Night of the Strangler (1972)

I'd like to say that Night of the Strangler (1972) was the movie where ex-Monkee Mickey Dolenz played a mad strangler.  But the truth is that there is no strangler in this movie - despite the title, nobody gets strangled.  But Mickey Dolenz does co-star in it.  Quite what moved him to appear a low budget, misleadingly titled, exploitation film we'll probably never know, (he wasn't even the first choice for his role - he was only cast after the original actor was fired early on) - perhaps he still traumatised by the break up of 'The Monkees'.  Nevertheless, he's the closest thing to a star that Night of the Strangler can muster, the rest of the cast padded out with exploitation regulars and unknowns.  To be fair, none of them are horrendously bad and Dolenz is, at least, very energetic in his role, but none of their performances is particularly distinguished, either.  Frequently lumped in with the 'Blaxploitation' genre, Night of the Strangler does indeed try to exploit the theme of racial tension - rather crudely, in fact.  Dolenz plays the younger of two New Orleans brothers whose sister returns from New York to tell them that she's pregnant by a black man, who she intends to marry.  The older brother, a high powered lawyer and dyed-in-the-wool racist, goes ballistic, making all kinds of threats.  After the sister returns to New York, her boyfriend is shot dead by an assassin.  She loses the child and returns to New Orleans, only to be herself murdered by a mysterious figure.  Meanwhile, a young black priest, who knows the brothers, has returned to New Orleans after some time away and is assigned by the church to officiate at the older brother's wedding to Dolenz's former girlfriend, (another sign of just how big a bastard he is).  Naturally, confrontations result at the wedding, first between the two brothers, then a racially charged confrontation between the older brother and the priest.  After this, a string of murders occur, targeting the brothers and those close to them.

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that the priest is behind it all - he isn't really the priest, but his identical twin, the real priest having been the one who knocked up the sister and was subsequently killed.  (The producers were clearly trying for maximum shock value here by breaking as many taboos at once as possible: a white girl knocked up not just by any black man, but one who was a Catholic priest, to boot!).  While the plot is serviceable, it unfolds very slowly, with long stretches of talky exposition scenes between the murders effectively dissipating any tension, let alone suspense.  In fact, the film is very rough hewn, with scrappy production values, grainy photography that never quite seems to know what it is meant to be focusing on in any particular scene and very clunky dialogue.  The script meanders all over the place, with a number of sub-plots brought in to little effect.  While it might be argued that the whole business involving the older brother firing the black gardener served a purpose in further establishing the brother as a racist, his liberal use of the N-word and reaction to his sister's relationship with a black man, had pretty much already established that.  It also, briefly, provides a red-herring suspect for the murders, but even this is ineffective, as the first murder pre-dates the gardener's firing and therefore his motive.  The sub-plot is clearly there simply to pad out the running time.  The film isn't a complete loss: some of the musical score is quite enjoyable, (interestingly, the opening credits lists a song which is never actually heard in the film as released), some of the murders are suitably bizarre - a snake in a bunch of flowers and crossbow-type trap concealed in a car dashboard, for instance - and some of the cop scenes are reasonably well done, with some good interplay between the main, multi racial, pair of detectives.  Moreover, the plot is quite ingenious in the way it sets up various of the protagonists to kill each other, without the real killer - who has instigated the situations - being implicated.

The title, however, remains a mystery.  In fact, Night of The Strangler was released under a number of different titles, in an apparent attempt to appeal to different sections of the exploitation audience.  Dirty Dan and Dirt Dan's Women (Dan being the name of the older brother) were doubtless designed for the sexploitation audience, while Is the Father Black Enough? was designed to play on the theme of racial tension for the 'Blaxploitation' demographic and Vengeance is Mine was for those looking for violent crime orientated exploitation.  A lot of the film's marketing, though, focused on the theme of racial violence - "A racist wind blows the dust from a black man’s grave to choke the honkies to death.”, runs the most infamous advertising slogan.  Which might seem laughable now, but back in 1972 would have seemed pretty provocative.  The film, however, simply can't live up to such slogans being, in reality, a pretty straightforward revenge thriller with a fashionable racial aspect bolted on so as to appeal to the most popular exploitation genre of the time.