According to The Hollywood Reporter, Brian De Palma is headed into murderous territory. He has signed on to direct The Boston Stranglers for Valhalla Motion Pictures, a movie all about the notorious 60's killing spree.The movie will be based on Susan Kelly's nonfiction book, The Boston Stranglers: The Public Conviction of Albert DeSalvo and the True Story of Eleven Shocking Murders. The movie will detail the famous murders, as well as their controversial resolution. Debate still centers on the guilt of Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to the murders, but never fit the profile. He was later murdered in prison.
Kelly's book is one of several to suggest there was more than one killer. Looking through Wikipedia, it seems there's a whole Jack the Ripper cult beginning to emerge around the murder cases. Everyone loves trying to piece together a gruesome tale, I suppose. Will they be inventing a fictional detective to center it on? It doesn't seem like there were any Abberlines or Paul Averys trying to untangle this spree, but I'm no expert.
De Palma is one of those directors everyone seems to passionately love or hate -- and he's suffered major bombs lately; most notably his last foray into true crime, The Black Dahlia. Somehow, I see this going the same way.
Yet I find myself still curious as to what has happened with his prequel to The Untouchables, and whether he will put it off again for this. I can never decide if I actually want to see that made or not.
1. I am a huge fan of DePalma's old work - Carrie is my favorite horror file. Scarface and Carlito's Way are two of the best crime movies out there. I even liked Femme Fatale. But after sitting through The Black Dahalia I had this odd feeling that film has passed Mr. DePalma by. Some say he steals tricks from other masters of film - Hitchcock being an example. But in Dahlia, he steals from HIMSELF.
I'm not saying he uses his old bag of tricks or anything, I'm suggesting that in that movie, he uses tricks that he has already used and it seems he is trying to pass it off as new. Maybe I'm crazy but it just felt like he has creatively run out of ideas. And that's a shame becuase there was a time where everything this guy made was awesome.
Posted at 12:49PM on Jun 4th 2008 by Mike D