The unconventional 1970 French Giallo The Strangler has been restored and given a first-ever US theatrical release by Altered Innocence.
The Strangler Details and Trailer
A French Giallo released before the sub-genre’s popularity boom resulting from filmmakers like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, The Strangler centers on Émile (Jacques Perrin, The Young Girls of Rochefort), a handsome young man targeting women he believes are too depressed to go on living. The late Paul Vecchiali directed the film.
The Strangler opened at Anthology Film Archives in New York on November 15, 2023, and is expanding on November 17, 2023, to Los Angeles, Austin, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and more. You can view the complete list of venues at the link here.
Following these select limited theatrical screenings across North America, Altered Innocence will release The Strangler on digital and home video.
As multiple women fall to Émile’s suffocating white scarf, inspector Simon Dangret, the detective assigned to track down the killer, resorts to seriously unorthodox and even unethical methods to get his man with the assistance of Anna, a beautiful woman who believes herself to be a potential victim.
Initially a selection of the 23rd Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight section, The Strangler has been praised as a “complex, melancholic meditation on isolation as well as a portrait of collective hysteria” by the New York Film Festival, where it recently screened in the Revivals section. The film equally subverts and indulges in the Giallo conventions with unexpected beauty and refinement.
Director Paul Vecchiali has been hailed as an “icon of a rebellious, reflexive, and emotionally excessive cinema” by Le Monde and celebrated for his prolific filmography and decades-spanning career as a critic, director, and producer.
