SKETCHES OF A STRANGLER (1978)
Article 5091 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-26-2019
Directed by Paul Leder
Featuring Allen Garfield, Meredith MacRea, Frank Whiteman
Country: USA
What it is: Psycho killer

An artist living with his sister is a serial killer who strangles prostitutes. When the sister of one of his victims arrives in town, she decides to catch the killer on her own by… oh, no, not again!

It seems only a short time ago that I complained about this tiresome and stupid plot contrivance, but here it is again – the sister of a murder victim tries to catch the killer by putting herself in the exact same position as her sister did, and in this case, that means she takes up prostitution in an attempt to catch him. I’ve reached the point where I almost stop taking the movie seriously at this point alone. Granted, even without this plot contrivance, there’s not a lot that could save this movie; even the fact that the acting is quite good doesn’t compensate for the fact that there’s not a plot element here that I haven’t seen before, and the turgid pacing of the movie is another minus. This is one of the dreariest stretches of celluloid I’ve encountered in quite a while.