The Deliberate Stranger: Before There Was Netflix…

Netflix, the streaming giant once poised to join or overtake HBO as a premiere destination for prestige programming, now happily wallows in lurid filth—and, sadly, I don’t mean that in the best spirit of the phrase. Whether it’s the new Marilyn Monroe film (which I’m avoiding for reasons better articulated by Michael Campochiaro of The Starfire Lounge), or an endless parade of deeply exploitative true crime ‘documentaries’ that aren’t worthy of the name, I regularly receive promo emails from Netflix touting irredeemable content.

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, one of its most recent ghoulish offerings, is produced by Ryan Murphy, a titan of tabloid tragedy who has never met a murder he wasn’t happy to exploit for profit. Even as real-life families of victims called the series re-traumatizing, it was quickly watched in its entirety by more than 56 million households. I’ve heard more than one viewer justify their decision by insisting they’re merely interested in abnormal psychology, which is absurd. No one is bingeing a 10-part series about a cannibal weeks before Halloween for academic reasons.

The Dahmer debate reminded me of NBC’s controversial decision to air The Deliberate Stranger (1986), a two-part miniseries about Ted Bundy, during May “sweeps.” Adapted from the book of the same name by journalist and Bundy acquaintance Richard W. Larsen, Stranger starred Mark Harmon (Original Sins), then People’s reigning Sexiest Man Alive, as the killer. George Grizzard (Blanche’s late husband on The Golden Girls) played Larsen, whose opening voice-over is meant to legitimize the film’s questionable subject matter.

“My name is Richard Larsen. You’ll meet me soon, at the beginning of our story—our nightmare—that began in Seattle in 1974 and ended, for most of us, in Miami in 1979. It didn’t end for the families, the husbands, the lovers of the victims. It will never end for them. This story is about them, too—the victims, their loved ones, and the few dedicated men who didn’t give up.”

THE DELIBERATE STRANGER (1986)

In the weeks before the film’s premiere, its producers tried to set both prospective viewers and the network’s legal department at ease by stressing Stranger’s accuracy and lack of sensationalism to reporters. Some of the press clippings from that period, like this April 26, 1986 Orlando Sentinel piece—Bundy was on death-row in Florida at the time—are notable for focusing more on legal minutiae than on the victims or their families.

Because of those legal concerns, much of the The Deliberate Stranger’s violence is only implied. It opens with a co-ed being followed in the dark by a shadowy figure; Gil Mellé’s suspenseful, sometimes chaotic score paints pictures director Marvin J. Chomsky’s camera can’t. Harmon’s Bundy, a crisis hotline worker soon to study law, is charismatic but remote and distracted. In domestic scenes with girlfriend Cas Richter (Glynnis O’Connor of Someone I Touched), a woefully insecure single mother he uses to cultivate a wholesome image, he’s tense and patronizing. Women respond to his good looks, but some reverse course after getting a bad feeling about him.

The miniseries begins in Washington state, where detectives played by M. Emmet Walsh, Frederic Forrest and Ben Masters doggedly work the case, assembling a ‘Ted’ squad after a grisly mountainside discovery. Halfway through the first installment, Bundy moves to Utah for school, where his murderous activities continue until a traffic stop (the first of several, all pivotal) puts him on law enforcement’s radar. When Utah and Washington begin sharing information, a Seattle-based detective gruffly asks “Do I have a court order? Does Goldilocks eat porridge?”

Harmon flashes the same flirty smile whether he’s taunting police or sizing up potential victims. “Maybe if you find enough straws, you can put the broom together,” he tells Det. Jerry Thompson (Frederick Coffin). The supremely arrogant Bundy deep-cleans his car while under surveillance and irritates a court-appointed psychiatrist who boredly instructs him “Sit down, Ted. Stop trying to control me.” As he loses his grip on a suspicious Cas, he tightens one on an old coworker, Martha (Deborah Goodrich), who’d been kept on the back burner for precisely that purpose.

The full extent of Bundy’s depravity is kept offscreen, where it belongs; the sinister shadows and empty alleyways of The Deliberate Stranger scare more effectively than his (abbreviated) blood-spattered sorority house spree. It’s only in the film’s final 15 minutes that its violence quotient dramatically increases, including his own beating by a police officer. The lack of graphic details doesn’t make the film any less frightening, because screenwriter Hesper Anderson (Oscar-nominated for Children of a Lesser God but mostly known for TV gigs) understands the most terrifying thing about a monster like Bundy is something you can’t see.

When Larsen, a tedious character despite Grizzard’s best efforts, asks Bundy, a former psychology major, to describe sociopathy to him, Ted replies, as if speaking of someone else, “You’re either born with something missing, or the void begins early, like a child who’s blind or death. A sociopath has no conscience, no sense of guilt, empathy, or no sense of consequences. They seem to have a need for greater and greater risk-taking. They seem to move through life mimicking human behavior they don’t really feel, except for themselves.” Harmon’s performance is so slick that it’s sometimes dismissed as caricature, a criticism that misses the point even as he explains it to us.

Streaming and DVD availability

The Deliberate Stranger is available on DVD from the Warner Archive Collection.

^{Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.}