This low budget effort with Victor Buono ought to be some sort of cult classic but somehow has fallen off the radar. While not quite a proto-slasher, the film's protagonist has several of the tropes that distinguish the genre: psycho-sexual disfunction with an Oedipal basis; social awkwardness/sexual frustration with the opposite sex, and a kinky fetish, this time out for carnival-prize dolls. No blood or gore (that's why the film is called "The Strangler" instead of "The Slasher"), but there is an approach to the sexual element of what Buono's character does that must have been daring at the time: Buono's climaxing as he undresses one of the dolls he won at the arcade is no less shocking for the fact that we only see his reaction in close up from the neck up. There's also a police procedural element that gives the hint of a giallo, although the film hardly suggests that genre in style or design. An intriguing character study of a disturbed individual operating in broad daylight that deserves a bigger audience than it has.
Review of The Strangler
