NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Altered Innocence Blu-ray (February 2024): Altered Innocence have transferred Paul Vecchiali's The Strangler to Blu-ray. Aside from a slight drop in quality at the 1/2 hour mark (for a minute or two) the image is quite strong. Flashbacks to past violence are tinted green-blue. The single-layered transfer with a supportive bitrate handles the darkness of the streets without compression issues - colors look true and there is some pleasing grain. Detail in close-ups is noticeable. It looked pretty good overall.

NOTE: We have added 60 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Altered Innocence use a DTS-HD Master mono track (24-bit) in the original French language. The Strangler has some nasty aggression - almost exclusively represented, overtly, through flashbacks. Where the 'present day' murders are extremely passive with 'presumption' rather than graphic struggles / screams. The score was by Roland Vincent (Paul Vecchiali's Femmes femmes and Once More) also known for his compositions and arrangements made for Michel Delpech during the 1960s and 1970. It sounds clean and without flaws in the, authentically flat, lossless. Altered Innocence offer optional English or Spanish subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Altered Innocence Blu-ray offers a new 1/4 hour video essay by Alexandra-Heller Nicholas (author of The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema.) She finds Claude Chabrol's The Butcher (Le boucher) a good companion piece to Paul Vecchiali's "The Strangler" - both using the framework of a crime-drama (male serial killers in France), the melancholy, and deeply moving portraits of lost men... and women. There is also a new trailer and four other trailers.

"Paging Dr. Freud! - paging Dr. Freud!" Wow. Paul Vecchiali's The Strangler ("L'étrangleur") characters have a barrel full of psycho-sexual issues... Emile (Jacques Perrin) was traumatized as a child when he witnessed a tearful woman murdered by strangulation using a white scarf. As an adult he reproduces this in serial format - seeking, finding and chocking depressed, lonely women - to, presumably, end their misery. Inspector Simon Dancrey (Julien Guiomar) poses as a journalist to entrap Emile. Anna (Eva Simonet - surprisingly press attaché for Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue!) insists on helping and we discover that she knows him from the past... Add to the mix a lazy, handsome, thief (Paul Barge) who follows Emile to rob the women after they have expired. This is twisted enough to be considered an early French Giallo. In 1987, Vecchiali became the first director to link AIDS to homosexuality in a French film with Encore. The Strangler ("L'étrangleur") is fascinating if quite, appealingly, odd. I enjoyed it very much. The Altered Innocence Blu-ray provides a good HD presentation with extras. Fans of more subtle Giallo should absolutely consider this one.

Gary Tooze