Before there was Love Island, there was the Dating Game, a game show where—in the original incarnation that ran from 1965 to 1973—a wholesomely attractive “bachelorette” would choose her favorite from three unseen (by her) polyester-suited bachelors by means of saucy-ish questions laden with clunky double-entendres provided by the producers. Then they, along with a chaperone, would be sent off on a (hopefully romantic) vacation.

A 1978 episode became retroactively notorious when it emerged that one of the bachelors, a “successful photographer” named Rodney Alcala, had appeared on the show even after serving two terms for “molesting” (the only charge the DA could prove) two girls under 13, including an 8-year-old whom he had raped and beaten. Also, unbeknownst to the police at the time, Alcala had raped and murdered five women in the months before the broadcast. Nevertheless, like numerous psychopaths, he appeared charming and intelligent on the surface, and Dating Game contestant Cheryl Bradshaw picked him as her date.

This disturbing episode has already been the subject of one film. Now, Woman of the Hour, the directorial debut of Anna Kendrick (who also stars), tackles it again. Her post- #MeToo take focuses on how law enforcement missteps, primarily due to not taking allegations seriously and not pursuing leads doggedly, repeatedly allowed Alcala to slip through the net and strike again—to the point where it is now thought he may have killed over 100 women and girls. Kendrick creates a chilling sense of fear and foreboding while largely only suggesting the sexual violence, and she always allows Alcala’s victims to retain their humanity and dignity. We look at what’s fact and what’s fiction in this true crime story. (This article contains spoilers.)

Was Cheryl Bradshaw an Aspiring Actress?

In the film, Sheryl Bradshaw (fictionalized with an S) is a serious actress who has done stage work in New York and moved out to Los Angeles to try to get into movies. But her reluctance to agree to nudity and her inclination to be cerebral rather than sexy tends to limit her casting opportunities. She is making plans to move back to New York when her agent calls to say she’s lined up a spot for Sheryl on the Dating Game, which will “get her seen.” After her episode leads nowhere, she packs up and moves back to New York.

In reality, little is known about Bradshaw. On the Dating Game episode, she’s introduced as a woman “with a wealth of experience” who once earned a living as a foot masseuse. She then says she is currently a drama teacher based in Phoenix. There is no record of her having been an actress in either New York or L.A. A Cheryl Bradshaw who was a communications teacher at a community college in Avondale, Arizona died in 2004, but it is not clear it’s the same person as the game show contestant.

Did Cheryl Bradshaw Refuse to Go Out With Alcala After Choosing Him?

Impressed by his answers that seem to respect her as a person, Sheryl chooses Bachelor No. 3, Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto). He waits for her after the show and takes her for a drink at a tiki bar, but she becomes uncomfortable when he insists on ordering another round even though she’s already declined (fortunately she conveys this silently to the waitress, who tells them the bar is closed). And she’s even more put off when he starts following her to her car after realizing she’s given him a fake phone number. She then tells the show’s contestant liaison that she doesn’t want to go on the date with Rodney and leaves L.A. shortly thereafter.

This is largely true. It is unlikely she went for a drink with Alcala immediately after the taping, but Bradshaw was unsettled by him, saying to the show’s contestant coordinator, Ellen Metzger, “There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem?” as Metzger told ABC News’ 20/20. The production team, Metzger recalled, was fine with Bradshaw not following through on the date. (It also must be said that rather than the trip to upscale Carmel offered as the romantic getaway prize in the film, the actual reward the show offered was a trip to the distinctly less lush Magic Mountain theme park.)

Did “Bachelor No. 2” Really Warn Bradshaw About Alcala?

The movie depicts Bachelor No. 2, Jed Mills, as good-looking but smarmy, convinced he’s a player of the “treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen” variety. Naturally, he and Rodney get into an off-mic competition as to who Sheryl will pick. “I always get the girl,” Rodney asserts. At the end of the show, as the losing contestants give Sheryl a peck on the cheek, Bachelor No. 2 whispers a warning about her chosen date to her.

It’s not known if Mills whispered a warning to Bradshaw, but he later said he had serious misgivings about Alcala, describing him to 20/20 as “creepy. Definitely creepy” and recalling that Alcala did indeed say “I always get my girl” in the green room. He also told CNN in March 2010 that he had an instinctive antipathy to Alcala, recalling that there was “Something about him, I could not be near him.” He also described Alcala as a “very strange guy” with “bizarre opinions.”

Did a Teenage Runaway Finally Get Alcala Arrested?

Rodney, who always has an expensive viewfinder camera around his neck, entices a teenage runaway into his car by telling her he is a model scout and showing her fashion photos of other women he claims to have discovered. However, the girl is not a total naïf, but a survivor—we’ve seen her break into a laundry machine for the coins, and she quizzes Rodney forensically before getting into his car. As they drive toward the desert, Rodney tries to get her to let her guard down by asking questions about her family, but she turns the tables by doing the same to him. Despite this bonding, as she poses with her back to him facing the setting sun, he knocks her to the ground.

When she wakes up the next morning, she is covered in abrasions and bruises and her pants are around her ankles. When Rodney asks if he was too rough, she says she likes it that way but asks him not to tell anyone what happened in case people judge her. She also suggests they go back to his place and continue. Lulled into a false sense of security, Rodney does not kill her, as he has his other victims, but drives her back towards L.A. While he is using the facilities at a gas station, she slips away unnoticed and heads towards a diner. Rodney emerges to the sound of police sirens and is handcuffed as the runaway watches with calm satisfaction. A title at the end informs us that her testimony at Rodney’s trial was a major factor in convicting him.

It is true that in 1979, Alcala picked up a 15-year-old runaway who he raped and nearly strangled (Alcala’s m.o., as shown in the film, was to nearly strangle his victims, resuscitate them, and then rape and torture them). This was Monique Hoyt, whom Alcala picked up hitchhiking. After he raped her, she did manage to escape his clutches by convincing him she wanted to continue the relationship, and was then able to raise the alarm. However, although the police attended, unfortunately they did not arrive in time to arrest Alcala. Hoyt did testify, but not until 2010, at a trial to determine whether Alcala should get the death penalty for the rape-murder of four woman and a 12-year-old girl. He had previously been assigned to Death Row for these crimes but had the penalty overturned on technicalities. Far from being remarkably collected right after her attack, even 31 years later, Hoyt was so unnerved by the prospect of seeing Alcala again she needed an LAPD detective to sit with her in the courtroom and told the jury that Alcala had ruined her life.

Did Alcala Work as a photographer for the Los Angeles Times?

In the film, about a year after his Dating Game appearance, Rodney tells a new, naive copyboy at the Los Angeles Times that he’s a photographer at the paper, and when the boy is on the editorial floor, he sees Rodney regaling a group of male co-workers with tales of the access his fashion work gets him to women, as they ogle the photos of scantily-clad girls Rodney has spread out on a table. The police arrive looking to question Rodney, but he wins them over. Rodney’s co-workers gossip about him, some with admiration, some with trepidation.

Alcala did work at the L.A. Times in 1979, but as a typesetter, not a photographer. He was frequently hired as a wedding photographer by customers who were as ignorant of his record as a registered sex offender as the Dating Game producers. Kendrick’s choice to play Alcala is considerably more dour and dumpy than the original, who was handsome and by all accounts charming. She may have done this to avoid glamorizing a serial killer, but the real Alcala’s good looks go some way to explaining how he got so many women to pose for him, while the filmic one’s appeal is more inexplicable.

Did Alcala Really Study Filmmaking with Roman Polanski?

It’s 1971 in New York and a young woman is renovating a loft-like apartment. After her movers dump her furniture on the street because she hasn’t paid to have them bring it upstairs, she notices Rodney taking photographs of her plight from across the street. She asks him if he’ll help bring the furniture up. With her things moved in, she offers Rodney a beer to express her appreciation, and they start talking about contemporary films, discovering they both have a taste for arthouse cinema, which he discusses with some authority. He tells her he attended NYU, where he took a film class taught by Roman Polanski. Charmed by his intelligence and sophistication, she lets her guard down, whereupon he pounces and strangles her with a scarf.

Alcala’s second known victim was a 23-year-old flight attendant for TWA named Cornelia Crilley, who he strangled with a stocking (not a scarf). She had just moved into her apartment. Under the name “John Berger,” he did attend NYU (having previously graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from UCLA), where he did take a film course taught by Polanski. Alcala’s obsessive need to take photographs, and particularly photographs of his victims before, during, and after their rapes and murders, recalls the photographer in Powell and Pressburger’s Peeping Tom, who creates a tripod with a dagger in one of the legs so he can film his victims’ death agonies. This was a film he might have seen in the NYU class.

Was a Victim’s Friend in the Dating Game Audience, and Did She Recognize the Killer?

In the film, a woman in the show audience has a panic attack and flees after recognizing Rodney as the man who had approached her and her friend on a beach the day before her friend was found raped and murdered. She tells a security guard she urgently needs to speak to the show’s producer, whereupon the guard tells her to wait in an office and the producer will be with her shortly. Naturally, no one turns up except, eventually, a custodian. She then tries to make a report to the police but they are similarly dismissive.

Kendrick herself told Rolling Stone that this character is a composite, meant to represent all the people who tried to report Alcala over the years and were ignored and all the leads that were allowed to go cold. The Crilley case, for example, went cold and stayed cold for 40 years. After that murder, Alcala left New York and got a job as a counselor at an arts camp for girls. He was only picked up by the police because two campers saw his photo on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list on a visit to the local post office. California police wanted to charge him with murdering an 8-year-old girl, Tali Shapiro, after beating and raping her with a metal bar, but her family had left the country. With no main witness, prosecutors had to offer Alcala a deal if he pled guilty to the lesser charge of child molestation. The judge gave Alcala a sentence of a mere one-year-to-life, and he was paroled and back on the street after only 34 months.