One of the more bizarre moments in American true crime history took place in 1978: Still actively murdering women and men across America before his eventual arrest, one of the most notorious serial killers ever, Rodney Alcala, was successfully featured as a contestant on The Dating Game. Using the alias “Bachelor No. 3”, Alcala successfully impressed bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw enough in a date to earn himself a trip to Carmel, California. However, after the show, talking to Alcala, Bradshaw changed her mind or probably just got curious. Even though he was good looking, friendly, and could make a great guest on TV she felt there was something wrong with him; a feeling that made her act wisely.
Woman of the Hour, directed by Anna Kendrick in her feature debut, is more than just a serial killer thriller or a retro spectacle of 1970s kitsch and irony. It’s a deep dive into the strange intersection of psychopathy and pop culture. While Alcala himself used art (photography) as a tool to lure and murder his victims, the film highlights that he wasn’t unique in his ability to exploit both his artistic interests and a fragile ego that easily turned to rage when rejected. It wasn’t just about Alcala; it was about a society that enabled predators like him to operate unchecked.
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Translating by Ian Macdonald from the original, Kendrick introduces Alcala as a mere figure of evil; The author gives us a brief look at several crimes in the space of 8 years, from 1971 to 1978. In Wyoming a pregnant woman named Sarah (Kelly Jakle) is strangled while Alcala photographs her in a isolated area of the countryside.
He then proceeds to cover her mouth with his mouth in an attempt to Pump on her face then he sexually assults her. Alcala’s first confirmed murder in New York: in December 1971, a stewardess named Charlie (played by Kathryn Gallagher), who moved into the apartment next to Alcala’s, invites him to help her carry some furniture; she is based on Cornelia Crilley, who investigators believe was Alcala’s first New York victim.
Amy, a runaway teenager that turned prostitute in Los Angeles (Autumn Best), is also lucky to make it alive after accepting an offer to be taken to the desert for a shoot. Just as the real-life Monique Hoyt will, she will find herself in luck at a country gasoline advertising apparatus.
1970s Pop Culture Meets Psychopathy: Woman of the Hour Explores Rodney Alcala’s Dark Legacy
Between those disturbing scenes, which, by the way, serve as a perfect illustration of director Paul Thomas’ skills, Kendrick’s switch to the role of Bradshaw lets the audience see what a woman of the 1970s had to go through every day on screen. A beginning actor attempting to enter show business she has grown accustomed to having men talk about the physical characteristics of other women while she is auditioning for a part. She does not want to lay naked but that she is fine with as one of the interviewers points towards her bust.
A creepily intrusive neighbor (Pete Holmes) constantly appears in her space and interferes with her life; when he gets offended after Bradshaw saw him brushing her cheek, she sleeps with him because she did not know how to reject him properly.
It was the kind of film performance, delivered by an Oscar-nominated actor, that has always suggested that she was the kind of screen performer who thrives in close-up where individual changes of expression and blink, or barely perceptible shift of the eyes, can indicate her registering the atmosphere of the room, as much as processing the words of dialogue. As you can observe Bradshaw has to contort herself just to make certain that no man will feel hurt or have the impression that they are somehow lacking in some way. If not, they may become moody or in other words ‘get on your black’. Or worse.
Bradshaw looks none too thrilled when her agent informs her she’s secured her client a television appearance and it’s a game show. But hey, it’s work, and a woman doesn’t want to offend anyone. All she has to do, as per the buttery-smooth blowhard of a host (Tony Hale, very much enjoying himself) is not be brainy in front of an audience. Intelligence – you know, that thing which is still frightening to guys so much? Additionally, he writes, change your dress. Loosen up your clothes a little, honey, let me see the figure you have on.
Picking up from where they presented the two paths of the woman of the hour and the killer on the road, the movie now doubles them for a date with fate. And like Bradshaw — who is inspired by the female facilitators of The Dating Game show to fuck that domestication of that shameless shrew nonsense — Woman of the Hour isn’t afraid to get it right. This is perhaps a testament to Alcala’s booby-trap characterization because there is no time when he does not appear both conniving and terrifying – all under the guise of charming responses and innocuous conversation, which leaves you with a feeling that the noose just got that little bit tighter.
While Bradshaw begins to ad-lib and fully piss off Bachelor No. 1 and the lecherous Bachelor No. 2, there is the threat that lies beneath the leering and the lascivious behavior. All of it pays off in two sequences that take place after the broadcast wraps: post-show small talk over drinks set in a tike bar where the audience sees Bradshaw slowly grappling with the fact that there is a self-serving man beneath the façade; an evening where the girl is walking back to her car and the boy doesn’t let her drive away.
But Alcala is only the most obvious extreme of something else, something that appears to be everyday, everywhere, but is in fact lurking even beneath the banal. Just before Woman of the Hour starts, there is a guest character portrayed by Nicolette Robinson, attending the shoot with her boyfriend. As soon as she sees Bachelor No. 3, she freaks out as she knows him. Rather she calms herself up and asks to talk with the producer of The Dating Game, and eventually becomes an object of ridicule. Any additional police investigations provide no results.
As far as both lead characters are concerned, do your fucking job, she screams at the hapless cop — it’s the second time in the film we’ve seen the degeneration of living in a man, man, man, man, man’s world into unbridled female anger.
The movie lets the audience be disgusted by the murder scenes and have a satisfaction that we are better people than those Seventies fellows being portrayed as chauvinists. But the much more mundane depictions of women receiving disrespect, being undermined, treated politely but condescendingly, sexualized, and simply erased – seem more sinister. Sexism was not part of the culture when this extraordinarily productive serial killer went for nearly a decade undetected by police. Sexism was the culture. Now we are not so sure that using past tense is appropriate here we should be using.