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We’re pleased to exclusively announce that Altered Innocence has acquired the restoration of the critically lauded queer film By Hook or by Crook ahead of its world premiere restoration screening at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on December 5, 2024. Altered Innocence has exclusively acquired all North American rights, with a planned theatrical release in Spring 2025.

By Hook or by Crook marks the feature film debut of three iconic queer filmmakers: film & TV director Silas Howard; author, visual artist and Guggenheim fellow Harry Dodge; and Emmy nominated producer Steak House.

The film’s new restoration will world premiere on Thursday, December 5th, 2024 at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures as part of their upcoming series Present Past: A Celebration of Film Preservation. Pioneering musician and writer Kathleen Hannah will moderate a post-screening discussion with the filmmakers.

The film has been digitally restored by the Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive...

Despite being a celebrated selection of the Cannes Film Festival, Paul Vecchiali’s 1970 arthouse giallo The Strangler was never released stateside. Thanks to a new 2k restoration by Altered Innocence, the psychosexual thriller finally gets a proper release a half-century later. Not only does The Strangler offer a stylized character portrait centered around a killer, but the restoration finally carves out its earned space in Giallo‘s history.

Emile seems like a nice guy. He’s handsome, loves his dog, and spends time at home crocheting scarves. Appearances are deceiving, of course; Emile uses said scarf to stalk and strangle lonely women whom he deems too depressed to go on living. As the death toll of mercy killings mounts, detective Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) finds himself resorting to unconventional, extreme measures to track the killer. That happens to include the assistance of the beautiful Anna (Eva Simonet), a woman who...

A gorgeously discordant pairing of image and sound depicts the killer of women Émile (Jacques Perrin) as he stalks his prey in the late writer/director Paul Vecchiali’s distinctly autumnal “The Strangler” — or “L’Étrangleur.” He pursues them from a distance, a sinister but jazzy interlude sometimes underscoring his menacing shadow-like presence.

The 1970 French arthouse giallo didn’t receive a release in the United States upon its premiere a half-century ago, despite being celebrated at Cannes. Distributor Altered Innocence brings the winking, melodramatic psychosexual thriller — anchored in the intersection of four strangers’ warring amoral main character syndromes amid Émile’s gendered murder spree — to American audiences this fall. This comes after showing at Austin’s Fantastic Fest and the New York Film Festival in September. It is restored with the help of Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (Cnc).

Vecchiali died earlier this year at the age...

Paul Vecchiali’s moody, labyrinthine The Strangler suggests the visual style of Jacques Demy’s Model Shop coupled with the psychosexual fervor of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it’s a queer version of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï by way of the story machinations of Claude Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders. Either way, it’s clear that Vecchiali’s interests are cinephilic in nature, and that this 1970 psychological thriller was his self-conscious attempt during the waning years of the Nouvelle Vague to take the movement’s genre-defying sensibilities in a new direction.

Throughout, Vecchiali is concerned less with plot than with mood and setting, which he largely establishes by showing people moving around colorful apartments and through the bustling streets of Paris. Take Anna (Eva Simonet), who rushes to a television station fearing for her safety after Simon (Julien Guiomar...

One of the standouts in a stellar lineup of Revivals at the 61st New York Film Festival earlier this month was Paul Vecchiali’s haunting, captivating portrait of alienation The Strangler. The new 2K restoration of the 1970 French arthouse giallo will now be getting a much-deserved wider release from Altered Innocence and for the occasion the new trailer and poster have arrived. With a series dedicated to the French filmmaker underway at Metrograph, a release of The Strangler will kick off at Anthology Film Archives starting November 15, then expand to Los Angeles, Austin, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and beyond.

Here’s the synopsis: “An unconventional French giallo released before the sub-genre’s popularity boom resulting from filmmakers like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, The Strangler centers on Émile, a handsome young man targeting women he believes are too depressed to go on living. As multiple women fall to Émile’s suffocating white scarf,...

The underseen French giallo film “The Strangler,” from 1970, never saw a release in the United States. That’s until this year, when the psychosexual chiller — about a young man targeting women he believes are too depressed to go on living — played the New York Film Festival and Fantastic Fest in all its restored glory. French director Paul Vecchiali died this year before he could finally see a stateside release, but Altered Innocence will now open “The Strangler” this November. IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer for the re-release this year.

Initially a selection of the 23rd Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight section, “The Strangler” stars Jacques Perrin (“The Young Girls of Rochefort“) as serial killer Emile. As multiple women fall to Emile’s suffocating white scarf, inspector Simon Dangret, the detective assigned to track him down, resorts to seriously unorthodox and even unethical methods to get his man with the assistance of Anna,...

While it’s understandable that many’s most-anticipated films at a festival are also some of the biggest titles of the season––evidenced by the instant sell-outs of the latest from Hayao Miyazaki, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sofia Coppola, Andrew Haigh, Jonathan Glazer, and more at the 61st New York Film Festival––one of the true joys of the experience is seeing work one may never find again. For this year’s edition of Film at Lincoln Center’s annual celebration of world cinema, we’ve gathered eight recommendations that currently don’t have U.S. distribution. While we imagine news will be announced soon for some of these selections, a release might not occur until next year, so be sure to catch them if you can.

We should also make a special note for Revivals, NYFF’s lineup of restorations, which features Paul Vecchiali’s haunting, captivating portrait of alienation The Strangler...

Altered Innocence has acquired distribution rights for a new 2K restoration of the late French director Paul Vecchiali’s 1972 giallo “The Strangler” (“L’Étrangleur”).

The company will release the film in the United States for the first time this fall following screenings at the Austin genre event Fantastic Fest and the New York Film Festival. The restoration will then have a VOD and physical media release. The National Centre of Cinematography and Animated Pictures (Cnc) in France assisted in the restoration of “The Strangler.”

The film follows a murderer named Émile (Jacques Perrin) who targets women he believes are too depressed to keep living. Inspector Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) goes to great lengths, both unusual and unethical, to catch Emile. He is assisted by a woman named Anna (Eva Simonet) who is a potential target of the killer. The New York Film Festival describes the film as a “complex, melancholic...

Following Main Slate and Spotlight, the 61st New York Film Festival has unveiled its Revivals lineup, featuring new restorations of classic and overlooked films. Highlights include Manoel de Oliveira’s Abraham’s Valley, Jean Renoir‘s The Woman on the Beach, Bahram Beyzaie’s The Stranger and the Fog, Abel Gance’s La Roue, Paul Vecchiali’s The Strangler, Lee Grant’s Tell Me a Riddle, Nancy Savoca’s Household Saints, Horace Ové’s Pressure, and more.

“This year’s edition of Revivals is a thrilling showcase of cinema history, packed with groundbreaking discoveries and long unseen classics alike, all in outstanding restorations,” said Florence Almozini, Senior Director of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center and NYFF Revivals Programmer. “We never cease to be amazed at the lasting influence of these cinematic gems on our collective sense of cinema, with the way they have tackled cultural, societal, or political issues with such modernity and artistry.

Fantastic Fest is back for its eighteenth edition which is jam-packed with horror insanity including World Premieres of several prominent titles including the remake of Troma’s cult classic The Toxic Avenger, the Bloody Disgusting-produced Shudder Original V/H/S/85, Blumhouse and Amazon’s Totally Killer, and Paramount’s hotly anticipated Pet Sematary: Bloodlines.

The festival will once again possess Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX from September 21st – 28th. Badges are available now at FantasticFest.com.

From the press release:

The opening night film for Fantastic Fest 2023 is the world premiere of Legendary Pictures’ The Toxic Avenger, a hilarious and action-packed reimagining of the classic Troma film from director Macon Blair that features an all-star cast including Peter Dinklage who will pick up the infamous mop to become the hideous vigilante that no one knew they needed (or wanted) as well as Jacob Tremblay and Taylour Paige with Elijah Wood and Kevin Bacon.

The story of the infamous serial-killer case nicknamed the Boston Strangler involved 13 sexual assaults and murders in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. Officially, 12 of them have never been solved. The 13th, decades later, was proven through DNA techniques to be the chief suspect, and self-confessed “Boston Strangler” Albert DeSalvo. He was famously represented by F. Lee Bailey, who later would write a book about the case.

Related Story ‘Boston Strangler’ Trailer: Keira Knightley Leads 20th’s True-Crime Thriller For Hulu Related Story Demi Lovato Making Directorial Debut With 'Child Star' Documentary at Hulu Related Story Criminologist Docuseries 'The Lesson Is Murder' Set At Hulu From ABC News Studios The Boston Strangler, 1968 20th Century Fox

The fact that there were, and still are, so many questions about it all did not deter Hollywood and others from exploiting the case to various degrees — most famously in the 1968 20th Century Fox...

Why was Owen locked in a storage unit?

That was the big question on Criminal Minds Season 13 Episode 21 when Reif discovered the former agent. 

Watch Criminal Minds Season 13 Episode 21 Online

However, the team struggled to get on board with the tall tale he told of his search for an UnSub named "The Strangler."

With limited leads, they were forced to investigate and learned that something was off with Owen's account of what was really going on. 

Use the video above to watch Criminal Minds online right here via TV Fanatic. 

View Slideshow: 15 Characters Who are Born Fixers

Get caught up with all the latest twists and turns for the characters right now. ...

Lock your doors! Hulking menace Victor Buono gets the full-on psycho treatment, based (very) roughly on early reports of The Boston Strangler. The 'baby doll' killer also prefigures the fiendish Richard Speck. Burt Topper's film is routine but ex- Baby Jane star Victor Buono's performance is decidedly not. The Strangler DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1964 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Street Date November 10, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Victor Buono, Diane Sayer, Davey Davison, Jeanne Bates, Ellen Corby, Mimi Dillard, Selette Cole, David McLean, Baynes Barron, Michael Ryan, Russ Bender, Wally Campo, Byron Morrow, John Yates, James Sikking, Robert Cranford. Cinematography Jacques R. Marquette Film Editor Robert S. Eisen Original Music Martin Skiles Written by Bill S. Ballinger Produced by Samuel Bischoff, David Diamond Directed by Burt Topper

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The old-time independent producer Edward Small gravitated to United Artists in the 1950s, while his counterpart...

Miscasting in films has always been a problem. A producer hires an actor thinking that he or she is perfect for a movie role only to find the opposite is true. Other times a star is hired for his box office draw but ruins an otherwise good movie because he looks completely out of place.

There have been many humdinger miscastings. You only have to laugh at John Wayne’s Genghis Khan (with Mongol moustache and gun-belt) in The Conqueror (1956), giggle at Marlon Brando’s woeful upper class twang as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and cringe at Dick Van Dyke’s misbegotten cockney accent in Mary Poppins (1964). But as hilarious as these miscastings are, producers at the time didn’t think the same way, until after the event. At least they add a bit of camp value to a mediocre or downright awful movie.

In rare cases,...

Robert Gary worked in films and television as a script supervisor from the 1950s onward. He worked on most of the Star Trek television series during his career, including the original series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager.

Gary was born in Illinois in 1920. He was an aspiring actor before taking a job as a script supervisor on John Ford’s 1956 western classic The Searchers. He also served as script supervisor for the films The Magic Sword (1962), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), The Strangler (1964), Hush… Hush… Sweet Charlotte (1964), and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). He also worked frequently in television on such shows as Perry Mason, The Outer Limits, and Highway to Heaven.

Gary died in Los Angeles on May 3, 2010 at age 90.