MovieChat Forums > The Boston Strangler (1968) Discussion > Something about the trivia!

Something about the trivia!

posted 14 years ago by toshguy
2 replies | jump to latest

This is the very first paragraph in the Triviva section of this film:

20th Century Fox originally hired Terence Rattigan to write the screenplay based on the book by Gerold Frank, but he wrote it as a comedy and was replaced by Edward Anhalt. In Rattigan's version, the killer was revealed, by a computer, to be Darryl F. Zanuck.

It's the most hilarious thing I've read all month! It just sounds so absurd that I find it hard to be true. Has anyone ever heard/read about this from another source or did the guy who added it to the trivia just make an ingenious joke?

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ddc300 12 years ago

Well, there might be truth to that original concept for "The Boston Strangler" if you consider that the biggest hits that 20th Century-Fox had around that time (1967-68) were campy productions like "Our Man Flint" and it's sequel "In Like Flint" (James Coburn spoofing James Bond). And let us not forget the mega-hits of the cult classic series "Batman" and "Lost In Space", both were off-the-wall campy shows that are still making money for 20th-Fox. So it's not totally absurd for them to have planned the movie to go that route when goofiness was big bucks at that time.