It’s a notoriously bizarre moment on daytime television. On September 13, 1978, Rodney Alcala was one of three competing bachelors on ‘The Dating Game’ who turned out to be a serial killer; he was captured the following year. (He was convicted of five murders, though it is believed he committed as many as 130.) It’s no joke—or perhaps it is a meaningful one—to say that Alcala had the look and personality of a ladykiller from the seventies. He was coiffed like one of the Hudson Brothers, with a sculpted grin reminiscent of Engelbert Humperdinck. He practically radiated good vibes — along with some half-submerged bad ones, answering his “Dating Game” questions in a way that was so confident it was…aggressive.

Of course, TV has never gotten much more kitschy than “The Dating Game.” As a kid, I used to watch it and marvel at how the entire show, with its Herb Albert-on-happy-pills theme music and flower-power set, was a kind of leering, grinning set-up that failed to impress. great effort to hide it. (It was the first show I had seen and it seemed that way about the sleaze culture of Los Angeles.) I always thought the cringiest moment every week was when the chosen bachelor came out from behind the barrier, and after giving the bachelorette that ritual polite kiss, the two stood there, with their arms around each other. around each other, as aviator-framed host Jim Lang described what awaited them on their date (usually it would be something along the lines of “Because you’re going on an expense-free weekend to…Tuscon, Arizona!”) , as if they were al a few.

You could say that “The Dating Game” was the “Bachelorette” of its time. And the fact that a serial killer of the Ted Bundy school (outwardly ‘normal’ and presentable, who played on his good looks to lure the women he would rape and murder) ever ended up in the middle of it is an immediate blow to the jaw. dropping a piece of TV history, an event that is both ridiculous and horrifying, and a giant metaphor that said: for women who lived in the era of the sexual revolution, the dating game was much more dangerous than it seemed.

“Woman of the Hour” is Anna Kendrick’s true-life thriller about Rodney Alcala and this bizarre, socio-cultural-criminal episode that only occurs in America. Kendrick directed the film (her first effort behind the camera), working from a script by Ian McDonald, and she also stars in it as Cheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring actress who especially stands out at low-budget film auditions when her agent hooks her hits. to become single in ‘The Dating Game’. Cheryl thinks the show is rubbish (and it is), but it gives her a chance to be ‘seen’.

As director, Kendrick jumps back in time through the 1970s, staging a number of Rodney Alcala pick-ups and murders. Alcala is played by Daniel Zovatto, who manages to play the sincerity of soft rocks, but then his eyebrows will lower and the smile will melt away, leaving you with a silent smoldering anger. Rodney, with long hair and a leather jacket, is a photographer, and that is his bohemian cred – and his murderous drive. This was a time when men with cameras and an artistic eye promised to turn women into stars. Rodney, finding his victims young (sometimes underage), makes them pose, which encourages them to let down their guard, and that’s when he goes to commit the murder. These scenes are effective to the extent that they are, though they’re not staged with the kind of complex fascination that was present in “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” the Ted Bundy drama starring Zac Efron.

The heart of the film is the “Dating Game” episode, which is performed with a kind of kinky enthusiasm, although I felt like Kendrick spends too many moments telegraphing what she wants to say. She takes Rodney Alcala’s metaphor in “The Dating Game” and puts it in italics. She makes it clear that the show is a meat grinder, from the on-screen double entenders attacking the Bachelorette to the grossly hostile off-screen personality of the host (Tony Hale), here called Ed Burke. And I think it’s telling that Kendrick chooses to play Cheryl, not as the flirtatious cuddly toy she seemed to be on the show — which was how the women were supposed to behave — but as a knowing, almost defiant figure who was not for anyone the sex toy will be. .

As Cheryl, who asks her standard questions, and finally one of her own (“What are girls for?”), Kendrick is such a good actor that she holds you completely. But as a filmmaker, she turns the tables on ‘The Dating Game’ by re-staging it in an almost postmodern way. What ‘Woman of the Hour’ is going for is not the ultimate authenticity of that era. It attempts to deconstruct television, along with the male aggression that can lead to violence, and show you how the two work together.

There’s a woman in the audience named Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who gets a chill when she sees that Alcala is single #3, because she was friends with one of his victims; she tried to go to the police, but to no avail. (That reflects what happened: a large number of tips to the police about Alcala, which he somehow evaded.) This is the weakest part of the film, however, because the drama is simultaneously too sketchy and too sharp.

The strongest part of the film takes place just after the show, when Rodney convinces Cheryl to go with him for a “date” (drinks at a dive bar) before their official date in Caramel, California. Their duel of wits is sickening and, by the time it gets to a parking lot, scary. In real life, Cheryl and Rodney never went on their ‘Dating Game’ date because she thought there was something wrong with him. And it’s satisfying to see Alcala caught at the end of the film, outsmarted by a victim who knows how to play on his vanity. But if “Woman of the Hour” captures a serendipitous moment when American violence peeked through the facade of packaged American television, the film doesn’t have much resonance because it makes all its meaning for you.