Adam Williams is a serial killer. Edward Binns is the police lieutenant trying to figure out who he is.
It's an intelligent, well-written script by Bill Raynor which tries to seriously explain the phenomenon. Earlier, it seems to me, serial killers were considered maniacs, and little more, like Peter Lorre in M or the unseen Jack the Ripper in versions of Mrs. Lowndes' THE LODGER. There was an almost supernatural quality about them. They could hide in plain sight and strangle anyone, anywhere, leaving a corpse, a baffled constabulary, and a terrified city. Here, we ar given reasons why Williams kills; and the reason he can vanish so effectively is that 1: he is not an idiot; 2: he looks mildly pathetic, but not so you'd be interested in looking at him and 3: it's a big city. The only way to find him is through a plodding routine while hoping you find him before he kills again.
It's that plodding routine that Binns and his cops go through that make this less than thrilling. I can the classic editing technique of hunter and hunted, alternating between the cops and Williams. The problem is they are all so slow and methodical and what's at risk is another random victim; even at the end, there's no real sense of tension. It's all so plodding that I found myself bored, despite the strident score provided by Herschel Burke Gilbert. There's no drama in Joseph Biroc's camerawork. There's not even much character for anyone to care about. It's a shame, really, because that script is so intelligent that something might have been made of it, but Arnold Laven was the director to do so. It's still an interesting movie, but never in a way that strikes the heart.
It's an intelligent, well-written script by Bill Raynor which tries to seriously explain the phenomenon. Earlier, it seems to me, serial killers were considered maniacs, and little more, like Peter Lorre in M or the unseen Jack the Ripper in versions of Mrs. Lowndes' THE LODGER. There was an almost supernatural quality about them. They could hide in plain sight and strangle anyone, anywhere, leaving a corpse, a baffled constabulary, and a terrified city. Here, we ar given reasons why Williams kills; and the reason he can vanish so effectively is that 1: he is not an idiot; 2: he looks mildly pathetic, but not so you'd be interested in looking at him and 3: it's a big city. The only way to find him is through a plodding routine while hoping you find him before he kills again.
It's that plodding routine that Binns and his cops go through that make this less than thrilling. I can the classic editing technique of hunter and hunted, alternating between the cops and Williams. The problem is they are all so slow and methodical and what's at risk is another random victim; even at the end, there's no real sense of tension. It's all so plodding that I found myself bored, despite the strident score provided by Herschel Burke Gilbert. There's no drama in Joseph Biroc's camerawork. There's not even much character for anyone to care about. It's a shame, really, because that script is so intelligent that something might have been made of it, but Arnold Laven was the director to do so. It's still an interesting movie, but never in a way that strikes the heart.