Contestant has a date with death in thrilling ‘Game’
“What does a girl want?” asks a female contestant on the 1970s ABC hit, “The Dating Game.” The answers from three bachelors angling for a night on the town with the petite beauty smack of the sort of blatant sexual innuendo that would get them canceled in today’s era of #MeToo. But in 1978, the “gentlemen” drew big laughs on a par with Jackie Gleason threatening to knock Audrey Meadows “to the moon” on “The Honeymooners.” Ah, men!
But that’s not the worst of this sexist, misogynistic display. Turns out Bachelor No. 3 would a year later be in police custody for murdering as many as 130 women nationwide during a decade of terror. Hardly “what a girl wants.” And that’s the not-so-subtle point of “Woman of the Hour,” the impressive directing debut by Anna Kendrick, who also stars as the “Bachelorette” posing the chilling question that serves as the movie’s theme.
Although written by a guy, Ian MacAllister McDonald, Kendrick’s female perspective imparts a distinctly menacing tone that has you questioning how something as demeaning as “The Dating Game” ever got on the air, let alone become a ratings juggernaut. In telling the fact-based story of aspiring actress Cheryl Bradshaw, you sense Kendrick is drawing from some of her own experiences of being subjected to the male gaze during demeaning auditions at which the “the boys” would brazenly discuss the size of her “girls” in her presence.
But unlike Cheryl, Kendrick withstood it long enough to exact her revenge with “Woman of the Hour,” the title pulled directly from how “Dating Game” host Jim Lange used to introduce his female contestants. Boy, does she succeed, not just through her ample acting and directing skills, but in her ability to land her punches squarely in the solar plexus. What I found most shocking is that women barely batted an eye when exposed to the kind of objectification “The Dating Game” not just condoned but promoted.
The movie rightly contends it was that mindset that allows Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), aka Bachelor No. 3, to kill at will using the same scam over and over to lure overly trusting women to remote locations under the pretense that he was a photographer who would make them famous. It would be the last ride most of these young women and girls would ever take.
Interspersed into Cheryl’s bizarre story, are recreations of a couple of Alcala’s murders, one in the desolate mountains of Wyoming; the other in a New York City walkup. In each instance, Kendrick enables you to feel the stomach-dropping fear his victims felt after naively falling for his cunning offers of empathy and kindness – just before choking the life out of them.
Those scenes, horrid as they are, cannot match the tension Kendrick ratchets up in the final 30 minutes, when Cheryl and another trusting young woman, Amy (an excellent Autumn Best), enter into ultra-taut showdowns with Alcala in which fast thinking and keen wits are their only hope for survival. It’s riveting. And if “Woman of the Hour” had stuck solely to its thriller roots, it would have been more than satisfying. But Kendrick and McDonald smartly weave in oodles of subtext concerning what was once a decisively one-sided battle of the sexes in which men could literally get away with murder.
For Alcala, the weapon of choice is his hands. But for millions of others, it’s words and actions, mostly with the aim of getting laid. Such might be the case with Cheryl’s solicitous neighbor, Terry (Pete Holmes), whom she considers a friend. But might his overtures of encouragement and understanding merely be a ploy to get her into the sack? Then there’s the film’s most compelling character, Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who accompanies her boyfriend and his parents to a taping of Cheryl’s appearance on “The Dating Game.”
Within seconds of catching sight of Cheryl’s crop of bachelors, we watch her smile suddenly transform into horrified recognition of Bachelor No. 3 as the man she believes killed her best friend. Panicked, she runs to tell someone, anyone, what she suspects. But being an “overly emotional woman,” no one takes her seriously, including a female receptionist. And for me, this scene is the film’s essence, a harbinger of how so many, many women in Hollywood would not be believed when they spoke up. Most notably, the dozens of victims of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.
There are shades of Weinstein and Cosby in Tony Hale’s Ed Burke, host of “The Dating Game,” who tosses out inappropriate remarks as Cheryl sits in the makeup chair, orders up another dress to “show off her great body,” and later in the hot seat, on stage, urges her to play dumb and submissive. It’s at this point that Cheryl’s had it with the role of marginalized woman, says WTF and starts asking her questions instead of those provided by the show. It’s a fabulous display of empowerment enhanced by Hale’s expression of ire and shock that a woman would dare defy his wishes. His unflattering account might explain why the filmmakers opted to sub out Jim Lange for the facsimile Ed Burke. Lawsuits, you know.
What matters is the court of public opinion. And I sense most – men and women – will embrace this Netflix offering, which packs a lot into a mere 89 minutes. It’s got it all: laughs, thrills, scares and a powerful message about a society that for too long has devalued women, treating them not as human beings of equal worth and stature, but as commodities to satiate the male desire. Sadly, that likely won’t change anytime soon, but there’s no denying, it is “what a girl wants.”
Movie review
Woman of the Hour
Rated: Not rated
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Tony Hale, Pete Holmes, Nicolette Robinson, Autumn Best and Kelley Jakle
Director: Anna Kendrick
Writer: Ian MacAllister McDonald
Runtime: 89 minutes
Where: In theaters Oct. 11 and on Netflix starting Oct. 18
Grade: B+
