The content of Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut is undeniably bizarre even if you’re already familiar with Rodney Alcala’s notoriety. A serial killer on an ABC dating show? It might’ve actually not been very convincing had it not been a real event. A very real serial killer went on The Dating Game to flaunt the same “charm” that he used on his victims. This particular incident–something so weird that one might even get away with calling it a phenomenon–has enough meat on its bones to be made into a film that makes it a spectacle for us to gawk at. But that’s not the kind of film that Kendrick wanted to make. What she’s made is this practically atmospheric, you-feel-your-heart-in-your-throat sort of observation about how people, the law, and society itself made it so convenient for people like Rodney to go on a crime spree. In Woman of the Hour, the story moves back and forth between Cheryl Bradshaw’s experience as a woman in LA hunting her big break and Rodney Alcala getting away with hurting and killing women. The two streams only converge in the singular event–the dating show where Cheryl’s the young, pretty girl and Rodney’s one of the three bachelors she’s supposed to pick from. And at the center of the extreme frustration you’re bound to feel about everything Rodney keeps getting away with is a guest at the show, Laura. Although her character is fictional, Laura is crucial to the theme that permeates the entirety of the film.
Spoiler Alert
Laura Isn’t Based On A Real-Life Person
In Woman of the Hour, Laura’s thrilled to be watching The Dating Game right there in the studio with her boyfriend and his family. Given the nature of the show, Cheryl’s not supposed to see the men until she’s picked the one who’ll get to take her out on a date, but the live audience can see them. And when Laura sees bachelor number 3, Rodney Alcala, she knows she’s seen him before under much more terrifying circumstances. Now, first things first, Laura’s character is not exactly based on a real person. In the film, Laura recognizes Rodney as the creepy guy her friend Allison met at the beach before she was found raped and murdered. Considering the real Rodney is speculated to have murdered as many as 130 women, Allison is likely based on one of his real-life victims. But since Laura is fictional, was her character only there to sensationalize the whole ordeal further? No, Laura meant more than that. Laura opened up to her boyfriend about recognizing Rodney, and he didn’t miss a beat before dismissing it as her paranoia and PTSD. The cops did nothing when a terrified Laura went to the police station. If the police had actually done their jobs, Rodney would’ve been caught way before the number of his victims got to three digits.
Laura’s Predicament Explores The Theme of the Movie
In Woman of the Hour, we saw how the investigators were easily wooed by Rodney’s charm when they dropped by his work to question him. It goes without saying that law enforcement’s sloppiness has historically been one of the biggest reasons serial killers could go on killing as many people as they did. In Rodney’s case, given the majority of the people he targeted were women, even his questionable actions were normalized by the people around him. It was only after the investigators left that his coworkers flocked to talk about how they’ve always known that there was something off about him. It only goes to show how a man can be hiding a much darker secret behind his general creepiness, and how he gets to continue hurting people just because people don’t find anything objectionable about his concerning behavior. Coming back to Laura, even though she’s not a character picked from real life, she’s likely a representation of all those people who reported Rodney to the cops all while they did a whole lot of nothing.
Part of why Laura’s fear was met with her boyfriend’s condescension was his faith in the producers and the team behind The Dating Game. He assumed that they’d vet their contestants thoroughly before putting their faces out there on national television. Well, considering Rodney was picked for the show and even won the date at the end, there was not much vetting involved in the selection process. And if you think that’s bad, wait till you hear what actually happened in real life. Rodney Alcala had already had a record as a convicted child predator before he was picked to fill a chair on The Dating Game. That says enough about how much the show’s producers cared about the safety of the women they featured. The real-life Cheryl Bradshaw narrowly escaped being one of Rodney’s unfortunate victims when she refused to go on a date with him after the shoot. In Woman of the Hour, even when Laura begged to see a producer of the show to voice her concerns about Rodney, the security guy played a prank on her instead of helping her get in touch with someone who called the shots around there. It’s really no surprise that no one took Laura seriously. I mean, here we’ve got a show where the host asks Cheryl to dumb herself down so she doesn’t make the bachelors feel emasculated. In a world where men’s egos are protected with such devotion, all a serial killer needs to make people swoon over him is a handsome smile and the right words at the tip of his tongue. It’s actually pretty interesting how the movie deviated from the truth when it came to their depiction of Rodney on the show. Woman of the Hour went for a more relatable portrayal of the fear. Unlike the real Cheryl, who played nice and asked the distasteful questions that she was handed, the movie’s Cheryl came up with her own questions for the bachelors. The real Rodney was frankly straight-up terrifying with the answers he had for those innuendos masked as questions to judge the eligibility of a suitor, whereas the movie’s Rodney said all the things that people would readily associate with a “green flag” in today’s time. So the message that Woman of the Hour wants to drive home is that the predators have learned to parrot the views and the words of a genuinely safe, wholesome man.
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