The serial killer who starred in “The Dating Game.”

It's an infamous freak moment on daytime television. On September 13, 1978, one of the three competing bachelors on “The Dating Game” was Rodney Alcala, who turned out to be a serial killer; He was captured the following year. (He was convicted of five murders, but is believed to have committed up to 130 murders.) It is no joke – or perhaps even a sensible joke – to say that Alcala has the looks and personality of a woman murderer from the 1970s. He was coiffed like one of the Hudson Brothers and had a chiseled grin reminiscent of Engelbert Humperdinck. He practically exuded good vibes – along with some half-suppressed bad ones, and answered his “Dating Game” questions in a way so confident it was…aggressive.

Of course, television has never been much cheesier than “The Dating Game.” I used to watch it as a kid and marvel at how the entire show, with its Herb Albert on happiness pills theme music and flower power decor, was a kind of leering, grinning affectation that No made a big effort to close hide. (It was the first show I had seen around (The sleaze culture of Los Angeles.) I always thought that the most anxious moment of each week was when the chosen bachelor emerged from behind the barrier and, after giving the bachelorette the ritual polite kiss, the two stood with arms around each other around while Aviator Fashion host Jim Lang described what to expect on her date (usually it was something like “Because you're going to… Tuscon, Arizona! on a paid weekend!”). “), as if they were already a couple.

You could say that “The Dating Game” was the “Bachelorette” of its time. And the fact that a serial killer from the Ted Bundy school (outwardly “normal” and presentable, who uses his good looks to attract the women he would rape and murder) once ended up in the middle of it all is suddenly mind-boggling. Dropping a piece of television history, an event both ridiculous and horrifying, and a giant metaphor that says: For women living in the age of the sexual revolution, this was it dating game was a far more dangerous thing than it looked.

Woman of the Hour is Anna Kendrick's true-life thriller about Rodney Alcala and this bizarre, unique-to-America social-cultural-criminal episode. Kendrick directed the film (her first foray behind the camera) from a script by Ian McDonald, and she also stars in the film as Cheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring actress who excels at auditioning for low-budget films -Films, when her agent attracts her to becoming a bachelorette on “The Dating Game”. Cheryl thinks the show is trash (and it is), but she's going to give her a chance to be “seen.”

As director, Kendrick jumps back in time through the 1970s and stages a series of Rodney Alcala's attacks and murders. Alcala is played by Daniel Zovatto, who knows how to convey the sincerity of soft rock, but then his eyebrows lower and the smile melts away, leaving behind a quietly simmering anger. Rodney, with long hair and a leather jacket, is a photographer, and that is his bohemian reputation – and his murderous act. This was a time when men with cameras and an artistic eye promised to turn women into stars. Rodney, who likes his victims young (sometimes underage), gets them to pose, which encourages them to let their guard down, and then he proceeds to kill. These scenes are effective in their impact, even if they are not staged with the same complex allure as 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 directed with a kind of perverse verve, although I felt like Kendrick spent too many moments trying to communicate what she wanted to say. She takes Rodney Alcala's metaphor in “The Dating Game” and writes it in italics. She makes it clear that the show is a meat grinder, from the double entendres used to attack the bachelorette onscreen to the grossly hostile off-screen persona 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 cuddler she seemed to be on the show – that's how women are supposed to behave – but as a knowing, almost defiant one Figure that won't be anyone's sex toy.

As Cheryl, who asks her pre-written questions and eventually one of her own (“What are girls for?”), Kendrick is such a good actress that she completely captivates you. But as a filmmaker, she turns the tables by restaging “The Dating Game” in an almost postmodern way. What “Woman of the Hour” strives for is not the ultimate authenticity of a period piece. It's about deconstructing television and the male aggression that can lead to violence, and showing you how the two work together.

In the audience sits a woman named Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who gets a shiver down her spine when she sees that Alcala is Bachelor #3 because she was friends with one of his victims; She tried to go to the police but to no avail. (This reflects what happened: a lot of tips to the police about Alcala, which he somehow dodged.) This is the weakest part of the film, however, because the drama is simultaneously too sketchy and too in-your-face.

The strongest part of the film happens right after the show, when Rodney convinces Cheryl to join him for a “date” (drinks at a bar) before their official date in Caramel, California. Their duel of wits is awkward and, when it arrives in 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 and outwitted by a victim who knows how to exploit his vanity. But when “Woman of the Hour” captures a random moment when American violence shines through the façade of American television, the film doesn't resonate much because it assumes all of its meaning for you.