Photo: Leah Gallo/Netflix
Anna Kendrick’s new Netflix true-crime film Woman of the Hour relives a haunting true-crime story, but the real-life Rodney Alcala, a.k.a. “the Dating Game killer,” was more terrifying than the film lets on.
In her directorial debut, which premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, Kendrick plays Cheryl Bradshaw, who appeared on an episode of The Dating Game in 1978. Daniel Zovatto plays Alcala, a serial killer who appeared on the show just one year before he was charged with the kidnap and murder of his last known victim, 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. Although the verdict was overturned, retried, and upheld multiple times, Alcala remained imprisoned until his death from natural causes in 2021.
Woman of the Hour spends a little time with both Bradshaw and Alcala leading up to the episode (with some fictional embellishments). But while Kendrick’s scenes seem to flow in sequential order and cover a short time frame before filming, Zovatto’s timeline feels more spaced out; some events happen in the present, and some of the murders we witness appear to be inspired by attacks that happened years before he showed up on Dating Game. As seen in the film, prosecutors have said that Alcala tortured his victims by repeatedly strangling and reviving them.
As gruesome a portrait as Woman of the Hour might paint of Alcala, the film practically glosses over the most chilling aspect of his backstory: Even before appearing on the dating show, Alcala had already been arrested multiple times, including for murder, and had made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
National crime databases did not yet exist when Alcala committed his crimes, so TV background checks weren’t possible. The Dating Game producers had no idea (and no way of easily knowing) that Alcala had already served three years for child molestation in connection with his attack on an eight year old. Woman of the Hour acknowledges in a postscript that survivors and other private citizens had reported Alcala to law enforcement for a decade, but this after-the-fact treatment almost downplays the sheer volume of his previous crimes.
Alcala’s first known attack occurred in 1968 — ten years before his appearance on The Dating Game. Morgan Rowan, who was 16 at the time, says that he lured her and two friends into his home in California, where he attacked and raped her. “I watched his face turn purple,” Rowan told People earlier this year. “He punched me between my eyes with a belt buckle. I saw stars shooting, and I dropped to my knees.” During the attack, she said, “I wasn’t praying to live. I was praying to die.” Eventually, she says, one of her friends entered the room by breaking a window and they all escaped.
Weeks later, Alcala lured 8-year-old Tali Shapiro into his car and took her to his home, where he beat and raped her. According to People, Alcala was still assaulting Shapiro when police arrived and subsequently fled. Shapiro, who was near death and comatose, says the police “made a choice of saving me or chasing him.” She remained in a coma for more than a month. Woman of the Hour, which takes place years later, does not specifically mention Alcala’s attacks on either of the girls.
Police issued a warrant for Alcala’s arrest, and he fled to New York, where, according to the New York Post and as mentioned in the film, he enrolled at NYU under the assumed name “John Berger” and studied film under director Roman Polanski (who, coincidentally, would later flee the country after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a minor).
Alcala’s next known murder victim, Cornelia Crilley, does seemingly make it into Woman of the Hour, but with a different name — Charlie. Just like in the movie, Crilley worked as a flight attendant and was moving into a Manhattan apartment on the day that she and Alcala are believed to have met. Speaking with CBS News’s 48 Hours, Manhattan prosecutor Melissa Mourges recalled that authorities found a “horrible scene” at her apartment after Alcala’s attack and found Crilley dead. She’d been stripped naked and strangled with her own stockings, with a bite mark on her breast. Without any solid leads or forensics, the case remained cold for decades.
Months after Crilley’s murder, in the summer of 1971, Alcala was arrested in New Hampshire, where he’d been using the slightly edited alias “John Burger” while working as a girls’ summer camp counselor. (Rodney mentions the upcoming gig to Charlie soon after they meet in the film.) According to 48 Hours, two campers recognized his photo on an FBI poster. Alcala was arrested and extradited to California in connection with the outstanding warrant for his assault on Shapiro. But prosecutors declined to charge Alcala with the girl’s rape and attempted murder because her parents refused to allow her to testify. Instead, Alcala served less than three years after pleading guilty to the lesser charge of child molestation. Although Crilley’s murder, which happened earlier, seems to appear in the film, none of the rest of this does.
Less than two months after Alcala’s release from prison, in 1974, police re-arrested him for assaulting a 13-year-old girl referred to only as “Julie J,” per Justia. She also does not appear in Woman of the Hour. As seen in the film, Alcala landed a job at the Los Angeles Times as a typesetter in September 1977 — just one year before he appeared on The Dating Game. During that time, he posed as a fashion photographer and snapped pictures of hundreds of men and women. As seen in Woman of the Hour, his portfolio is said to have been filled with explicit nude photos, including of teenage boys. The Dating Game introduced him as a photographer, as the film depicts.
Not much is known about the real Cheryl Bradshaw. Kendrick’s film frames her as a frustrated Juilliard graduate who only appears on The Dating Game because her agent says it’ll get her seen (and she needs rent money). As her misery on the show unfolds, she reminds herself multiple times that Sally Field once did this exact same thing — and if it worked for Sally …
Although the film portrays Bradshaw as a rebel who went off-script and held her bachelors’ feet to the fire, the actual Dating Game episode unfolded with the usual suggestive, slightly sleazy banter. For instance, at one point, Bradshaw introduced a scenario in which she was serving Alcala for dinner and asked what he’d be called and what he’d look like. His response? “I’m called the banana, and I look really good.” When she asked him to be “a little more descriptive,” he added, “Peel me.”
Some of what we see in the Netflix film’s version of The Dating Game is true to real life. For instance: Alcala did brag to fellow contestants that he “always” gets the girl. Jed Mills, who appeared as Bachelor Number Two, told ABC’s 20/20 in 2021 that Alcala told him just that in the green room.
Still, Kendrick and screenwriter Ian McDonald also add a few dramatic flourishes. Some are small: While Alcala appears as Bachelor Number Three in the movie’s retelling, he actually played The Dating Game as Bachelor Number One in real life. Other inventions are a little more drastic — like a seemingly made-up audience member at the game show taping named Laura, who just happens to be a friend of one of Alcala’s victims. Another small discrepancy: In the movie, Rodney and Cheryl receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii — an ominous prospect, given everything we know about him. In real life, the prize was only tennis lessons and a trip to California’s Magic Mountain theme park.
But it’s the movie’s version of what happens after filming that seems to be a complete invention. Although Kendrick’s character agrees to go on a date with Alcala, where the energy quickly becomes unsettling, the real Bradshaw called a Dating Game staffer to cancel the date she’d arranged with Alcala.
Speaking with 20/20, former Dating Game contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger recalled that Bradshaw had told her, “Ellen, I can’t go out with this guy. There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem?” As one would hope, Metzger’s response was simply, “No.”
In February 1979, prosecutors say that Alcala raped 15-year-old Monique Hoyt; he allegedly knocked her unconscious while she posed for photos. That, too, makes it into the film, although Monique has been renamed “Amy.” Alcala attacked his last known victim, Robin Samsoe, months later in June 1979; in 1980, he received a death sentence for her kidnapping and murder. The judgment was reversed in 1984, and in 1986, Alcala received the death sentence again after a new trial. A federal appeals court overturned the sentence in 2003, and in 2010, Alcala once again received the death sentence for not only the murder of Samsoe but also his attacks on Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted, Charlotte Lamb, and Jill Parenteau. Alcala pleaded guilty in 2012 to the murders of both Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover. As Woman of the Hour acknowledges, authorities estimate that his actual number of victims is much higher than the seven for which he’s been convicted — “as high as 130.”