I hesitate to mention that this movie was reportedly inspired by the real-life Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper murders because this is actually quite different from the "serial killer biopics" that are so popular today. On one hand, this is kind of one those low-rent crime dramas inspired by "Dirty Harry" (which was itself loosely based on the real-life Zodiac Killer). It is set in the suburbs of San Francisco, not far from where "Dirty Harry" takes place, and the focus is mostly on the two cops investigating the murders. The movie also mines the then-popular "sexy female hitchhiker" movies as pretty much all the victims are young females with tight shorts and loose morals.
In a particular absurdity though, the killer's main hunting ground is a single community swimming pool. This would not only seem to make him very easy to catch, but you would think he'd run out of victims pretty fast since people would STOP GOING SWIMMING AT THAT PARTICULAR POOL. But from a purely exploitation standpoint, of course, the pool locale provides for plenty of scenes of nubile girls in bikinis. The murders are pretty effective, at least while the killer remains a shadowy figure in a sinister yellow van. At one point, he picks up two girls hitchhiking back to the pool (where their mother had dropped off) from their boyfriends' house. One minute the two girls smoking dope in the front seat of the van with the unseen killer and the next minute one of the girls is tied up in the back watching as her friend gets brutally raped. After the killer comes out of the shadows though and turns out to be a short, pudgy John Karlen (from the Euro-fave horror flick "Daughters of Darkness"), the movie becomes significantly less scary.
The movie has some interesting, very 70's touches. The main detective is married (to a woman who's surprisingly understanding when the killer at one point dumps a body on their lawn), yet he's carrying on with a female professor of criminology, who hatches a crackpot scheme to catch the killer using herself as bait. The other detective (Martin Speer, who many may recognize as Dee Wallace's husband in "The Hills Have Eyes") is single, but quite a swinger himself. In one scene he is seriously rebuffed by a female colleague, but in the next scene he is in bed with her (only in the 70's--or, at least, only in the movies of the 70's). The cynical ending is also very 70's. And that, perhaps, is the best reason to see this today--it really captures the flavor of the era (think a kind of downbeat "Starsky and Hutch" with graphic violence and nudity). Not recommended for serious serial killer buffs, but a good movie for 70's crime thriller fans.
