Who Is Rodney Alcala, the Dating Game Killer in Woman of the Hour?

Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, is based on the true story of murderer Rodney Alcala — but who was the Dating Game killer, really?

The film, set to hit Netflix on Friday, October 18, is based on the notorious serial killer and sex offender who found his next potential victim on national TV while appearing on a 1978 episode of The Dating Game. Daniel Zovatto will portray Alcala in the true crime thriller, while Kendrick will star as Cheryl Bradshaw, the bachelorette at the center of the infamous episode.

Although Kendrick was originally only attached as the star of the film, she eventually pitched herself to direct. “I think I was particularly invested in the script and in pieces of the script that [my character is] not in, in a way that I normally wouldn’t be,” she told Netflix’s Tudum in September 2024. “I really like the complicated journey of a woman who is shrinking herself and being very pleasing and then manages to rebel and take back some power.”

Alcala was eventually caught and sentenced to death for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979, and later pleaded guilty for two more murders committed in New York. His true number of victims, however, is unknown, with many believing it could be as high as 130.

While Woman of the Hour will revisit the details Alcala’s crimes, the story will take a unique approach by choosing to focus on the women whose lives he cut short more than the murderer himself.

So, who was Rodney Alcala? Us explains below:

The Key Players

In Woman of the Hour, Zovatto stars as the real-life serial killer and sex offender Alcala who was convicted of seven murders in two states, California and New York. (His actual victim count is suspected to be 130.)

During his various trials, prosecutors claimed that Alcala — who worked as a photographer — “toyed” with his victims, often strangling them until they lost consciousness and then waiting until they revived to repeat the process before killing them. During one trial, a police officer referred to Alcala as a “killing machine.”

Alcala was arrested in 1979 and although he received death sentences in 1980 and 1986, judges changed their mind twice before he finally received a death sentence in 2010 thanks to new evidence that was uncovered. He died of unspecified natural causes in 2021.

Women of the Hour will majorly focus on Kendrick’s character, Cheryl Bradshaw, who Alcala met as Bachelor No. 1 on The Dating Game in 1978. He was cast despite having already gone to prison for child molestation, according to The Washington Post. (Alcala and Bradhaw never actually went through with their date, as Bradshaw told the show’s casting coordinator she got “weird vibes” from him.)

The story will also touch on the women who Alcala murdered. His confirmed victims include Robin Samsoe, Ellen Jane Hover, Cornelia Crilley, Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted, Charlotte Lamb and Jill Parenteau. (He was also charged with the murder of Christine Ruth Thornton but the charges were later dropped.)

Another key player in Alcala’s story is Steven Mack, a homicide detective with the Huntington Beach Police Department in California who took a leading role in retrying the twice-overturned murder cases against Alcala. After searching through items previous investigators had discovered decades earlier inside a storage locker belonging to Alcala, Mack noticed two rose earrings in a small red satin pouch. Further DNA testing, including Alcala’s own samples, further linked him to Lamb’s murder and the unsolved homicides of seven other women in the Los Angeles area, New York City and Granger, Wyoming, during the 1970s.

The Gist

Alcala was killing for nearly a decade before he appeared on The Dating Game — and had reportedly already served time for child molestation — but his participation in the show is what earned him the name of the Dating Game Killer. While on the show, Bradshaw asked three men behind a barricade questions before ultimately choosing a date with Alcala. She later turned down the opportunity after she felt “weird vibes” coming from him, according to the show’s casting coordinator.

Woman of the Hour will focus on the infamous episode and the murders that occurred both before and after it aired in 1978.

Screenwriter Ian MacAllister McDonald stumbled upon the Dating Game story on a true crime website, which inspired him to write Woman of the Hour. “The context around him was the thing that I found really interesting,” McDonald told Netflix’s Tudum in September. “He seemed to represent something that we were kind of wrestling with as a country at the time, which is ordinary people looking the other way so that bad people could get away with bad behavior.”

Why It’s a Big Deal

Woman of the Hour serves as Kendrick’s directorial debut, telling the story of one of the most infamous serial killers of the ‘70s appearing on a dating game show on national TV. That’s frankly bizarre enough, but the film has garnered buzz for its choice to flip the serial killer story on its head by “zeroing in on Alcala’s victims and the lives he cut short,” per Netflix, the comedic commentary on Hollywood sexism and the choice to frame the narrative through a female lens.

In the film, Bradshaw takes charge of the situation by posing questions that feel intelligent and quick witted that allow her to pick up on Alcala’s off putting nature in real time, according to TIME. During Alcala’s real Dating Game appearance, the questions were more standard and Alcala’s answers were, well, flat out creepy.

“I’m serving you for dinner. What are you called and what do you look like?” Bradshaw asked, according to the outlet. Alcala responded, “I’m called the banana and I look good.” When she followed up, he said, “Peel me.”

What People Are Saying

“In true crime circles you’ll sometimes hear people say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s kind of like Ted Bundy,’” McDonald told Tudum of Alcala. “But the truth of the matter is, he’s kind of the opposite. Ted Bundy was a chameleon. He was really good at pretending to be something he wasn’t. And Rodney Alcala really seems to have flouted a lot of his worst tendencies. It wasn’t that he was being sneaky, it’s that other people were kind of actively looking the other way.”

While Woman of the Hour officially hits Netflix on October 18, reviews have begun to trickle in after the movie premiered at 2023’s Toronto Film Festival. The Guardian gave the film four out of five stars, calling it a “fascinating and frightening stranger-than-fiction tale” that is an “unusual” choice for Kendrick’s directorial debut.

“She makes a convincing first-time film-maker, capturing the feel of a time and a number of places with ease, despite not shooting on location in the U.S.,” the outlet said, adding that McDonald’s script is a “grim commentary on the morality of dating shows, or lack thereof, and the knife-edge danger of dating for women, a constant awareness that violence is forever close, a bruised ego turning nasty in a heartbeat.”