L’Étrangleur aka The Strangler
Beautiful and weird, Paul Vecchiali’s 1970 serial-killer thriller The Strangler (originally L’Étrangleur) is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy mixed with Vecchiali’s humid take on queer sexuality. And on top of that it sends a string of women to their graves as if doing them a favour. A very very odd movie. Vecchiali only died in 2023, aged 92, and was making movies to the end having started in 1961. Along the way he also happened to produce Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, currently number-one film in Sight and Sound’s prestigious poll, but he also wrote, acted and edited and occasionally composed the music for his films too. … Read more