Rod Steiger is excellent as Christopher Gill, a hammy theater manager and psychotic master of disguise. Gill stalks and kills various women all due to his love/hate relationship with his dead mother, who was a respected stage actress. He uses his talents of disguise as a plumber; a priest; and policeman to gain the confidence of his victims. He starts a cat-and-mouse game with a NYPD detective Morris Brummel(George Segal),who himself is quite the "mama's boy" still living with his mother. At every chance she tries to shame him for being a Jewish cop. Gill begins calling in tips of his crimes to Brummel, who is slowly putting together the clues to the serial killings; and on the back burner trying to figure out his feelings for his new girlfriend(Lee Remick). The Segal/Remick relationship seems no more than a silly teen-aged romance. Steiger is perfect for the role. Segal's character needs a backbone. Remick works effortlessly and is so easy to look at. In supporting roles are:Murray Hamilton and Eileen Heckart. Very interesting to say the least.

Rod Steiger makes for an effective serial killer in this late Sixties flick, described by a police detective later in the story as displaying a 'paranoiac exhibition of mother hate'. I thought Morris Brummel's (George Segal) sixth victim ruse was pretty clever in getting the maniac to go off his stride and set himself up for capture. However in the one scene at the bar in which the disguised-as-a-woman Gill (Steiger) was picked up by the buxom saloon gal - what was Brummel's rationale in following them to the apartment next door? There wasn't any logical reason to my mind why he should have suspected anything was up with those two, even after questioning the bartender. That one didn't make sense to me.

Though never mentioned by name, I thought the reference to Christopher Gill's Oedipus complex was cleverly referred to in the museum scene with the statue of Oedipus and Antigone. The story didn't delve into Gill's background very effectively otherwise, the fact that he had inherited the family theater business didn't add much to explaining his murderous tendencies. The cops did a better job of bringing him out with planted stories of his being a sexual pervert, and of course that sixth victim business.

Keeping an eye on the street scenes during the race to Kate Palmer's (Lee Remick) apartment, I caught two marquees displaying the titles "The Born Losers" and "Pink Pussy". The first picture was a Tom Laughlin/Billy Jack movie, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't get an IMDb hit for the second. But lo and behold, it turns out that it was a 1964 Venezuelan film with New York City scenes added a couple years later for an American release. So the timing in this movie worked I guess. If you take a quick look, there's even a single review for the picture, which is probably all you need, since getting a hold of the flick is probably impossible.

Anyway, this was an okay thriller that could only have gone one way in the resolution, so you had to get some entertainment value out of the handful of humorous scenes offered. The Kupperman (Michael Dunn) confession was a sketch, but the scene that just killed was when Kate Palmer met Brummel's Jewish mother and deadpanned her way through an entire critique of Mrs. Brummel's (Eileen Heckart) 'other son Morris' - "With a son like Franklin, you don't mind having this one so much"!

This movie wound up being a vehicle for Rod Steiger to show off is acting talents, which were at their peak at this time. Now, he's a cartoon of himself with mostly overacted roles.

In this story, Steiger does his Boston Strangler imitation pretending he is different people to gain entrance into their homes and strangle them. Unlike the real-life strangler, Steiger's character disguises himself as different people (and kills half as many as the real life killer in Boston). He's interesting to watch through the entire story.

The other main characters weren't as fascinating. This was the beginning of the big change in Hollywood where morals went out the window. I was disappointed to hear Lee Remick announce how she was kicking out her live-in boyfriend of three years. Remick, someone I've always liked watching, was a major disappointment in this. She looked bad and her character was classless and trashy with stupid dialog. I had always seen Remick play classier roles, but then again the restrictions were now lifted.

Eileen Heckert also was annoying as the overly-doting Jewish mother. Her act grew tiresome in a hurry, but fortunately, she exited soon anyway.

George Segal, meanwhile, plays a good guy cop and is a lot more enjoyable to watch than the two ladies.

In all, an interesting film that really started showing how Hollywood was going to be changing in content.