Woman of the Hour

A fictionalized drama based on the true story of Sheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring actress, and Rodney Alcala, a serial killer, who cross paths in 1970s Los Angeles on an episode of The Dating Game.

In 1977, Rodney Alcala photographs a woman on the plains of Wyoming. After he gets her to open up about a recent painful breakup, he strangles her unconscious, revives her, and then strangles her to death. In 1971, a woman is moving into a new apartment in New York City. She sees Rodney Alcala across the street, taking some photographs, and asks him to help her move some furniture into the apartment. After helping her, Rodney kills her.

In 1978, Sheryl Bradshaw is a struggling actress in Los Angeles when her agent urges her to appear on television as a contestant on The Dating Game, saying it might lead to her big break. Sheryl reluctantly agrees, and as the shows starts, with the three bachelors hidden from Sheryl's view behind a partition, Bachelor #3 is revealed to be Rodney.

This means nothing to Sheryl, of course, but Laura, a member of the studio audience, recognizes Rodney as the man she saw with her friend, Alison, the night before Alison was found murdered on the beach. She attempts to alert others about this, but no one will listen to her or take her seriously.

Meanwhile, Sheryl decides to go off-script because the questions she is supposed to ask the bachelors are typically stupid and sexist. In the end, Rodney makes a better impression than the other two contestants, so he wins, and Sheryl picks him to go on the date with her. After the taping, Rodney and Sheryl go for drinks. He tries to woo her, but when she playfully teases him, he gets angry and weird, and Sheryl spots the red flag. When they leave the bar, Rodney insists on walking with her back to her car. She tries giving him a fake phone number, but he catches her, and when she tells him that she won’t be going on the date with him, he threatens her, and then attacks her at her car. She is only able to get away when he backs off because a group of people happen by.

The next day, Laura goes to the police and tries to report her sighting of Rodney but to the shock of absolutely no one, the cops are no help at all, and so Rodney moves on, free to kill at will.

In 1979, in San Gabriel, California, Amy is a teenage runaway living on the streets when Rodney approaches her about being a model. She agrees to accompany him to an isolated location in the desert for pictures. There, Rodney attacks her. Amy awakens later as Rodney lies next to her, crying, and manages to convince him to untie her, that it was all her fault somehow, assuring him that she will not tell anyone, and that she actually had a good time with him. But when they stop at a gas station, she flees and calls the cops.

Finally, years too late, the police arrive and arrest Rodney.

A postscript states that Rodney was released on bail following his arrest while awaiting trial, and he then murdered another woman and a young girl. In July of 1979 he was found guilty of murdering at least seven women and girls, although the actual number of his victims was believed to possibly be as high as 130.

Rodney died in prison.

Women of the Hour is star Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut. Exploring entrenched sexism both within the entertainment industry, as well as in American culture in general, it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023. Written by Ian McDonald, the film is inspired by the true story of how serial rapist and killer Rodney Alcala appeared on The Dating Game in 1978.

But besides being a nice little thriller based off a truly crazy moment in television history, Woman of the Hour is mainly concerned with examining how women are seen, listened to, and understood in America. It's a good critique of a society that enables people like Rodney Alcala, and demonstrates how violence against women is normalized through the acceptance and encouragement of seemingly innocuous little attitudes and “jokes” that are centered in sexism and misogyny, and how that then paves the way for much worse.

Whether it’s Laura trying to alert the world about Alcala, or Sheryl letting a waitress know with a look that her date needs to be over, or Amy trying and failing to find help from any of the other men she encounters without alerting Alcala, the film shows the similarly-rooted shared experiences, and the perils of living in a world where you must be constantly aware of who is the prey, and who are the predators. This is clearly a world that Kendrick knows all too well, and she very deftly illustrates it throughout the film.

At one point, as the Dating Game is over, Sheryl asks the makeup lady if she made a mistake changing the questions, basically exposing the misogynistic nature of the whole show. The woman assures her that it doesn’t matter, saying:

“No matter what words they use, the question beneath the question remains the same: Which one of you will hurt me?”

This is the heart of the film in a nutshell, which was also summarized by one of Alcala’s earlier victims, mere moments before being murdered:

“I knew he was risky, but fuck it—everyone’s risky,”

Woman of the Hour walks the line between being a good time at the movies, while also being a very barbed commentary about the rampant and casual sexism of daily life. It is also a tense true crime thriller, a genre that is often accused of capitalizing on violence towards women.

But in a clear response to that critique, Kendrick avoids directly showing a lot of the violence of Alcala’s attacks, often choosing to cut away, or obscure it. Instead, she wrings a lot of the story's tension from the sexism and implied threats that come in Sheryl’s day to day life. Whether it’s the many times men gaslight her, or touch her hair without permission, or in the way she has to adjust her life in order to avoid her creepy neighbor, or even when she is forced to "be polite" and to walk across a dark and deserted parking lot with a man she's pretty sure might try to kill her, the pervasiveness of it stunning. From the casting call where two men openly discuss her physical appeal in front of her, all while she must smile and laugh with them, to the moment when the host of The Dating Game warns Sheryl not to scare off the bachelors with her intelligence, to when Amy must smile and soothe and reassure Alcala in order to make it out of the desert alive, the film makes a lot out of the various common (and uncommon) situations where a woman must play “nice” if she wants to survive.

Bolstered by both Anna Kendrick and Daniel Zovatto's performances, Woman of the Hour is a pretty decent, well-made little thriller, not to mention a pretty good directorial debut by Kendrick. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's a good time, and a fascinating bit of history, so it's worth checking out.