Here's a word of warning to all those guys out there who are thinking of watching this film with a girl as a cheap ploy to scare her into snuggling up to you for comfort - this isn't the film for you. Within ten minutes you'll be accused of watching pornography and then (if you make it past this) you'll be called a sick freak for making her watch The Hillside Strangler.

This true-life crime drama tries to recreate and reconstruct events of cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who during 1977-1978, kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed ten women. However, unlike a lot of films that try to explain why they did this, this film is very vague indeed. Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell) is an intelligent man who has aspirations of joining the police force, but this is declined due to prior convictions. He goes to LA and moves in with his cousin Buono (Nicholas Turturro), a small time crook. Together they start up a pimping business for mainly old men (and by old, I mean old!) which ends when they are run out of business by the local pimp gang.

The two men set out for revenge, not against the gang, but the women who they attribute to the problem. After killing their first victim, they enjoy the thrill this gives them and it leads to the frequent seeking out and murdering of several girls, usually prostitutes and hitchhikers. The murders go on for a number of months, until Bianchi starts making mistakes and the police finally trace the murders to them.

This film is possibly the worst of any of this type - both characters seem 2D, with dialogue coming straight from the Dummy's Guide to Mafia-Talk and far too much swearing, which obscures the tone of the film. Because of the lack of a consistent tone, I am unsure at times if I'm meant to find these characters sympathetic, despicable or just plain idiotic. The acting is unconvincing, with Howell unable to make me hate, fear or pity him. This is in complete contrast to Carl Crew's performance of Dahmer in The Secret Life of Jeffrey Dahmer which heightened the whole film and made you feel pity for the man one minute and then utter disgust the next. The support cast don't do this at all. The girls they murder are the typical, dumb screamers and all seem to be adverts for silicon implants; only Lin Shaye as Buono's mother makes any kind of impact, although even this feels like a poor imitation of the scene from Goodfellas with Tommy's mother (played by Martin Scorsese's mother)

As a case that is fairly unknown, I thought I would be intrigued by the story and compelled to go away and research what I had just seen. In a way I was, to see how much was true and how much was not. With a little research it seems as though the filmmakers skipped over most of the story and actually ignored the really interesting part that occurred after the pair were captured. Told in the awful film Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders, it seems that Bianchi attempted to convince the police, and actually succeeded to some extent, that he had a split personality who actually did the killings instead of him. If this idea had been hinted at in the film (and having him smile manically at intervals doesn't count) then it may have been slightly more interesting. As it is, (almost like Freak Out) we are presented with two sick perverts who killed for no apparent reason other than the fact that they enjoyed it.

At just over ninety minutes, everything feels rushed - allowing more time to explain how they planned the killings, dumping the bodies, as well as how they went about their lives in-between the murders, would have helped. We also have no insight into how they were caught, and more importantly why it didn't happen sooner; the police just turn up at one point and arrest them. There is no look at this from the police's side, such as how they initially thought it was just one person (hence the singular title).

The DVD offers no features other than a few trailers, but in all honesty, this is a blessing; I don't think I could sit through a commentary with the director explaining a scene, or watch a featurette with the actors trying to justify what they were doing. Because of the obscure time jumping that occurs in the film, I have a feeling that deleted scenes do exist, but if this was all the good stuff kept for the final print then I can't imagine the rejected stuff is like! As for bloopers… I shudder to think!

The Hillside Strangler is almost what Wolf Creek would have been if it had been half as gory and had some closure. The fact that these events actually happened should scare me to the bones and the fact that they were both caught should fill me with relief. It doesn't. There is nothing to recommend on any level - even if you are a hardcore horror fan, you'll find little joy in this and very few real scares. Just like the Strangler's victims, this film should be choked to death and left on the side of the road.

Reviewed by David Simpson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).