The Zodiac Killer (1971)

People talk about a work in progress all the time, but by the time they finish it's usually no longer carrying that title. This film, on the other hand, is a rarity in that it appears to still be unfinished even in its final version. It starts as a weird, boring character study of two potential killers, then the more obnoxious of the two is unceremoniously offed, at which point it turns into a weird, boring killer-taunts-the-police flick. However, the filmmakers still weren't satisfied, so they push the film further into following-the-killer-during-random-killings territory. And it's there that the film gets interesting; in its unaffected visual style and its series of murders played out as fact and not sensationalism, the film feels like a fetal version of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Shame then about the filmmakers not having figured out where they wanted to go with the story before they turned on the camera. One good rewrite and we might have had a minor lost classic(k).

Grade: C-