The true story behind Netflix’s ‘Woman of the Hour’
In recent years, Netflix has found a winning formula: movies and series based on true crimes. From Mindhunter to Monsters, real-life murderers and criminals have scored high ratings for the streaming platform, and the higher-ups show no sign of altering their winning content strategy.
The most recent entry to this list is Woman of the Hour, the directorial debut of actor Anna Kendrick which launched to the top spot of the streamer shortly after arriving on October 18th. Though most widely known for her appearances in musicals like Pitch Perfect, The Last Five Years, and Into the Woods, Kendrick has already made a splash with this crime thriller, earning rave reviews as a director and star.
The film stars Kendrick as Sheryl Bradshaw, an out-of-work actor in the 1970s whose agent persuades her to go on the reality show The Dating Game. Daniel Zovatto plays Rodney Alcala, the contestant she chooses to go out with. He also happens to be a serial killer and rapist who is taking a quick hiatus from his murder spree to appear on the show.
With a nonlinear structure, Woman of the Hour allows the audience to see Alcala committing his crimes alongside his stint on the show. It also delves into the misogyny of the television world in the late 1970s. When every man that the protagonist meets is nonchalantly predatory, it’s far more difficult to recognize which might be a serial killer and which are just the standard creeps. Although Sheryl narrowly escapes Alcala after an increasingly unnerving date outside the show, the film shows multiple women who were not so lucky.
Whenever a wildly entertaining and outlandish story purports to be based on true events, it’s only natural to wonder exactly how much of it is accurate and how much of it is fictionalised for the sake of drama. Woman of the Hour is surprisingly accurate.
So, what’s the true story behind ‘Woman of the Hour’?
Sheryl Bradshaw was a real contestant on The Dating Game, but she ultimately turned down Alcala’s overtures when she found his behaviour “creepy.” When the show aired in 1978, Alcala had already murdered at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a child. By the time he was arrested in 1979, it was estimated that he had killed at least eight people, though there is speculation that there were more victims.
Though all serial killers are, by definition, sadistic, Alcala was known for being particularly vicious, torturing, raping, and photographing his victims before killing them. As is depicted in the show, he was arrested following an assault on a young hitchhiker in 1979, and, as the final credits explain, was quickly released on bail. He murdered two more victims following his arrest, including a 12-year-old, before being put back behind bars for life.
When Alcala was finally linked to the murders, he became known as the ‘Dating Game Killer’.