This story contains references to assault and significant spoilers for the film Woman of Hour. Woman of Hour is the latest film to continue the trend of true crime films to focus on the stories of the victims rather than the perpetrators or the authorities. The film is the directorial debut of Anna Kendrick, who brings to haunting life the true story, stranger than fiction, of a serial killer who went unnoticed enough to appear on the reality TV show “The Dating Game” in 1978, and whose victims were ignored.

Streaming on Netflix on October 18, 2024, this creepy thriller set in the 1970s focuses primarily on a woman (Kendrick) who appeared on a dating reality show and ultimately chose a man (Daniel Zovatto) called the “Dating Game Killer” (Kendrick played by Kendrick), focuses on the fiction of the show. But the film's tight one-and-a-half hour running time also includes the misfortunes of several women killed by a serial killer named Rodney Alcala and how he was caught.

Directed by Kendrick and written by Ian MacDonald, this serial killer film is largely based on fact, but the details are fictional.

Rodney Alcala is a real-life serial killer and rapist who is believed to have murdered over 100 people, although he is confirmed to have murdered seven women and girls and sexually assaulted two girls across three states throughout the 1970s. Throughout his murders, he evaded law enforcement and was not convicted of many of his crimes until 2010.

According to his biography, Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala-Bucall in San Antonio in 1943 and spent part of his childhood in Mexico before moving to L.A. He is also known as “The Woman of the Hour. In Woman of the Hour, Alcala recounts various details about himself, including that before he viciously assaulted and murdered his victim, he had graduated from New York University, studied under film director Roman Polanski, and had plans to work at a summer camp. These details were drawn somewhat from his real life. In fact, he received an art degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1968, living under the pseudonym John Berger, and took classes at New York University, including classes with Polanski, but did not graduate, according to his biography.

The summer camp crap is also inspired by reality. Alcala's first victim was an 8-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro, whom he raped and beat with an iron rod in 1968. After the attack, he moved east and in 1971 began working as a counselor at a summer camp in New Hampshire under a false name, even though he was on the FBI's wanted list at the time. Several campers there recognized him, leading to his arrest. A first-time offender, he pleaded guilty to child molestation and served only 34 months in prison before being paroled in 1974. Shortly after his release, he was caught with a 13-year-old girl for marijuana possession and returned to prison until 1977.

Upon her release in 1977, she took a job with the Los Angeles Times despite her criminal record as a sex offender. In Woman of the Hour, he is portrayed as working there as a photographer, but in reality he was a typesetter. The scene in which his co-workers say the police want to question him was also inspired by actual events, although it was adapted. He could have been brought in as a suspect in the Hillside Strangers case but was released, unaware that the officers were talking to another dangerous criminal.

His criminal record also went unnoticed in The Dating Game. Because the producers did not do a background check, he appeared on the show in 1978 and won after showing playfulness in his responses; according to PEOPLE magazine, the charisma and conventional good looks he displayed on the show, in addition to the fact that he told them he was a professional fashion photographer, helped him lure victims off the show. The magazine said that it helped to

Just one year after his appearance in The Dating Game, Alcala was arrested and sentenced to death in 1980 for the murder of a 12-year-old girl, Robin Samsaw; between 1971 and 1979, he brutally raped and murdered several women in New York, Wyoming and California. Among them was Cornelia Michael Crilly (played by Katherine Gallagher), a flight attendant who moved into a New York apartment similar to the one depicted in Kendrick's film. Alcala appealed his conviction in 1984 and was retried in 1986, resulting in another conviction, which was overturned on technical grounds in 2001. Since then, and again at his re-trial in 2010, more DNA evidence and the release of photographs taken by him have implicated him in many other murders and assaults.

Alcala, who was sentenced to death, died of natural causes in prison in 2021 at the age of 77.

Alcala was arrested and jailed following the murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsaw in Huntington Beach, California. According to his bio, he kidnapped a girl who was riding her bicycle to ballet class, and her body was found a few days later in Angeles National Forest. When police prepared a sketch of a potential suspect, a probation officer in Alcala recognized his likeness when he saw it, and authorities launched an investigation that led to his arrest after finding a pair of Samsaw earrings in his storage locker.

Alternatively, “Woman of the Hour” portrays a teenage runaway named Amy (played by Autumn Best) as the survivor who led to Alcala's arrest; according to Slate, this character was picked up hitchhiking by Alcala in 1979, photographed She is modeled on Monique Hoyt, a real-life 15-year-old woman who was picked up, photographed, and raped in Alcalá in 1979. As depicted in the film, she fled, saying she wanted to further her relationship with Alcala and keep what happened a secret. In the end, the authorities were not able to apprehend the perpetrators. Although her report was instrumental in the arrest of the perpetrators, it was not until 2010 that she was able to testify (from “ABC News”).

In addition to the horrific scale of the Alcala murders, he became famous for his appearance on The Dating Game, a dating show that began airing in 1965. In Woman of the Hour, the show's mid-century set was recreated in an L.A. studio, with Tony Hale playing a Jim Lang-inspired host named Ed Burke.

Kendrick also plays a fictionalized version of Sheryl Bradshaw in the film; as reported by Slate magazine, except for how she was portrayed in The Dating Game, little is actually Not much is known about her. A former masseuse with “a wealth of experience” and a theater teacher based in Phoenix, Arizona, the Netflix film rather spices up her characterization by setting her up as a struggling actress who was encouraged to go on the show for exposure.

Bradshaw's interactions with the bachelors were also exaggerated in the film. The film's screenwriter told Netflix's Tudum that Cheryl's going off script was inspired by another episode of “The Dating Game” that she watched for research. 'I saw it on ...... There was a woman asking a question in an obviously contentious manner,” McDonald said.

“She was trying to pick a fight with the moderator, and she saw the show as sexist, and she really disapproved of it, and she was making that disapproval clear by her question.”

In the actual episode, as reported by Variety, the host introduced Alcala as “a successful photographer who was discovered by his father when he was 13 years old, fully developed in a darkroom. Bradshaw asked him a few questions. He said, “They call me a banana. After she replied, he added, “Strip me.”

However, as in the movie, Bradshaw expressed concern once she met Alcala and did not want to run the prize with him (an amusement park pass and tennis lessons, not a trip to Carmel). Ellen Metzger, the show's contestant coordinator, later told ABC News about how Bradshaw confided in her. She said, 'Ellen, I can't go out with this person. Ellen, I can't date this person. He's so weird. I don't feel comfortable with him. Is that going to be a problem? Metzger recalled. Of course, I said no.”

Therefore, the two did not go out for drinks after the shoot, as they did for Woman of the Hour.

In “Woman of the Hour,” a woman in the audience of “The Dating Game” (played by Nicolette Robinson) instantly recognized Alcala, remembered him as the man who raped and murdered her friend without being caught, and felt uncomfortable in his presence. During the filming of the show, she sat up and attempted to speak to the security guard about her concerns, demanding to speak to the producer, only to be completely ignored and ridiculed.

Although this did not actually happen, Kendrick and McDonald inserted a fictional composite character named Laura to represent other women who tried to come forward and were ignored. In an interview with Netflix's Tudum, Kendrick opened up about the thinking behind the decision, saying, “Laura really serves as a sort of representative of all the people who tried to sound the alarm and were ignored. ...... There are so many heroes in this story, but the heroes were outnumbered by a culture of incompetence, neglect, and not putting victims first,” he said.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault or harassment and is seeking help, visit RAINN.org.