Ahead of the release of Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut about a shocking true crime tale, the crimes of Rodney Alcala are coming back into light.
Woman of the Hour, arriving on Netflix on October 18, is based on a shocking real-life, televised event. A young woman goes on a dating show, The Dating Game, and wins a date with a mysterious stranger.
However, she ended up turning down an opportunity after the show, saying the man was “creepy.” It was an instinct that likely ended up saving her life, as that man was Rodney Alcala, a serial killer and sex offender with a victim count that could be as high as 130 people.
While Woman of the Hour explores the hypothetical date that they could have gone on, the documentary Dating Death: The Rodney Alcala Murders tells the real story. Here’s how to watch it ahead of the new movie.
How to watch Dating Death: The Rodney Alcala Murders
All three episodes of Dating Death: The Rodney Alcala Murders are available to stream on AMC+ as part of a subscription.
Alternatively, you could buy the miniseries on Apple TV+.
The series was released in 2022, and documents Alcala’s crimes starting in 1968 to his eventual conviction.
Who is Rodney Alcala?
Rodney Alcala was an American serial killer and sex offender, who famously appeared as a winning contestant on the TV show The Dating Game in 1978.
Even without this infamous appearance, Alcala would have likely become a widely-known serial killer due to the sheer number of estimated victims during his rampage from 1968-1979.
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Although he was only sentenced for five murders in California and two murders in New York, it’s estimated that the number of victims could be as high as 130.
During his spree, Alcala posed as a successful photographer, and collected more than 1,000 sexually explicit photographs of women, teenage girls, and boys. It’s widely believed that many of these could be victims of rape or murder.
Alcala would later go on to be called a “killing machine” by police.
In 1978, he made his appearance on The Dating Game. As explained by the host Jim Lange, Alcala described himself as a “successful photographer… Between takes you might find him skydiving or motorcycling.”
The winner of the episode, a woman named Cheryl Bradshaw, refused the date after the show. It was also noted that one of the other contestants described Alcala as a “very strange guy.”
After his eventual arrest in 1979, he was sentenced to death, but died of natural causes in 2021 at age 77.
Woman of the Hour will drop on Netflix on October 18, 2024. Until then, check out our guide to the Menendez brothers case ahead of Monster Season 2, and find out everything you need to know in the Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter documentary.
