Who is Woman of the Hour about on Netflix? Explained

Woman of the Hour premiered on Netflix on October 18, 2024. Anna Kendrick's directorial debut is based on a true crime story of one of the most high-profile serial killers who were active in the United States during the 1970s, Rodney Alcala.

Rodney Alcala first gained national prominence when he appeared on the television show The Dating Game in 1978. Unbeknownst to the audience at the time, he was already in the midst of his crime spree. His crimes were eventually exposed thanks in part to the large collection of photographs he kept of his victims. He eventually died in 2021, while serving awaiting execution in prison.

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Woman of the Hour is a fictionalized account of Rodney Alcala's life

Woman of the Hour is a fictionalized portrayal of Rodney's appearance on The Dating Game, as well as the crimes he'd been committing at the time. Woman of the Hour accurately depicts some of his sadistic methods, such as strangling his victims until they passed out, and then reviving them only to do it all over again.

Alcala's criminal history was gleaned from the over 1,000 photographs he had in his possession. These pictures showed boys and girls, many of them underage, in s*xually explicit poses. Per a July 26, 2021 report from WION News, while Rodney was eventually convicted and sentenced for eight murders, authorities suspect he may have been responsible for as many as 130.

Alcala first ran afoul of the authorities back in 1968, when he convinced an eight-year-old girl, Tali Shapiro, to come to his apartment by lying to her and saying he knew her parents. The police found Shapiro r*ped and beaten with a steel bar, while Alcala had fled.

By 1971, Alcala was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List of fugitives. When he was arrested in 1971, he was finally tried for Shapiro's assault, being charged with and convicted of child mol*station because the police didn't want to hit him with more serious charges when Shapiro refused to testify.

In 1978, Alcala was working at the Los Angeles Times as a typesetter, and he attempted to reinvent his image as that of a fashion photographer. He used this identity to continue to lure people into posing in a s*xually suggestive manner.

It was during this time that Rodney made his appearance on The Dating Game television show, which is what Woman of the Hour focuses on. The episode where he appeared was hosted by Jim Lange, who introduced him as a photographer who dabbled in skydiving and motorcycling.

As recounted in Woman of the Hour, the contestant he won a date with was a woman named Cheryl Bradshaw, who eventually refused to go out with him as she deemed him a creep. After his appearance on The Dating Game, Rodney killed at least three more women, and criminal profiler Pat Brown speculated that being rejected might have spurred him on another crime spree.

"One wonders what that did in his mind. That is something he would not take too well. Psychopaths don't understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: 'She played me. She played hard to get.' She wanted to live," Pat Brown told CNN.

Alcala's luck with the law finally ran out in July 1979, when he was arrested for the murder of a 12-year-old girl named Robert Christine Samsoe. He was tried twice for the crime, with the first one thrown out because the jurors had been improperly informed of his prior criminal history.

Though his conviction for Samsoe's murder was overturned on appeal, the police continued linking other murders to him, eventually combining four other murders with those of Samsoe's. Rodney represented himself during this trial and was convicted of first-degree murder on all charges, with him being sentenced to death in March 2010.

Authorities never followed through on Rodney's execution, as he instead perished of natural causes in prison on July 24, 2021.

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Woman of the Hour is available to stream on Netflix.