. It was very natural
and very sensitive and it works very well well.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
To be fair to Rod Steiger, if you're talking about
creepy performances in The Loved One, what is it mister
joyboy with his mother? That is one of the most
scenes in movie history. I would say I haven't seen
The Loved One in years. I gotta see that movie again.

(59:22):
Be you don't eat after you see that scene or
why to Eat, it's a good appetite suppressort.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
I'll say that there are performances of his that I like.
I remember liking him as Reb Saunders and The Chosen
and the Pawn Broke or I don't remember that being
too shabby either, But yeah, you get some of these
performances where I talked about running the Ero the same
Fuller film and just the with Irish Southern accent that

(59:50):
he's doing in that one, or God, I love him
and the Specialist, the Celester stallone film where he's like.

Speaker 13 (01:00:00):
The Chief of Police twenty is going to work with
us on this problem, you know. I mean he was
a former employee of the Say and he is an
explosive sport and I think he can be a big out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Or the Sixth Day where he's like it's another world
out there, just scream into high oven. I'm like, yes,
this is fantastic. So he was great scenery chewing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
I was just going to say, you're enjoying him, I
think for the wrong read.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Yeah, yeah, it's very much more ironic. Yeah, bring him out,
let's see him go crazy. This will be great.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
I certainly like in the heat of the night. But
getting back to James B. See King, that was great
to see him. It had to be his earliest role
that I would presume. I think it was his first
credited role. Right, I was expecting to have a pipe
in his mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
He's one of the few people that isn't smoking in
this movie. So many people are lighting up, especially Bluono
in the lab, in the hospital, Bono in the police department.
Of course all the cops are smoking. But yeah, it
was remarkable to see just how much they were smoking
every place.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
I get anything perfectly plausible for those days. I'm sure
they were okay in the lab and even with highly
flammable chemicals around, and going in to see how the
mother is in her bed smoking right there.

Speaker 5 (01:01:26):
Bono was smoking a cigarette when he couldn't get his
hands on nylons to play with or a doll.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Yeah, a little bit of an oral fixation, exactly. I've
praised the whole thing with the eyeball at the beginning,
the way that they frame up him during the confession.
I also like that great cut when he's about to
throw that box at his mother's photo in the in
her bedroom when he finds out that he's killed her successfully,

(01:01:54):
and they cut from that from the picture to a
dart blowing up a balloon and we're back at the arcade.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
I thought that was really nice as a way to transition.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
I wondered when he destroyed his mother's room, it looked
like Charles Foster Kane Stroy was the wife's room. If
that was deliberate or just it was a homage to
that film or just coincidental. The way he moved and
was knocking things around it looked very Caine like.

Speaker 5 (01:02:24):
It's an excellent point. There's another person, Victor Buono could
have played Orson Wells. They certainly had the rat pack
connection in common.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
For what I understand, he actually was playing Falstaff in
some of these older characters when he was doing theater
before they said hey, come on to Hollywood things. He
was a great actor, and I just don't think that
he was ever really given any chance. And of course
we've talked about and we'll talk again in two weeks

(01:02:56):
when we discussed Who's Mind Me the Mint? But I'm
excited to see some more comedy from him because he
was such a great comedic actor. He had wonderful timing.
He was such a delight to see.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
As we talked last time, those two odd couple episodes
he's in, and of course they it's not only his
timing great, he just holds the screen as it were. Yeah,
when you do wonder what his Shakespearean performances would have

(01:03:27):
been like, because as you say, I think he was
discovered doing a San Diego San Diego is that the
Globe Theater? Yeah, and that's how he got into the industry.
So some people saw him and saw this guy, great actor.
But it's just the nature of the business, the limited
number of roles. But we've been saying there potentially were

(01:03:52):
roles that he could have played that even if they
were murderers creepy people, would have been a higher level.

Speaker 5 (01:04:01):
He could have gotten in and become a fixture in
that whole genre, like a Christopher Lee or a Vincent
Price or someone like that. As far as this comic,
and I just I have to make mention of it
because my life, whether I wanted it to be or not,
has been ensnarled with the rat Pack. But he does these,

(01:04:24):
he does He does four for Texas and Robin and
the Seven Hoods with Franken Dean both and then it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Was I found it interesting in this picture. The woman
who plays Tally her name, she's got like a doesn't
she have a male name?

Speaker 5 (01:04:44):
Yeah, Davey Davison is her name. When Tim and I
were watching rewatching, I was rewatching it, he was watching
it for the first time. But I'm like, why do
I know that girl?

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
Why do I know that girl? And then I looked
it up on IMDb.

Speaker 5 (01:05:00):
She was in one of the worst rat Pack movies,
which I know seems redundant, but she was in a
movie called Marriage on the Rocks in nineteen sixty seven
that was just Frank and Dean and Deborah Carr and
she plays Nancy Sinatra, who is playing Frank's daughter. In

(01:05:23):
the movie, she plays Nancy Sinatra's girlfriend who is interested
in Nancy Sinatra's father, French.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Your dad is Mike Cardio.

Speaker 5 (01:05:34):
Okay, really it's a horrible movie, but it just made
me think, oh, that's funny. Too bad Victor wasn't in
that one too, because we would have had a trifecta
for him with the Pack, but they apparently liked him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Speaking of the rat pe, but no better than I.
But I think he's in two Matt Helm films right now.
He is in quite a connection there. Yes, you're right,
he is in at least one, maybe two Matt Helm film. Well,
that's funny. He's a yellow phase. If I'm not mistaken,
I think you're right.

Speaker 5 (01:06:10):
Yeah, the character's name is to because I'm teaching this
course right now in Sammy Davis Junior. And people see
these old videos now of their antics on stage at
the Sands during the height of the rat pack era,
and they make all these jokes, and of course people
were offended by. They used to make the constant joke

(01:06:34):
where Dean would pick Sammy up and he'd say, I'd
like to thank the NAACP for this award. All these
things that people don't like now. But of course they
also used to allude to a lot of gay humor,
knocking out gay people. But what's really fascinating is everything

(01:06:57):
you read talks about how Dean Martin befriended Montgomery cliff
on that movie that that they made with with.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Brando Brando was in. It was Brando Clift and Dean Martin.
It was the war picture.

Speaker 5 (01:07:14):
Who's I'm blanking on the name of it now, But
they all said that he befriended Montgomery Cliff and was.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
Like really great to him.

Speaker 5 (01:07:24):
They've said the same thing about how much Sinatra loved
working with who's the guy in Manchurian Care candidate Lawrence Harvey,
Lawrence Harvey, Lawrence Harvey. And of course Dean loved apparently
loved Victor Buono. He loved dom dela There were just
a lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
People, Wait, Dom Delaize is gay.

Speaker 5 (01:07:46):
No, I didn't say that. All right, never mind, I
didn't say that. He came across that the way. That's
let's say that.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
There were other.

Speaker 5 (01:07:57):
People that that didn't seen that, Paul Wynn and Charles
Nelson Riley, who were both on his show A lot
the wait.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Wait, Charles Nelson Riley was gay?

Speaker 5 (01:08:08):
Come on here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Liberaci was gay.

Speaker 5 (01:08:13):
But about Rip Taylor, No, wait a minute, Liberati wasn't gay.
He was a matinee idol for women in the fifties.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
They like, yeah, there was a lawsuit all about that.
I don't think he would help.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
He was absolutely who lived with his mother probably, and
he loved his brother George. I wish his brother George
were here right now.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
It took me so long to figure out that joke.
When bugs Buddy says that when he sits down at
the piano, I'm like, what what is this?

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
I wish my brother George was here.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
At the very end when he gets shot out the window.
We don't find out whether he actually killed his victims.
Why when I went back to see that, it's left open.
Because he does move so quickly when he strangles him,
you would think we'd see her. Oh, thank goodness, she

(01:09:08):
came just in time. Yeah, the move.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
This movie ends so darn quickly, it just wraps up.
I was almost hoping for Simon Oakland to show up
and explain this case a little bit more too.

Speaker 5 (01:09:20):
Yeah, I thought it was odd that it ended so abruptly.
It really made no sense. It was like, like Tim said,
we were He and I looked at each other. Okay,
is that it? You're just stopping it there? It seems
to every guy's we're talking about how it's like a
TV detective show. Let's get a little epilogue here, man, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
There was no she should have rushed into one of
the detective's arms. Yeah, because you see her him strangling her.
But yeah, we don't get her a shot of her
at all, and yeah, she could really be dead, And
so I didn't even think about that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
Well, I know how fast he moves when he strangles.
You got to give him that much. But whether that
was deliberate or whether it was just bad filmmaking, I
don't know. But it's is that it. That's all, folks,
nothing more to see here, Move along.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
It's funny. We talked last week about Feud and that
whole Ryan Murphy's series. But I want to say that
there was an homage to the Boston Strangler in one
of those American Horror stories, because he did those right.
Wasn't that where Ryan Murphy really made his bones? Yeah,
because I want to say, and I watched part of

(01:10:33):
the first season of American Horror Story, really liked the
made character, the younger made version. And then I want
to say, I watch first episode of maybe the second season,
and what's that kid's name? He plays a creep. Really,
he was one of the two Quicksilvers in the Marvel universe.

(01:10:55):
I believe in the Fox Marvel universe. But I want
to say that there was an opening where it was
I want to say it was a bunch of nurses
sitting around, So I was like, Okay, is this kind
of mixing up the weeds of Ted Bundy and then
the nurses of DeSalvo.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
I couldn't find more about that. Oh yeah, Richard Speck
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
Yeah, it's disturbing just in general, how many of these
mass murders we know of, and also that, as we've
seen in recent years, Netflix and other places are just
revisiting the lives and crimes of these very disturbing people.

(01:11:38):
Maybe there's a reason for a remake of The Strangler.
The guy who played Victor Buono in Feud, maybe this
is an opening for him. If you loved him in Feud,
you'll love him in The Strangler too.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
This time it's personal, get dominic progress back on the phone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
and to find out a little bit more because like
you guys also looked into the Boston Strangler case a
little bit more as well, and this whole thing of
a lot of people saying that it wasn't really DeSalvo
that was the murderer for me growing up, but it
was always yes, we saw this case. Everything's good, but

(01:12:13):
it feels like the more time goes on, it's becoming
evident that he wasn't the murderer that or maybe there
might have been two murderers, but they're not really sure.
The whole thing of him switching from the older victims
to the younger victims was a.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
Very weird move.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
And then some of the things that DeSalvo was actually
up to seemed very similar to what the Boston strangler
was doing. But there's all of this theorizing around, Oh no,
it was actually the guy he was in lock up
with who was giving him all this information. But then
the cops are like, no, he was answering the questions,
like immediately, there was no thinking about things, no recalling things.

(01:12:52):
But yeah, I don't know what to think. But it's
a pretty fascinating case. And I can't believe it went
on for over a year. Once they it was almost
two years that he was terrorizing Boston. It must have
just been just horrible for women in the city at
that time, especially once they started to put these cases
together and realize that there was a serial murderer on

(01:13:13):
the loose.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
How long was Son of Sam? Was it just for
that summer? That one summer? I think it was. Yeah,
we've had sadly our fair share of such awful cases
here in the city of Rochester and their cities where
there's murderer, or maybe it was like the Hillside Stranglers
where they were cousins. Or it's sad that I even

(01:13:35):
know about.

Speaker 5 (01:13:36):
The Hillside Strangler was in LA but he was from Rochester, Chester, Yeah, exactly.
But we had God, I don't remember how old I was,
but boy, talk about being in the news for years.
There was a guy named Arthur Shawcross who killed I
think probably close to twenty women.

Speaker 6 (01:13:58):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
That was a terrible one too. And that's it now
that I think of it. I don't know if they
ever made.

Speaker 5 (01:14:04):
They usually Hollywood leaves no stone unturned, especially if it's
got a lot of discussing things under it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
They like to exploit it. But I don't know if
they ever made a movie about about it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
As soon as I started to type in the word
art it's at Arthur Shawcross, I was like, oh God,
you think I'm a serial killer group also known as
the Genesee River Killer.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
Okay, that's why I say, sadly, we've got more than
our fair share of such horrible cases. But also we
learned and who killed Teddy Bear that the Juliette Prowse
character was from Rochester.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Yeah, good detective work on that. I like how you're like,
she sounds like she's got a Rochester accent, and then
sends me a screen grab of her going well back
in Rochester.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
Well, some might say it's a South African accent, but
we'll he could quibble over that.

Speaker 5 (01:14:55):
Just let me say that I've lived in Rochester my
entire life, and I have never seen any woman that
looked like Julia Prous because I would have remembered her.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
Boy, Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Really thought she was from the UK. Apparently born in Mumbai, India.
So just so you know, nationality American, British, Indian, and
South African. But with the American it doesn't say in
parenthesis Rochester.

Speaker 3 (01:15:21):
Well, I guess Strangler is a good middle ground between
the two Aldrich films because all three of them are
don't Gothic or if you want to describe a dark,
disturbing films. And Otto and I agreed, we're glad that
we're ending with who is Minding the Mint with another

(01:15:41):
side of Victor Bono, the lighter side, if you will.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Well, speaking of let's go ahead and take a break
and play a preview for next week's show. Right after
these brief messages, bring Home the Smurfs Movie on digital now.
In this fun epic adventure, the Smurf's team up with
new friends on a daring rescue mission to see Papa
Smurf from a league of evil wizards. By the film,
critics are calling pure comedy, magic and get over. Thirty

(01:16:07):
five minutes of Smurftastic extras, including new music from Rihanna
and Moore, available at participating retailers. Rated PG from Paramount Pictures.

Speaker 7 (01:16:18):
Hush Hush, Sweet Shart, don't tell anyone what happened in
the summerhouse a good game.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
Hush hush, Sweet Sharlotte.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Don't tell anyone how sharp the edge of terror can be.

Speaker 12 (01:16:39):
Hush hush, Sweet Charlotte. Don't tell anyone what's wrapped in
that rug. Hush hush, Sweet Sharlett.

Speaker 4 (01:16:51):
Don't tell anyone what stands in the shadows at the
top of the stairs.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Hush hush, Sweet Charlotte. Charlotte, don't you cry. Hush hush,
Sweet Charlotte.

Speaker 14 (01:17:15):
I love you till I die. Hush hush, Sweet Charlotte,
Tilla die.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
That's right. We'll be back next week. What they look
at Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte. As Buono Palooza continues until then,
I want to thank my co host for this month,
Otto and Tim So Otto's keeping you business, sir.

Speaker 5 (01:17:51):
After I talked to you last week, I got my
index and everything in for my baseball book, so that's
all completed and that now I'm literally working on ideas
as to what I'm gonna right next.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Your subject is right here in front of your face,
Victor Buono.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
Yeah, Ganda, Ganda.

Speaker 5 (01:18:11):
As I've said to Tim all these years, there's just
not enough information out there about Buono. His star was
too brief, and there's not enough, as we've said many
I'll say it every day, not enough respect.

Speaker 3 (01:18:27):
For these character actors.

Speaker 5 (01:18:29):
Like we've already said, this guy was very talented, and
this was one of only two films that he got.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
A real starring role in, and neither of the films
were so another went out there. We stumbled on Big
Daddy or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
I think that's a missing film. I don't know if
that exists anyplace.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
I would find it. There's you know, the promo board
as it were, but almost like a parody see the
alligators the chopping people in the swamps.

Speaker 5 (01:19:03):
I think you're right, Mike, though I think I read
somewhere that that film is nowhere to be found now.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
Yeah, Big Daddy from nineteen sixty nine where he played
a Lincoln beau Regard, So I imagine it was probably
really chewing up the scenery, which I'm here for. Man,
give me anything more with Bono.

Speaker 5 (01:19:23):
But it had the wonderful Joan Blondell in it too,
didn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
And Tim, what about you? What have you been up
to so last we met.

Speaker 3 (01:19:30):
I've just been dealing with the extreme heat and I'm
sweating like the Strangler before he strangles someone. Five degrees
here and it's a little rough, but actually I'm insconsin
I air conditioned homes, so I can't really complain, just
trying to beat the heat.

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
Well, thank you so much guys for being on the show.
Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
of the other shows that I work on. They are
all available at weitingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to the
Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
helps the Projection Booth take over the world.

Speaker 9 (01:20:24):
Made you hear about the you know about about you
hear about there?

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
You won't restart thet.

Speaker 9 (01:20:40):
Don't don't go on the.

Speaker 15 (01:20:49):
Line of the morning.

Speaker 12 (01:20:51):
It's went the time to cop.

Speaker 9 (01:21:02):
Talking about the ninety the moon you ever seen? I
don't about them ninety.

Speaker 15 (01:21:12):
I can't to see you talking the gold Mosaide had said,
listen you hear mo do.

Speaker 9 (01:21:23):
You well talking about them? Not about a go to

(01:22:10):
my long should what I'm talking about? The man that
dam why you never seen the more.

Speaker 12 (01:23:41):
That I don't do that, don't do that, don't do that,
do that, don't do that?

Speaker 9 (01:24:33):
Well you heard about the bollster.

Speaker 12 (01:24:41):
It's not one of those.

Speaker 9 (01:24:45):
We're talking about about the one closed the bed dream.

Speaker 3 (01:24:57):
I'm called the f.

Speaker 16 (01:25:00):
An anger, the knight sharpened to potato. Just that truly
did the bell genuine.

Speaker 9 (01:25:21):
So i'd ever leave the med m I allow you
want you gonna say.

Speaker 17 (01:25:42):
A soul, I'm gonna smash yours.

Speaker 9 (01:25:59):
Well, no hold on?

Speaker 15 (01:26:01):
Could I miss you?

Speaker 18 (01:26:03):
Your teaching here at the midnight ra and evens.

Speaker 15 (01:26:29):
Other down to your master the night gamble to the
siml Man, my man night a call and if you
had a nash of man night, rather you mess up
my No, your Lord.

Speaker 3 (01:26:47):
I'm gonna heave somebody.

Speaker 9 (01:26:48):
You're cold fan danger.

Speaker 15 (01:26:50):
I think my n my down nor fro