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"The Alphabet Killer," a low-budget thriller also starring Dushku, takes more than one wrong turn along the way, but Western New York audiences may have a certain morbid fascination with a movie inspired by serial killings in Rochester and featuring wintry landscapes, rundown neighborhoods and dark taverns that look a lot like Buffalo. (It gets rated an extra half-star for the local connection.)
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THE ALPHABET KILLER
Three stars
STARRING: Eliza Dushku, Carey Elwes and Timothy
Hutton DIRECTOR: Rob Schmidt
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes
RATING: R for violence, adult themes, partial nudity.
THE LOWDOWN: A homicide investigator is ravaged by schizophrenia as she tries to find a serial killer. Based on serial killings in Rochester.
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The strong cast includes Carey Elwes and Timothy Hutton, with cameos by Martin Donovan and Melissa Leo. The movie was filmed with hand-held cameras in and around Rochester. (A police station was set up in an abandoned Kodak plant, and a critical scene was shot near the High Falls of the Genesee River.)
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle notes that the murders of three young girls between 1971 and '73 were dubbed the "double initial" murders because the victims had matching initials of first and last names, and their bodies were found in towns that begin with the same letter: Carmen Colon, 11, was found in Churchville; Wanda Walkowicz, 11, was found in Webster; Michelle Maenza, 10, was found in Macedon. (The victims' names were changed for this movie, although the same initials were used.)
In a commentary on the DVD sent to critics, screenwriter Tom Malloy -- who plays a police detective -- notes that he learned about the murders from his wife, who grew up in Rochester, and he based much of the story on interviews with a homicide investigator who worked on the case, which has never been solved.
As the movie begins, there's plaintive cello music as a young girl is shown getting into a car, then running across a highway and through a wooded area screaming for her life.
The terrifying beginning sets the tone for what would seem to promise a solid police procedural in the vein of "Zodiac" perhaps. But the script opts not to concentrate on the victims but rather on the homicide investigator, played by Dushku, and her mental breakdown into the ravages of adult-onset schizophrenia, for, as Malloy puts it "A Beautiful Mind" meets the "Zodiac."
Dushku does a credible job as investigator Megan Paige, although the script does not convincingly portray her initial breakdown as she obsesses over the first murdered girl and starts to hallucinate visions of the girl's corpse in advancing stages of decay.
Malloy notes there's no payoff for the audience in not finding out the identity of the killer. So he makes things more interesting, plotwise, by loading the film with actors who have played killers in other films. This adds to the sinister atmosphere and the adrenaline rush when the killer is finally unmasked, a scene that will strike some moviegoers as terrifying and others as unintentionally hilarious. Among those creepy faces are Tom Noonan, a killer from "Manhunter," who plays Megan's police captain boss; Michael Ironside as an uncooperative police officer from another jurisdiction; and Bill Moseley from Rob Zombie films "Devil's Rejects" and "House of 1,000 Corpses." (Some may remember that Carey Elwes, who plays Megan's cop-boyfriend and is clearly not a suspect here, played a serial killer in "Kiss the Girls.") The creepiest face of all may belong to unknown actor Rocco Sisto, who shows up near the end in a scene filmed at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Rochester.
As Dushku dissolves into insanity, this opens the possibility that the entire second half of the movie, including her identification of the killer, is all in her head, although Malloy declares that was not his intention.
Malloy notes that homicide investigators did uncover late in the day a link between the victims that may or may not point to the killer. He includes a plea for anyone who knows anything to come forward, on the remote chance that the killer might still be alive 35 years later.
jwestmoore@buffnews.com
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