The Zodiac Killer, the first in series of planned Blu-ray collaborations between the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) and Something Weird Video, is an odd duck even by the wonky standards of the true crime film in that it was made and released in 1971, while the actual Zodiac Murders were still happening in the real world. It also opens with a note from San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery stating that the movie is intended to help catch the real killer and to "create an awareness of a present danger"!

The premise for the film isn't particularly complex. When the movie starts, the fine upstanding officers of the San Francisco Police Department are baffled by a series of seemingly random murders taking place in their fair city. They all appear to be committed by the same sick, psychopathic killer but they don't always use the same weapon. When the murderer, dubbed The Zodiac Killer, starts writing letters to the local newspaper, the pressure mounts on the cops to stop this person before they kill again.

As the investigation ramps up, they narrow the culprit down to two possible suspects. The first is a middle aged truck driver with a penchant for booze, a whole lot of domestic squabbling going on in his personal life and a taste for pretty young women. The second is a mailman who takes the nagging old ladies on his route way too seriously and seems prone to emotional breakdowns. As the cops try and figure out who is really behind all of these, we bear witness to recreations some of the real Zodiac Killer's more notorious slayings and a few reasonably less accurate murder set pieces thrown in for good measure. Lots of seriously screwy twists and turns occur in the last half of this fairly tasteless exercise in low budget movie making awesomeness, leading up to a truly bizarre conclusion.

Quick paced, sensationalist and made fast and cheap, The Zodiac Killer is fairly packed with murder and mayhem. The police procedural aspect of the picture plays second fiddle to the murder scenes, which themselves are interesting in strange ways. Those that are based on actual killings that were documented in newspapers and TV reports of the time are, if not meticulously researched and recreated with the utmost accuracy, at least valid attempts and conveying reality. A good example of this is the murder of the couple in the car. The murder scenes that were invented specifically for the film, however, are a fair bit more bonkers and blunt in their execution. Highlighted by a scene in which the killer places a woman's head under the hood of a car and then jumps up and down maniacally on said hood, the filmmakers definitely get bonus points for creativity here.

As you'd expect for a movie made about a serial killer who hadn't yet been caught, the movie takes some liberties with the facts of the story. Here the killer zips about in a spooky uniform with the Zodiac logo on it, he rants and rages a fair bit and he worships a weird idol kept in a basement that he babbles at the way crazy people tend to babble at idols they keep in their basements. An exercise in bad taste> Yeah, more or less, but a fairly awesome one.

Video:

AGFA presents The Zodiac Killer arrives on Blu-ray framed at 1.33.1 taken from a new 4k scan of the only remaining 16mm blow up elements known to exist (which was a theatrical print). Given the source material used for this transfer, it's best to keep your expectations in check. There is some color fading and print damage evident throughout and the image is pretty grainy. That said, there is detail here that we can appreciate and the image is definitely film-like. Better to have it look like this than slathered in noise reduction or riddled with edge enhancement. Those who have seen the DVD by way of the previously released Something Weird Video DVD release will appreciate the increase in clarity, color reproduction, detail, depth and texture that is very evident here.