Very good horror film that has many flaws, but overall well worth a one time watch. The acting was pretty good but the writing was confusing at times. The script jumped around and plot holes weren't explained fully, but if you are a thinker, you will figure it out. The main theme of this movie is racism and the deeply racist lead Dan will make you want to wish he was the next victim. He will get his, but it will be towards the end of the movie. Stop reading because here comes the spoilers...

Two brothers and one sisters are all white. One brother is cool, one brother is a racist, and the sister is in love and pregnant by a black man. The serial killer kills the black man but it is the priest who kills the white sister who was dating the black man, the priest brother. So there are two killers in this movie killing for their own reasons. The priest almost gets away with it until two, not so dumb detectives figures it all out in the end. In the end, everybody gets what is coming to them, but the racism of the South is the central theme of the movie.

Watch out!...this early 1970s anti-racist mystery has more murders than the mafia. I mean I watch giallos on a level that most people wouldn't consider sane and I haven't seen a body count like this outside of a slasher flick from at least ten years later. That's not a good thing, I'm not a gore hound, and the sheer level of murder that people get away with in this cheesy flick in order to make the end "work" is laughably absurd.

People are just dropping like flies from beginning to end despite the victims being regular average folks on college campuses in broad freaking daylight and in the upper middle class white suburbs of New Orleans.

To top it all off, one of the Monkees - Mickey Dolenz, looking just as much like a Monchhichi doll as ever - is a main character yet never once breaks into song. AND...the "night of the strangler" never actually happens, unless you count a drowning. There are however an abnormal number of Asian snakes and poison darts.

There are seeds of a good film here in a story about a man, The Monkees' Micky Dolenz, who disowns his sister after learning she is pregnant with boyfriend's baby because her boyfriend is black. The sister is later found murdered, which leads Dolenz and a black priest to investigate the murder, which has been disguised as a suicide, trying to find an individual with a peace-sign belt buckle who they suspect is the culprit. There could have been some interesting commentaries on race relations with this kind of a set-up, but the film is basically a cash grab exploiting the real-life Boston Strangler, who still at-large, and following a big budget Hollywood production a few years before about the Boston Strangler. Never mind that no characters are actually strangled and the story has nothing to do with that case. It's a super cheap production without any real scares or suspense, so there's not a lot to recommend outside of the novelty value of seeing Micky Dolenz is a very un-Monkees-like role. Well, he is still a bit of a 1960s hipster/hippie, but he plays a much darker character than his Monkees Micky character. Overall, "The Night of the Strangler" is a forgettable quickie low-budget picture that offers a darker role for Micky Dolenz, but is a missed opportunity for murder mystery about race relations.