The basement scene is a true horror scene, genuinely have never felt so uncomfortable watching a scene because there's no jump scares, no digital effects, just pure, slow burning terror. Also, I love that every time Zodiac appears and speaks, it's always a different person and different voice since they never caught him and couldn't know what he looked or sounded like.
really? in my country's version they used the same VA for all of the zodiac's scenes so you knew who it was from the moment the actor who plays Allen is first on screen
@@Neyenn you're right, David Fincher was attracted to the project because it was personal - he remembered as a kid taking the school bus with police cars trailing behind after the Zodiac threatened to blow up school buses.
I think it's really important that the last coda of the movie says that none of the DNA matches Allen. It's a film about obsession and about the frustration of not getting someone. The fascination we have with serial killers and the duty people have with giving people closure. Also two fun facts: The Zodiac is played by a different actor in every scene he appears and the man with the basement is the voice of Roger Rabbit.
Didn't they figure out who it was a few years ago? And do you know if Allen was really this sketchy? I can't remember what I've read over the years lol
The only DNA they had was on a stamp so whatever DNA was on that stamp could have belonged to the postman, the carrier or any other number of people. Also in the bay area at the time a lot of people used those little things that were a tray with water and a wheel that you'd put a stamp on to get it wet. Additionally there's a part in Graysmith's book about how Allen would constantly have other people lick stamps for him. I'm not convinced Allen was the zodiac but I've never thought the DNA in this particular case was very convincing. The argument that is usually made about it is that DNA testing didn't exist at the time so there was no reason to try to avoid getting your DNA on something but there was blood type testing and if you're doing something that high stakes while at the same time taunting the investigators I think it's reasonable to assume you'd go as far as you could to avoid any potential links to yourself.
@@d3l3tes00n Every few years someone announces they've solved it. As to Allen being sketchy he was in Atescadero State Hospital for child molestation and was released but had to report to a probation officer. He showed up to the meeting holding the hand of a small child.
I believe it was Roger Ebert who said something along the lines of, "There is nothing more thrilling to watch on screen than professionals who are really, really good at their job." This is one of those movies. Watching great actors playing competent professionals is just endlessly enjoyable.
@@jimmy2k4o In the movie, one of the characters says, they know who the killer is, but they can't prove it in court. Arthur was suspected till the year of his death. Recently, people close to him have provided more details on how he was close to all murder sites when they were with him. It's all circumstantial. Plus his handwriting and prints were in the clear, which are hardcore evidence of someone being the killer
One of the things this movie really showcases is how rare, awkward, and difficult interdepartmental cooperation was in the 60s. Zodiac killed in several different jurisdictions, and even though they were all within a fairly small area of the country, the police weren't sharing information with each other, which made it much easier for him to elude capture.
Also a lot of people in this departments thought there were several serial killers when in fact it was just one person. Communication was very bad back then.
@@Jar0fMay0I also think that the zodiac murdered a lot more people, if you look at other serial killers they always started with people who wouldn’t be missed, like prostituts or people who live on the streets, Back then nobody cared if a homeless man went missing or a prostitut, And someone like zodiac who murdered with such violence murdered before, My guess is 10-15, more or less, who ever this guy was, he wasn’t stupid.
The "stay on the line" thing for tracing a call is based on old equipment at the phone exchanges. The operator had to manually trace the route between the two phones in order to see where it was coming from, so it was a very real thing. With more modern computerized exchanges it is no longer needed. A great movie that shows the process is "Three Days of the Condor".
John carroll lynch is very underrated. To both pull off this unsettling performance and also the unbelievably sweet and charming norm gunderson is pretty incredible
It's scary to know that this actually happened back in the late 60's, early '70's. When the movie, DIRTY HARRY was released, it was loosely based on the Zodiac Killings.
what's interesting as well is that Toschi, the main detective in charge of the investigation after Stine was shot, was already famous as a really good detective, the classic movie Bullitt has its main character modeled after him which brought, among other things, the idea of a weapon holster on your chest which is something Toschi came up with during his work and copied by the main actor of the movie McQueen
About two years ago David Oranchak solved the 340 cipher on his YT channel. Absolutely fascinating series if you're into puzzles and/or computer science.
The whole 'You have to keep them on the phone line for 15 minutes' thing is real. Nowadays doing a phone trace is pretty instant, true, but back then it was different. The system in use at the time was a lot more complicated and not nearly as centralized, so just the steps of getting access to the local phone lines, let alone tracing a call, was a more arduous, time-consuming process.
The Lake stabbings are staggering in how close to reality and how creepy they are. The guy survived the stabbings if y'all didn't get that (you called it "murders at the beach" at some point I think). 17:10 "It's a good thing he didn't lock the doors" If the car had manual locks, he'd have to have reached over her and pushed the little lock tee down, which would have alerted her as soon as he did it. It seems power locks are older than I knew, but they weren't common on any cars I ran into back in the day.
@@thegrimreaper990 He deliberately let the man live so he could give a description to the police. He wanted the notoriety and for the police to know what they were dealing with,
I could be misremembering things but I believed that David Fincher had some of the actors playing the Zodiac suspects in the movie play the zodiac killer in the attack scenes. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and cemented David Fincher as one of my favorite directors! If you want more from him I would go Panic Room, or Social Network.
Panic Room was ALSO from him? 😅 Damn, he's my favorite director of all time and even I don't know every of his credits. Social Network is also one of my favorite movies. Considering I had ZERO interest in its subject matter. Panic Room was also great. Of course there is still stuff like Fight Club. I think literally the only movie he made that I didn't love was Alien 3. But that was the studio's fault, not his....
The Zodiac killer was a constant existential threat when I was growing up where I lived (Vallejo). Any time you tried to run off somewhere for fun it was, "Don't get too far away or the Zodiac killer will get you" lol I used to go to that park all the time in the opening sequence too. The IHOP building is still there too.
my interpretation of the basement scene and the whole meeting with that guy is that even a perfectly innocent meeting with someone you already know and spoke with before can become impossible because of the extreme paranoia that obsessing over something like this would cause. You would never be able to feel safe around anyone at all.
Funny story but my grandpa actually lived in the bay area his whole life and was interrogated multiple times under suspicion of being the zodiac killer. He matched the police sketches down to the glasses and pet dog. It was a strange time for them apparently even just living in the area. People feared the zodiac killer so much that when their house was under construction, and as such it didn't have a door, my grandpa and grandma would take turns staying up at night to be sure no one would sneak in.
What is his name so i can avoid him? Maybe turn him in even. Cause i 100% know it was your grandfather. And sounds like you sre being blinded by blood relations.
Same thing happened to my grandpas brother so my “great uncle”? He was in the Air Force and wore Zodiac Watches. He stopped wearing them after getting questioned. I’m glad he didn’t throw them away cuz my brothers and I inherited them. Which by the way, does anyone know if Fossil can fix a Zodiac? It hasn’t ticked since before I was born
Keep in mind that this movie is based on Graysmith's book and he was convinced that Allen did it so the movie tries to frame it that way. I love Fincher's movies but he's never been concerned with historical accuracy and has even straight up said it's "irrelevant" to him. Graysmith takes a lot of what the Zodiac "revealed" about himself in the cyphers as gospel. But only the parts that fit his theory. He doesn't mention the parts that don't. For instance, in one cypher Zodiac says he's encoded his name. That cypher was never decoded, but we know that whatever name is encoded there is too long to be Allen's. The police did manage to get a partial DNA sample of the Zodiac in the early 2000s from an envelope he sent one of the letters in. It did not match Allen. In 2022 using much more advanced techniques they managed to get a much more complete sample from another envelope. It matched the first sample, in other words not Allen. One thing I've learned from following true crimes and seeing so many decades-old ones being solved with DNA: There's always a guy the police are sure did it because he fits the clues so perfectly like Allen does here that you can't see it being anyone else. And it almost always is someone else. In this movie we have the guy Graysmith thinks did it. Most people who follow this case and have seen all the evidence think Richard Gaikowski did it (his nickname "Gyke" is literally in one of the decoded cyphers, the dispatcher positively identified his voice as the Zodiac's, among A LOT more evidence, so much that he fits even better than Allen!). Detective Narlow also has a different guy he's absolutely sure did it. Other detectives are "sure" of still more people. That's common in these cases and when one of them is solved by DNA it's almost never anyone who was ever suspected. Maybe one day we'll find a match for the DNA sample. But probably not. We'll likely never know
After watching this movie recently I looked up Allen on google only to find that FBI had finally identified the real Zodiac. It said Gary F. Poste was the killer. But that us just what I got from google.
@@Hater20X That's just what a group of knuckleheads on the internet claimed to try and get publicity. They have previously claimed to have solved the DB Cooper and Jimmy Hoffa cases as well. The FBI was not involved and the police have laughed off their claims. They don't have much evidence for it either. Certainly nothing like the amount of evidence pointing to Allen, much less the mountains of evidence that points to Gaikowski "You're all wrong, this new guy is the Zodiac" is a common occurrence. So far nobody's come up with anything credible after Allen and Gaikowski
There may have been two killers or at least two people working together, maybe not both doing the actual physical killing. This has probably been speculated on; I don't follow true crime. But I have seen Scream!
Bullshit. Fincher's one of the greatest directors out there. Of course he and his team made sure to get all the relevant facts. And the facts are that a lot more pointed to Allan than any other suspect. Also, source on that statement of him saying historical accuracy is irrelevant? I seriously doubt those were his exact words and that they were said in the context you're implying.
As for the DNA thing, all it takes is someone else touching the envelope (postal workers, anyone) for there not to be a match 🤷♂️ It doesn't rule out Allan in the slightest.
A movie about murder that's really a movie about obsession. What a great film. I don't know if you'd do it for the channel but there's an incredible Korean film called Memories of Murder that has a similar vibe. It's by Bong Joon-Ho, the director of Parasite. Highly recommended.
Memories of Murder is imo one of the very best films of the '00s decade (which as far as I can tell was a weak decade for film overall). I also put an Australian Western called the Proposition in the same category. The lake scene here in Zodiac is one of the most truly violent scenes ever filmed imo, and phenomenally demonstrates how sound can make something like this extremely graphic - using 'natural' Foley sounds, as opposed to eg. Psycho which uses its musical score to punctuate violence in the same way (idk why I try to be generalised and say 'violence' - stabbing, I'm talking about stabbing with a mfing knife). I agree with what Simone says about stabbing - I'm a LOT more scared of being stabbed than being shot, even though I assume being shot is more lethal
Fincher gets the feel of that time period so well. My family and I moved to SF in 78 and this captures the period so well. I know Fincher grew up in the north bay in the late 60s and remembers when the bus threat came out.
When I saw this back in 2007, I became obsessed with this case. I read both of Graysmith's books. I've the case files, watched so many old news reports. It's tragic that the families of the victims never had any justice for their loved ones. As a California native, I still get emotional whenever I pass my some of the murder sites. I pass by them all the time whenever I'm in the Bay Area. I have been to each location where someone died. It's an eerie feel to be there. Especially when it gets dark.
I went to the military institute that he stole the cipher book he used from. It was really eerie, especially since the interior of the library basically looks like a time capsule from the 60s save for the computers.
@Chris-ci8vs While it was obviously one person, you have no basis to think it was Allen conclusively, let alone obnoxiously act like it's a fact. There are several prominent suspects, some of whom are just as compelling as Allen, though with everything about the case, it's all purely circumstantial. The movie is based on Graysmith's book, which is known to be sensationalized, and at times flat-out b.s. Graysmith makes these huge, baffling leaps in logic, quotes people as saying things they never said, and contrives the narrative to fit his conclusion. It seems a lot of the time, most who think it was Allen (I'm not entirely dismissing him, but I never felt him compelling either; I have no strong opinion on who the suspect might be) have only ever seen the movie, bought into its narrative, and have done zero research on the case itself, particularly in regards to the suspects. Most of the narrative against Allen come from Don Cheney, who's far from reliable, not at all like how the movie dishonestly portrays - we know Cheney had it our for Allen (he had filed a report claiming Allen tried to molest his kid, as Allen was of course a well known predator) so Cheney had every motive to screw him (Cheney didn't say anything that wasn't already widely printed in the papers). The book makes for a compelling read, but everything Graysmith writes needs to be taken with a grain of salt; and the movie (much as I love it) is less than accurate and is likewise told through Graysmith's biased perspective.
So... This movie also ironically gave people tunnel vision for a while. It was almost certainly _not_ Allen. There are still popular theories on the who, but to my knowledge, they don't _know._ I suspect it was originally the dude suspected because of his proximity to the library worker college lady. As far as the ciphers go, the 340/Z340 Cipher wasn't solved until a couple years ago. He would do things like spell paradise as "paradice", and as you know the christmas/christmass thing. But if you want to see the considered solution, you can find it w a search. You can also, if interested, search the likely perpetrators based on other people's mini obsession. It is most certainly a complex puzzle. Especially because of how many false threads there are. Which letters are real? Fake? Was it one guy? More? If so, did they work together? Or was he taking credit for stuff he didn't do? Was he military/a military geek? Would explain the code stuff mixed with the spelling. Both seemingly a genius but maybe just dumb lucky. Or a serial ender with more than one name? Iirc, people thought he could've been the Golden State ridder of people. Also reminds me, you guys should do 7 Psychopaths. Great movie. It's like the modern Jack The Ripper case.
Aside from Zodiac being a great suspenseful thriller, the amazing thing is how close to real life this thing is. It's so meticoulously accurate (at least in depicting real-life locations, timing, dialogue, down to the clothing, not saying of anything Graysmith claims or speculates, although it's also very faithful to the book) that it's goddamn impressive on itself.
No other movie has made me actually contemplate and fear being stabbed the way Zodiac did. The movie never shies away from the violence but that whole scene at Lake Berryessa is on another level
Tracing a phone call is almost immediate in modern digital-switching systems. In the 1960s they had to manually trace the call across multiple analog switch connections, which took finite time.
I was a little kid living about two hours away from San Francisco when this was happening. It was constantly on the radio and people were seriously scared.
This reminds me that I FINALLY have to watch this film. Been meaning to forever but kept just not doing it. I was a kid when the Zodiac Killer was in the news and it terrified me. Would love to see the behind-the-scenes of the investigation.
Fincher's made a couple of great, obscure choices for actors in roles that you wouldn't think would work but they do. Meatloaf in Fight Club, Timberlake in Social Network and Tyler Perry in Gone Girl for example.
Lee definitely wasn't the Zodiac. But Dave and Robert were both obsessively convinced that he was, because of all the circumstantial evidence. Really, it's the best way to handle a film about a killer who was never identified. Since you can't reveal the killer's identity at the end, you spend the whole film revealing the obsessions of the people trying to catch him.
There's a crazy behind the scenes moment on the Blu/DVD where Gyllenhaal and the BTS camera person are making a bet on how many takes a certain scene will require (director David Fincher is infamous for requiring an insane number of takes sometimes). Gyllenhaal guesses something like 17 or 18 but it ends up taking 30 something. What's really insane is that the scene is just his hand dropping the characters' sketch book on his car seat with the book open to a certain page. This type of shot is called an "insert shot" and is almost always filmed using a stand-in (often weeks or months later) since you only see the characters' hand. But for some reason Fincher wanted Gyllenhaal there to film the scene...
Yeah the instant moment you place a phone call it can be traced and pin pointed to your exact location the second the call is made. It has been this way since the mid 80s. Prior to this there did need to be about 60 seconds but that was so that telephone switch operators could manually connect the circuits as they were manually switched in the pre digital era
Great watching along with your reaction as always. Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network all were mentioned in the comments, but there’s a criminally underrated and under appreciated film in Fincher’s body of work … and that is The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. I think you guys would be mesmerized by that film 😵💫😵💫😵💫
To this day, no one knows who the Zodiac is. The last Zodiac cypher was cracked about 5 years ago by an FBI supercomputer. Unfortunately it didn’t lead them anywhere.
This is one of my favorite movies, even though Graysmith’s book was largely debunked, the film is a great exploration of the effect Zodiac had on the Bay area at the time, and the fascination people have with the case. But Allen has been ruled out by subsequent investigations.
The key to the movie is the tagline - "There's more than one way to lose your life to a killer." It's a great line; the movie isn't about who the murderer is at all. If you come away thinking 'I'm so glad they definitely figured out who the killer was' then you might have watched it wrong
This movie was based off the book written by Graysmith, who is more inserted into the story and made into a character than in actuality to represent the obsession with the case. The story makes Leigh seem like a slam dunk suspect but it isnt as clear cut as the movie makes it seem. Handwriting evidence is also not conclusive evidence, its like a lie-detector test or witness statements. We need DNA evidence, fingerprints, victim belongings, etc.
I love that George mentioned listening to a lot of Simon Whistler! I recently discovered his channels and I listen to them all the time now. Dude’s hilarious.
First, this movie was great with how it deceived you with multiple suspects and actors to throw you off, just like with how difficult it was to find the real killer in the real life case. Second, George said the woman and baby were lucky that the Zodiac didn't lock her in which allowed her to jump out and escape. However, back then not many cars had automatic door locks that could be controlled by the driver. Also, even the ones that did could be unlocked by the passenger anyway, so she could have escaped just as easily. Lastly, another great Jake Gyllenhaal thriller I'd recommend is "Prisoners" with Hugh Jackman and Paul Dano. Great stories and .emotional roles.
I’m from Sacramento and we still talk about zodiac here to this day. My parents were around when it all happened and we talk about it some. This movie though…it’s my favorite movie of all time. Not because of the graphic nature of it. But for the dialogue and having someone different portray the zodiac every time they’re on screen. Leaves you guessing. Keeps you intrigued. Makes you infatuated in what’s happening and that you want a resolution so bad, will you believe it to be true if it was right in front of you. Such a class act in dialogue. I want to be an author/screen writer and I always come back to this movie to see how setups are done. Just so well done. Nothing feels botched or bloated. Every scene just flows and it’s just so well crafted. Every performance is just 👨🏻🍳💋
Generally, as i understand, keeping them on the line gives the authoritys time to close in on the known loacation of the call. As long as theyre on the line you KNOW exactly where they are standing as you get to the location
Absolutely one of my all-time favorite movies. There's something about this specific portrait of obsession that will just always resonate with me, and Gyllenhaal is the perfect actor to portray it.
16:31 This moment right here.... Oh god.... 🤤 This should be taught at film schools all over the world. It's one of my favorite scenes of all time. The way the sound completely drowns, it teaches brilliantly how you could also create shock and terror with complete silence! It's GENIOUS!!! 😍
One of the best thrillers ever! Criminally underappreciated! I really wish more people had watched this on the big screen, but it came out around the same time as 300, so competition was kinda hard haha
36:28 - Don't ask me why, but I found that basement scene to be even more terrifying when I learned that the actor, Charles Fleischer, voiced Roger Rabbit.
Fun Fact Simone: the real Melvin Belli, the white haired attorney portrayed in this movie, played the "Friendly Angel" in an episode of Star Trek (TOS).
Fun fact, only Canada requires daytime non-switchable running lights. All vehicles produced or imported to Canada have to have them, but American produced, not for import vehicles don’t. I once had a Civic built in Canada and it had them and I always thought it was weird until I looked up the law and why it was like that.
Fun Fact: We can see the Zodiacs prior victims (Bryan C. Hartnell) in the courthouse scene when Mark Ruffalo is talking up the stairs to Dermot Mulroney
A great movie with an all-star cast. I remember my mom being fascinated with the Zodiac when I was a kid. I didn't realize it until I saw a documentary about Zodiac when I was in my 20s. There are a lot of good documentaries on Zodiac out there though.
Two things. Unless you are driving a different sort of car Simone, I have a less than 5 year old Chevy and can shut off my lights from the indicator light stem. As for the time to trace a call consider when this happened. Today you don't need to stay on the line at all, and that's been the case since back in the days when touch tone phones became the norm. That is due to the switching being purely electronic. To the point as long as the person receiving the call stayed on the line it could be traced. However in the late 60s and 70s when rotary phones were state of the art, those exchanges were mechanical and when either side hung up the mechanical switches reset. Tracing a call was a matter of physically checking the connections. THAT is when you needed to stay on the line for a frighteningly long time.
In the last couple decades Graysmisths book has pretty much been torn to pieces for innacuracies and wild assumptions. Then there's the guy who wrote about it being his dad, and David Gold says it was Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin Bros, it's just a mess at this point. It'll never be definitively solved.
I was born & raised in the Bay Area in the 70’s & 80’s, and between the Zodiac Killer, the Golden State Killer, and a Richard Ramirez, we were always a bit on edge.
I like that they had different actors playing the killer during the murder scenes. The actor's bodies fit the descriptions of what the killer looked like based on witness accounts.
Digital phone system is instant , you know who phones before you answer the phone , like with mobile phones . Mechanical analog phone centers , you had to physically track the call , they replaced human operated switchboards with automated ones . Old switchboard system , there operator had to plug your phone line to who ever you called , less phones , less options , easier to figure out .
@4:20 a good reason not to publish these codes is that it will set a precedent where any copycat or prankster will demand things be put into the newspaper or else they will threaten to do something, serious or not.
17:51 Zodiac watches are actually alive and well today. They're an old, old watch brand from the 1800s and were popular during this time period for their dive watches. Like all watch companies, sales dropped after the introduction of quartz movement and digital watches. And Zodiac did experience a rough time in the 90s unique to them, but it was mostly due to a new executive (who formerly worked at Tag Heuer) taking the company and its watch designs in a bad direction and bankrupting it. The brand got picked up by a conglomerate afterwards and went back to its older designs. As far as I'm aware, the company never received any negative press or sales drops specifically from being associated with the killer.
Simone...every car and truck NOW can completely turn off their headlights. There's on Off/Auto/On options. In auto the headlights will stay on. But a simple turn of the switch to off, will completely turn them off.
I grew up in the bay area and this movie gave me such powerful nostalgia it was insane. It came out the same year I had to leave the state to take care of a family member with a health issue so that probably magnified it a bit. When I was little I went with my cousin several times to that same Ace hardware store that is shown in the film as where Allen worked but I don't know if they used the same one the the exterior shot. I do know that when I saw an old news report about him as an old man I was about 80% I recognized him from when I was little. Which is kinda creepy when you know what he did with kids. Not convinced he was the Zodiac but there was either a ton of coincidence involved or he actively tried to court that attention.
When folks dive into this mystery, they end up having favorites and villains - who may or may not be The Killer! This is a fascinating movie not because it 'solves' the crime (it doesn't) or because the author/filmmakers point to the wrong guy (fans boo, critics cheer) but because it follows an investigator that no other authors or filmmakers have done. Oh yeah... let's not forget they made up some of the investigation details...ahem. I wish there were more dancing girls, personally.
12:00 The whole "keep them on the line for x amount of time"-trope is no longer a thing, but it used to be. Nowadays you can track a call before you even answer the phone, but back in the late 60s the whole process had to be done manually and would take quite bit of time.
Back in the 60s it took 15 min to trace calls...u have to remember there was no such thing as fiber optics, or computers that they had access to, so everything was done thru electrical signal thru land lines
I was a little kid, about six, during the height of the Zodiak murders. I lived in San Carlos, which is a bit south of SF. This was all over the news, and everyone was talking about it, to the point where even kids my age were very aware (so far as we could comprehend) of what was going on. After the threat against schoolbuses, word went around among the kids in my school that there were shotguns hidden under the schoolbuses. I'm sure that wasn't true, but you know, it's the sort of thing kids would come up with. My friends and I all had completely non-workable plans for catching the Zodiak killer, which were fun to talk about, although looking back, it would've been a creepy scene to put into the movie -- have one or two of the major characters listening in on a couple of little kids talk about how they'd catch the killer. o_O This was an era where a lot of kids walked to school by themselves, and a lot of parents (including my mom, who walked to school with me for the rest of the school year) started walking or driving their kids. Things died down, and he never did go after any schoolkids, so when I started second grade, I was walking by myself or with some friends my age again. I guess my point is that this was a *huge* thing in the Bay Area while it was going on. I wasn't aware of the machinations shown in the movie, because I was six, but the basics were just soaked into the culture for a while. Trivia: Melvin Belli was a very famous lawyer back then -- everyone would've recognized his name, then and for decades after. He died before he could play himself in the movie, but he had a bit part in the original Star Trek series, in *And the Children Shall Lead,* as well as a few other acting gigs.
Cool Hand Luke (1967)- Paul Newman 😎 Papillon (1973)- Steve McQueen / Dustin Hoffman🦋 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)- Paul Newman / Robert Redford🤠
One thing, Fincher used a different person when he depicted attacks so the audience never quite got a bead on exactly what they looked like, were built, etc... And they only depicted the ones in which someone survived or witnessed it to describe it.
On the 15 minutes needed to be on the phone to trace the call back to the dialer. This is definitely not the case anymore & has not been for quite some time. However, up until the late 1970s through mid 1980s [depending on where you lived as different places adopted the newer tech at different times,] it did in fact take some amount of time of a call being connected in order to trace it back to the caller. Because phone calls phones that were ultimately connected directly with one another for the voice transmission to reach the other phone(s) via a series of switches at phone exchanges [& go far enough back & people had to mechanically connect lines at switchboards.] So to run the connection back through the switches took a certain period of time & if the call ended before they were done tracing it back down the line the switches would disconnect the lines in order to connect other calls to each other. Now, there was no standard period of time it would take to trace calls back. It might be just a few minutes or it could take 20 minutes... it just depended on the type of switches the connection went through & the number of switches that the connection had to go through. Local calls were quicker to trace than long-distance ones for example.
I looked up call tracing. It's digital today so it's all immediately traceable as soon as the call happens. But according to an article I read "Back in the bell-bottomed pre-digital 1970s, telephone switchboards required operators to manually connect circuits, leaving the cops to cool their heels for 10 to 20 minutes while Ma Bell pinpointed the caller's location."
"I could watch an entire movie of people just, like, figuring stuff out like that." "Lone Star" from 1996, with Matthew McConaghey and Chris Cooper is intriguing like that.
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One of Jake’s first staring roles was a silly romantic comedy called “bubble boy” and John carrol lynch (Arthur Leigh Allen) played jake’s father.
The basement scene is a true horror scene, genuinely have never felt so uncomfortable watching a scene because there's no jump scares, no digital effects, just pure, slow burning terror.
Also, I love that every time Zodiac appears and speaks, it's always a different person and different voice since they never caught him and couldn't know what he looked or sounded like.
The actor playing the scary old man in that scene is Charles Fleischer. He is most famous for being the voice of Roger Rabbit!
@@samqualls1339 That’s even scarier
Agree 100% with your opinion of the basement scene.
It always felt like to me, that when he smirked a bit after saying goodnight, that he deliberately tryna scare him, in a trolling way.
really? in my country's version they used the same VA for all of the zodiac's scenes so you knew who it was from the moment the actor who plays Allen is first on screen
Cool detail: David Fincher only filmed the murder scenes where someone survived or witnessed what happened.
And used a different body double and voice actor for every "encounter" on top of that too, right?
@@WreckingWood I believe you're right on that
On the Taxi scene David Fincher actually used to live near there, so it has some personal relevance to him doing that scene.
@@Neyenn you're right, David Fincher was attracted to the project because it was personal - he remembered as a kid taking the school bus with police cars trailing behind after the Zodiac threatened to blow up school buses.
I think it's really important that the last coda of the movie says that none of the DNA matches Allen.
It's a film about obsession and about the frustration of not getting someone. The fascination we have with serial killers and the duty people have with giving people closure.
Also two fun facts: The Zodiac is played by a different actor in every scene he appears and the man with the basement is the voice of Roger Rabbit.
So Roger Rabbit is the killer?
Didn't they figure out who it was a few years ago? And do you know if Allen was really this sketchy? I can't remember what I've read over the years lol
The only DNA they had was on a stamp so whatever DNA was on that stamp could have belonged to the postman, the carrier or any other number of people. Also in the bay area at the time a lot of people used those little things that were a tray with water and a wheel that you'd put a stamp on to get it wet. Additionally there's a part in Graysmith's book about how Allen would constantly have other people lick stamps for him. I'm not convinced Allen was the zodiac but I've never thought the DNA in this particular case was very convincing. The argument that is usually made about it is that DNA testing didn't exist at the time so there was no reason to try to avoid getting your DNA on something but there was blood type testing and if you're doing something that high stakes while at the same time taunting the investigators I think it's reasonable to assume you'd go as far as you could to avoid any potential links to yourself.
Clearly he was framed once again
@@d3l3tes00n Every few years someone announces they've solved it. As to Allen being sketchy he was in Atescadero State Hospital for child molestation and was released but had to report to a probation officer. He showed up to the meeting holding the hand of a small child.
I believe it was Roger Ebert who said something along the lines of, "There is nothing more thrilling to watch on screen than professionals who are really, really good at their job." This is one of those movies. Watching great actors playing competent professionals is just endlessly enjoyable.
Ironic because they were playing characters that however skilled they were, messed up their job by failing to catch zodiac.
@@jimmy2k4o In the movie, one of the characters says, they know who the killer is, but they can't prove it in court. Arthur was suspected till the year of his death. Recently, people close to him have provided more details on how he was close to all murder sites when they were with him. It's all circumstantial. Plus his handwriting and prints were in the clear, which are hardcore evidence of someone being the killer
One of the things this movie really showcases is how rare, awkward, and difficult interdepartmental cooperation was in the 60s. Zodiac killed in several different jurisdictions, and even though they were all within a fairly small area of the country, the police weren't sharing information with each other, which made it much easier for him to elude capture.
Also a lot of people in this departments thought there were several serial killers when in fact it was just one person. Communication was very bad back then.
@@Jar0fMay0I also think that the zodiac murdered a lot more people, if you look at other serial killers they always started with people who wouldn’t be missed, like prostituts or people who live on the streets,
Back then nobody cared if a homeless man went missing or a prostitut,
And someone like zodiac who murdered with such violence murdered before,
My guess is 10-15, more or less, who ever this guy was, he wasn’t stupid.
The "stay on the line" thing for tracing a call is based on old equipment at the phone exchanges. The operator had to manually trace the route between the two phones in order to see where it was coming from, so it was a very real thing. With more modern computerized exchanges it is no longer needed. A great movie that shows the process is "Three Days of the Condor".
John carroll lynch is very underrated. To both pull off this unsettling performance and also the unbelievably sweet and charming norm gunderson is pretty incredible
True, they look exactly the same but are two entirely different people
He’s very funny too.
He played jake gylenhaal’s father in “bubble boy” one of jake’s first films.
Norm "Son of a" Gunderson
Man I hope Prisoners is on the watch list eventually, I don't even wanna mention why but I feel like you guys would enjoy it.
Oh Yeah most certainly...
I hope " Knives Out" is also on their list.
Yes, must see!
Top notch acting and sooo gripping
Yes pleeeeeeeeease watch Prisoners one of the best, and most criminally underseen films of all time
Yes! One of my favorite movies!
Forreal. Really enjoyed that one. Weird I watched prisoners for the first time a few years ago, then i watched zodiac the next night
The scene where he stabs the couple at the lake is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen.
very disturbing.
I wonder why stabbings feel so painful for us to watch. A bullet can really mess you up on the inside, plus they buuurn!
Yes it's very uneventful in term of hollywood treatment yet realistic 💀
I usually skip over that. Her screams are spine chilling.
The guy who survived that attack said it looked exactly like what he saw & experienced.
It's scary to know that this actually happened back in the late 60's, early '70's. When the movie, DIRTY HARRY was released, it was loosely based on the Zodiac Killings.
what's interesting as well is that Toschi, the main detective in charge of the investigation after Stine was shot, was already famous as a really good detective, the classic movie Bullitt has its main character modeled after him which brought, among other things, the idea of a weapon holster on your chest which is something Toschi came up with during his work and copied by the main actor of the movie McQueen
About two years ago David Oranchak solved the 340 cipher on his YT channel. Absolutely fascinating series if you're into puzzles and/or computer science.
The whole 'You have to keep them on the phone line for 15 minutes' thing is real. Nowadays doing a phone trace is pretty instant, true, but back then it was different. The system in use at the time was a lot more complicated and not nearly as centralized, so just the steps of getting access to the local phone lines, let alone tracing a call, was a more arduous, time-consuming process.
The Lake stabbings are staggering in how close to reality and how creepy they are. The guy survived the stabbings if y'all didn't get that (you called it "murders at the beach" at some point I think).
17:10 "It's a good thing he didn't lock the doors" If the car had manual locks, he'd have to have reached over her and pushed the little lock tee down, which would have alerted her as soon as he did it. It seems power locks are older than I knew, but they weren't common on any cars I ran into back in the day.
It is interesting how he did survive that. That son of a gun was smart as fuck...
@@thegrimreaper990 He deliberately let the man live so he could give a description to the police. He wanted the notoriety and for the police to know what they were dealing with,
There was no guarantee that the men would live. They were attacked with no one around and could have easily bled out
I could be misremembering things but I believed that David Fincher had some of the actors playing the Zodiac suspects in the movie play the zodiac killer in the attack scenes.
This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and cemented David Fincher as one of my favorite directors! If you want more from him I would go Panic Room, or Social Network.
Best of fincher is se7en
Panic Room was ALSO from him? 😅
Damn, he's my favorite director of all time and even I don't know every of his credits.
Social Network is also one of my favorite movies. Considering I had ZERO interest in its subject matter.
Panic Room was also great. Of course there is still stuff like Fight Club.
I think literally the only movie he made that I didn't love was Alien 3. But that was the studio's fault, not his....
@@Pennywise-hn5qw maybe but they have already seen it I think.
The Zodiac killer was a constant existential threat when I was growing up where I lived (Vallejo). Any time you tried to run off somewhere for fun it was, "Don't get too far away or the Zodiac killer will get you" lol
I used to go to that park all the time in the opening sequence too.
The IHOP building is still there too.
my interpretation of the basement scene and the whole meeting with that guy is that even a perfectly innocent meeting with someone you already know and spoke with before can become impossible because of the extreme paranoia that obsessing over something like this would cause. You would never be able to feel safe around anyone at all.
Funny story but my grandpa actually lived in the bay area his whole life and was interrogated multiple times under suspicion of being the zodiac killer. He matched the police sketches down to the glasses and pet dog. It was a strange time for them apparently even just living in the area. People feared the zodiac killer so much that when their house was under construction, and as such it didn't have a door, my grandpa and grandma would take turns staying up at night to be sure no one would sneak in.
Fascinating story. Not so much "funny", I would say ;)
What is his name so i can avoid him? Maybe turn him in even. Cause i 100% know it was your grandfather. And sounds like you sre being blinded by blood relations.
Same thing happened to my grandpas brother so my “great uncle”? He was in the Air Force and wore Zodiac Watches. He stopped wearing them after getting questioned. I’m glad he didn’t throw them away cuz my brothers and I inherited them. Which by the way, does anyone know if Fossil can fix a Zodiac? It hasn’t ticked since before I was born
Your grandpa was the zodiac killer. You ever see him and the zodiac in the same room at the same time? Solved.
@@xxsgt_stadinko I don't know about Fossil fixing zodiacs but Wristwatch revival on YT might want to fix a zodiac
Keep in mind that this movie is based on Graysmith's book and he was convinced that Allen did it so the movie tries to frame it that way. I love Fincher's movies but he's never been concerned with historical accuracy and has even straight up said it's "irrelevant" to him. Graysmith takes a lot of what the Zodiac "revealed" about himself in the cyphers as gospel. But only the parts that fit his theory. He doesn't mention the parts that don't. For instance, in one cypher Zodiac says he's encoded his name. That cypher was never decoded, but we know that whatever name is encoded there is too long to be Allen's.
The police did manage to get a partial DNA sample of the Zodiac in the early 2000s from an envelope he sent one of the letters in. It did not match Allen. In 2022 using much more advanced techniques they managed to get a much more complete sample from another envelope. It matched the first sample, in other words not Allen.
One thing I've learned from following true crimes and seeing so many decades-old ones being solved with DNA: There's always a guy the police are sure did it because he fits the clues so perfectly like Allen does here that you can't see it being anyone else. And it almost always is someone else. In this movie we have the guy Graysmith thinks did it. Most people who follow this case and have seen all the evidence think Richard Gaikowski did it (his nickname "Gyke" is literally in one of the decoded cyphers, the dispatcher positively identified his voice as the Zodiac's, among A LOT more evidence, so much that he fits even better than Allen!). Detective Narlow also has a different guy he's absolutely sure did it. Other detectives are "sure" of still more people. That's common in these cases and when one of them is solved by DNA it's almost never anyone who was ever suspected.
Maybe one day we'll find a match for the DNA sample. But probably not. We'll likely never know
After watching this movie recently I looked up Allen on google only to find that FBI had finally identified the real Zodiac. It said Gary F. Poste was the killer. But that us just what I got from google.
@@Hater20X That's just what a group of knuckleheads on the internet claimed to try and get publicity. They have previously claimed to have solved the DB Cooper and Jimmy Hoffa cases as well. The FBI was not involved and the police have laughed off their claims. They don't have much evidence for it either. Certainly nothing like the amount of evidence pointing to Allen, much less the mountains of evidence that points to Gaikowski
"You're all wrong, this new guy is the Zodiac" is a common occurrence. So far nobody's come up with anything credible after Allen and Gaikowski
There may have been two killers or at least two people working together, maybe not both doing the actual physical killing. This has probably been speculated on; I don't follow true crime. But I have seen Scream!
Bullshit. Fincher's one of the greatest directors out there. Of course he and his team made sure to get all the relevant facts. And the facts are that a lot more pointed to Allan than any other suspect. Also, source on that statement of him saying historical accuracy is irrelevant? I seriously doubt those were his exact words and that they were said in the context you're implying.
As for the DNA thing, all it takes is someone else touching the envelope (postal workers, anyone) for there not to be a match 🤷♂️ It doesn't rule out Allan in the slightest.
The Melvin Belli/Zodiac interview is on TH-cam. Pretty well reenacted, Brian Cox did a great job portraying Belli.
A movie about murder that's really a movie about obsession. What a great film.
I don't know if you'd do it for the channel but there's an incredible Korean film called Memories of Murder that has a similar vibe. It's by Bong Joon-Ho, the director of Parasite. Highly recommended.
Thanks for recommanding this one.
It's not very well known and it should be.
@@djazayri213 I was bowled over when I saw it. Couldn't believe how good it was and how little I'd heard about it.
I don't like Zodiac very much, but I LOVE Memories of Murder. A masterpiece.
Memories of Murder is imo one of the very best films of the '00s decade (which as far as I can tell was a weak decade for film overall). I also put an Australian Western called the Proposition in the same category. The lake scene here in Zodiac is one of the most truly violent scenes ever filmed imo, and phenomenally demonstrates how sound can make something like this extremely graphic - using 'natural' Foley sounds, as opposed to eg. Psycho which uses its musical score to punctuate violence in the same way (idk why I try to be generalised and say 'violence' - stabbing, I'm talking about stabbing with a mfing knife). I agree with what Simone says about stabbing - I'm a LOT more scared of being stabbed than being shot, even though I assume being shot is more lethal
@@helvete_ingres4717 The Proposition is fantastic 💪
Fincher gets the feel of that time period so well. My family and I moved to SF in 78 and this captures the period so well. I know Fincher grew up in the north bay in the late 60s and remembers when the bus threat came out.
When I saw this back in 2007, I became obsessed with this case. I read both of Graysmith's books. I've the case files, watched so many old news reports. It's tragic that the families of the victims never had any justice for their loved ones. As a California native, I still get emotional whenever I pass my some of the murder sites. I pass by them all the time whenever I'm in the Bay Area. I have been to each location where someone died. It's an eerie feel to be there. Especially when it gets dark.
I think, there might have been multiple Zodiac killers. And at least one of them never got caught.
I went to the military institute that he stole the cipher book he used from.
It was really eerie, especially since the interior of the library basically looks like a time capsule from the 60s save for the computers.
@@chanceneck8072 no it was all Arthur Leigh Allen.
@Chris-ci8vs While it was obviously one person, you have no basis to think it was Allen conclusively, let alone obnoxiously act like it's a fact. There are several prominent suspects, some of whom are just as compelling as Allen, though with everything about the case, it's all purely circumstantial. The movie is based on Graysmith's book, which is known to be sensationalized, and at times flat-out b.s. Graysmith makes these huge, baffling leaps in logic, quotes people as saying things they never said, and contrives the narrative to fit his conclusion. It seems a lot of the time, most who think it was Allen (I'm not entirely dismissing him, but I never felt him compelling either; I have no strong opinion on who the suspect might be) have only ever seen the movie, bought into its narrative, and have done zero research on the case itself, particularly in regards to the suspects. Most of the narrative against Allen come from Don Cheney, who's far from reliable, not at all like how the movie dishonestly portrays - we know Cheney had it our for Allen (he had filed a report claiming Allen tried to molest his kid, as Allen was of course a well known predator) so Cheney had every motive to screw him (Cheney didn't say anything that wasn't already widely printed in the papers). The book makes for a compelling read, but everything Graysmith writes needs to be taken with a grain of salt; and the movie (much as I love it) is less than accurate and is likewise told through Graysmith's biased perspective.
So... This movie also ironically gave people tunnel vision for a while. It was almost certainly _not_ Allen. There are still popular theories on the who, but to my knowledge, they don't _know._ I suspect it was originally the dude suspected because of his proximity to the library worker college lady.
As far as the ciphers go, the 340/Z340 Cipher wasn't solved until a couple years ago. He would do things like spell paradise as "paradice", and as you know the christmas/christmass thing. But if you want to see the considered solution, you can find it w a search. You can also, if interested, search the likely perpetrators based on other people's mini obsession. It is most certainly a complex puzzle. Especially because of how many false threads there are. Which letters are real? Fake? Was it one guy? More? If so, did they work together? Or was he taking credit for stuff he didn't do? Was he military/a military geek? Would explain the code stuff mixed with the spelling. Both seemingly a genius but maybe just dumb lucky. Or a serial ender with more than one name? Iirc, people thought he could've been the Golden State ridder of people.
Also reminds me, you guys should do 7 Psychopaths. Great movie.
It's like the modern Jack The Ripper case.
The double murder by the lake is legitimately one of the most horrifically affecting movie scenes I have ever seen.
Apparently very realistic
@@yvonnesanders4308 yeah it's very realistic to keep screaming at the top of one's voice when stabbed in the torso.
@@alexroxhissox It wasn't double murder. The guy survived.
@@alistairbartlett6569 That's the couple from the car. I'm talking about the couple having the picnic by the lake that he stabs.
Aside from Zodiac being a great suspenseful thriller, the amazing thing is how close to real life this thing is. It's so meticoulously accurate (at least in depicting real-life locations, timing, dialogue, down to the clothing, not saying of anything Graysmith claims or speculates, although it's also very faithful to the book) that it's goddamn impressive on itself.
You have no idea the amount of CGI this movie has. It is everywhere, look for a behind the scenes, it is incredible.
No other movie has made me actually contemplate and fear being stabbed the way Zodiac did. The movie never shies away from the violence but that whole scene at Lake Berryessa is on another level
Tracing a phone call is almost immediate in modern digital-switching systems. In the 1960s they had to manually trace the call across multiple analog switch connections, which took finite time.
3:00 Funfact. Whenever the Zodiac appears he is played by a different actor.
I was a little kid living about two hours away from San Francisco when this was happening. It was constantly on the radio and people were seriously scared.
Such a great, but often overlooked, film. I love RDJ and Jake G and Ruffalo in this. All terrific performances.
This reminds me that I FINALLY have to watch this film. Been meaning to forever but kept just not doing it. I was a kid when the Zodiac Killer was in the news and it terrified me. Would love to see the behind-the-scenes of the investigation.
This is literally my favorite film of all time. So stoked and jealous you two got to experience it for the first time.
Big shout out to Roger Rabbit for being the absolute creepiest dude in this film
Fincher's made a couple of great, obscure choices for actors in roles that you wouldn't think would work but they do. Meatloaf in Fight Club, Timberlake in Social Network and Tyler Perry in Gone Girl for example.
Timberlake wasn’t a good choice, but Harris in Gone Girl was a terrible miscast
Lee definitely wasn't the Zodiac. But Dave and Robert were both obsessively convinced that he was, because of all the circumstantial evidence. Really, it's the best way to handle a film about a killer who was never identified. Since you can't reveal the killer's identity at the end, you spend the whole film revealing the obsessions of the people trying to catch him.
I always fast forward the Lake Berryessa murder scene. That was the most gruesome part I’ve ever seen in a movie.
Simone and her knowledge or lack there of, about vehicle lights. 10/10
The guy from the very first scene is Lee Norris- aka Minkus from Boy Meets World!
There's a crazy behind the scenes moment on the Blu/DVD where Gyllenhaal and the BTS camera person are making a bet on how many takes a certain scene will require (director David Fincher is infamous for requiring an insane number of takes sometimes). Gyllenhaal guesses something like 17 or 18 but it ends up taking 30 something. What's really insane is that the scene is just his hand dropping the characters' sketch book on his car seat with the book open to a certain page. This type of shot is called an "insert shot" and is almost always filmed using a stand-in (often weeks or months later) since you only see the characters' hand. But for some reason Fincher wanted Gyllenhaal there to film the scene...
I love that they had multiple actors play the killer. Such a smart move.
Yeah the instant moment you place a phone call it can be traced and pin pointed to your exact location the second the call is made.
It has been this way since the mid 80s.
Prior to this there did need to be about 60 seconds but that was so that telephone switch operators could manually connect the circuits as they were manually switched in the pre digital era
Great watching along with your reaction as always. Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network all were mentioned in the comments, but there’s a criminally underrated and under appreciated film in Fincher’s body of work … and that is The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. I think you guys would be mesmerized by that film 😵💫😵💫😵💫
I just can't believe that Iron Man, The Hulk, and Mysterio couldn't outwit and destroy this guy...
They don't have a power back in the days lmao
Hurdy Gurdy Man has always been a creepy song. It was perfect for this flick.
I first heard its remake by the B---hole Surfers about 25 years ago. Donovan's is superior as that remake is more annoying than haunting.
To this day, no one knows who the Zodiac is. The last Zodiac cypher was cracked about 5 years ago by an FBI supercomputer. Unfortunately it didn’t lead them anywhere.
This is probably my favorite Fincher movie. Glad y'all liked it!
This is one of my favorite movies, even though Graysmith’s book was largely debunked, the film is a great exploration of the effect Zodiac had on the Bay area at the time, and the fascination people have with the case. But Allen has been ruled out by subsequent investigations.
The key to the movie is the tagline - "There's more than one way to lose your life to a killer." It's a great line; the movie isn't about who the murderer is at all. If you come away thinking 'I'm so glad they definitely figured out who the killer was' then you might have watched it wrong
George's description of the poster is like a Rorschach test.
In the Clint Eastwood movie, Dirty Harry, the killer was based on the Zodiac Killer.
12:22 that was a thing back in the old days of telephone. today they don't need any time at all. as soon as you call the got you tracked.
This movie was based off the book written by Graysmith, who is more inserted into the story and made into a character than in actuality to represent the obsession with the case. The story makes Leigh seem like a slam dunk suspect but it isnt as clear cut as the movie makes it seem. Handwriting evidence is also not conclusive evidence, its like a lie-detector test or witness statements. We need DNA evidence, fingerprints, victim belongings, etc.
The sheer amount of VFX shots in this film is what shocked me more than the subject matter
I love that George mentioned listening to a lot of Simon Whistler! I recently discovered his channels and I listen to them all the time now. Dude’s hilarious.
First, this movie was great with how it deceived you with multiple suspects and actors to throw you off, just like with how difficult it was to find the real killer in the real life case.
Second, George said the woman and baby were lucky that the Zodiac didn't lock her in which allowed her to jump out and escape. However, back then not many cars had automatic door locks that could be controlled by the driver. Also, even the ones that did could be unlocked by the passenger anyway, so she could have escaped just as easily.
Lastly, another great Jake Gyllenhaal thriller I'd recommend is "Prisoners" with Hugh Jackman and Paul Dano. Great stories and .emotional roles.
I remember what a fancy thing it was when cars got electric windows, no longer had to turn a crank.
Interesting enough, not only were Zodiac Watches NOT discontinued, but still sell today at prices ranging from $750 to over $2000 each.
i was about to say something like that. Status is still status, good or bad. Everyone likes to see a car crash
I’m from Sacramento and we still talk about zodiac here to this day. My parents were around when it all happened and we talk about it some.
This movie though…it’s my favorite movie of all time. Not because of the graphic nature of it. But for the dialogue and having someone different portray the zodiac every time they’re on screen.
Leaves you guessing. Keeps you intrigued. Makes you infatuated in what’s happening and that you want a resolution so bad, will you believe it to be true if it was right in front of you.
Such a class act in dialogue. I want to be an author/screen writer and I always come back to this movie to see how setups are done. Just so well done. Nothing feels botched or bloated. Every scene just flows and it’s just so well crafted. Every performance is just 👨🏻🍳💋
One of my favourite movies. A whodunnit where there isn’t a definitive answer. That scene in the diner with Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal is 👌🏼
Generally, as i understand, keeping them on the line gives the authoritys time to close in on the known loacation of the call. As long as theyre on the line you KNOW exactly where they are standing as you get to the location
Absolutely one of my all-time favorite movies. There's something about this specific portrait of obsession that will just always resonate with me, and Gyllenhaal is the perfect actor to portray it.
16:31 This moment right here.... Oh god.... 🤤
This should be taught at film schools all over the world.
It's one of my favorite scenes of all time. The way the sound completely drowns, it teaches brilliantly how you could also create shock and terror with complete silence! It's GENIOUS!!! 😍
One of the best thrillers ever! Criminally underappreciated! I really wish more people had watched this on the big screen, but it came out around the same time as 300, so competition was kinda hard haha
36:28 - Don't ask me why, but I found that basement scene to be even more terrifying when I learned that the actor, Charles Fleischer, voiced Roger Rabbit.
Probably in my top 10 movies of all time. Flawless.
the best fincher film imo. the beach stabbing, the baby in the car, some of his best scenes.
The invisible special effects in this movie are so well done, the CGI that recreates 1970s SF is so good that you don't even notice it.
Fun Fact Simone: the real Melvin Belli, the white haired attorney portrayed in this movie, played the "Friendly Angel" in an episode of Star Trek (TOS).
one of the greatest films of the century so far.
Fun fact, only Canada requires daytime non-switchable running lights. All vehicles produced or imported to Canada have to have them, but American produced, not for import vehicles don’t. I once had a Civic built in Canada and it had them and I always thought it was weird until I looked up the law and why it was like that.
Fun Fact: We can see the Zodiacs prior victims (Bryan C. Hartnell) in the courthouse scene when Mark Ruffalo is talking up the stairs to Dermot Mulroney
A great movie with an all-star cast. I remember my mom being fascinated with the Zodiac when I was a kid. I didn't realize it until I saw a documentary about Zodiac when I was in my 20s. There are a lot of good documentaries on Zodiac out there though.
An amazing thriller! I think that basement scene is one of the most tense I've seen.
Two things. Unless you are driving a different sort of car Simone, I have a less than 5 year old Chevy and can shut off my lights from the indicator light stem.
As for the time to trace a call consider when this happened. Today you don't need to stay on the line at all, and that's been the case since back in the days when touch tone phones became the norm. That is due to the switching being purely electronic. To the point as long as the person receiving the call stayed on the line it could be traced.
However in the late 60s and 70s when rotary phones were state of the art, those exchanges were mechanical and when either side hung up the mechanical switches reset. Tracing a call was a matter of physically checking the connections. THAT is when you needed to stay on the line for a frighteningly long time.
In the last couple decades Graysmisths book has pretty much been torn to pieces for innacuracies and wild assumptions. Then there's the guy who wrote about it being his dad, and David Gold says it was Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin Bros, it's just a mess at this point. It'll never be definitively solved.
I was born & raised in the Bay Area in the 70’s & 80’s, and between the Zodiac Killer, the Golden State Killer, and a Richard Ramirez, we were always a bit on edge.
I like that they had different actors playing the killer during the murder scenes. The actor's bodies fit the descriptions of what the killer looked like based on witness accounts.
Digital phone system is instant , you know who phones before you answer the phone , like with mobile phones .
Mechanical analog phone centers , you had to physically track the call , they replaced human operated switchboards with automated ones .
Old switchboard system , there operator had to plug your phone line to who ever you called , less phones , less options , easier to figure out .
@4:20 a good reason not to publish these codes is that it will set a precedent where any copycat or prankster will demand things be put into the newspaper or else they will threaten to do something, serious or not.
i remember this when it happened, and the thing that scared me was that the killer was never caught...
17:51 Zodiac watches are actually alive and well today. They're an old, old watch brand from the 1800s and were popular during this time period for their dive watches. Like all watch companies, sales dropped after the introduction of quartz movement and digital watches. And Zodiac did experience a rough time in the 90s unique to them, but it was mostly due to a new executive (who formerly worked at Tag Heuer) taking the company and its watch designs in a bad direction and bankrupting it. The brand got picked up by a conglomerate afterwards and went back to its older designs. As far as I'm aware, the company never received any negative press or sales drops specifically from being associated with the killer.
Simone...every car and truck NOW can completely turn off their headlights. There's on Off/Auto/On options. In auto the headlights will stay on. But a simple turn of the switch to off, will completely turn them off.
I grew up in the bay area and this movie gave me such powerful nostalgia it was insane. It came out the same year I had to leave the state to take care of a family member with a health issue so that probably magnified it a bit. When I was little I went with my cousin several times to that same Ace hardware store that is shown in the film as where Allen worked but I don't know if they used the same one the the exterior shot. I do know that when I saw an old news report about him as an old man I was about 80% I recognized him from when I was little. Which is kinda creepy when you know what he did with kids. Not convinced he was the Zodiac but there was either a ton of coincidence involved or he actively tried to court that attention.
When folks dive into this mystery, they end up having favorites and villains - who may or may not be The Killer! This is a fascinating movie not because it 'solves' the crime (it doesn't) or because the author/filmmakers point to the wrong guy (fans boo, critics cheer) but because it follows an investigator that no other authors or filmmakers have done. Oh yeah... let's not forget they made up some of the investigation details...ahem. I wish there were more dancing girls, personally.
Cars certainly have the option to turn off headlights today.
12:00 The whole "keep them on the line for x amount of time"-trope is no longer a thing, but it used to be. Nowadays you can track a call before you even answer the phone, but back in the late 60s the whole process had to be done manually and would take quite bit of time.
Back in the 60s it took 15 min to trace calls...u have to remember there was no such thing as fiber optics, or computers that they had access to, so everything was done thru electrical signal thru land lines
David Fincher is my #1 all time favorite director and he sure as hell deserved that spot! 😍🥰
Fincher is just on another level, his camera movements are mesmerizing
I was a little kid, about six, during the height of the Zodiak murders. I lived in San Carlos, which is a bit south of SF. This was all over the news, and everyone was talking about it, to the point where even kids my age were very aware (so far as we could comprehend) of what was going on. After the threat against schoolbuses, word went around among the kids in my school that there were shotguns hidden under the schoolbuses. I'm sure that wasn't true, but you know, it's the sort of thing kids would come up with. My friends and I all had completely non-workable plans for catching the Zodiak killer, which were fun to talk about, although looking back, it would've been a creepy scene to put into the movie -- have one or two of the major characters listening in on a couple of little kids talk about how they'd catch the killer. o_O This was an era where a lot of kids walked to school by themselves, and a lot of parents (including my mom, who walked to school with me for the rest of the school year) started walking or driving their kids. Things died down, and he never did go after any schoolkids, so when I started second grade, I was walking by myself or with some friends my age again.
I guess my point is that this was a *huge* thing in the Bay Area while it was going on. I wasn't aware of the machinations shown in the movie, because I was six, but the basics were just soaked into the culture for a while.
Trivia: Melvin Belli was a very famous lawyer back then -- everyone would've recognized his name, then and for decades after. He died before he could play himself in the movie, but he had a bit part in the original Star Trek series, in *And the Children Shall Lead,* as well as a few other acting gigs.
Cool Hand Luke (1967)- Paul Newman 😎
Papillon (1973)- Steve McQueen / Dustin Hoffman🦋
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)- Paul Newman / Robert Redford🤠
One thing, Fincher used a different person when he depicted attacks so the audience never quite got a bead on exactly what they looked like, were built, etc... And they only depicted the ones in which someone survived or witnessed it to describe it.
Whole video all I could look at was Garth Hudson on Simone's shirt. He looks so shocked and interested in that picture. Always loved it.
This is one of my favorite movies, so dope to see y'all react to it!
The guy at the end that brings him into the basement is the voice of roger rabbit
On the 15 minutes needed to be on the phone to trace the call back to the dialer. This is definitely not the case anymore & has not been for quite some time. However, up until the late 1970s through mid 1980s [depending on where you lived as different places adopted the newer tech at different times,] it did in fact take some amount of time of a call being connected in order to trace it back to the caller. Because phone calls phones that were ultimately connected directly with one another for the voice transmission to reach the other phone(s) via a series of switches at phone exchanges [& go far enough back & people had to mechanically connect lines at switchboards.] So to run the connection back through the switches took a certain period of time & if the call ended before they were done tracing it back down the line the switches would disconnect the lines in order to connect other calls to each other.
Now, there was no standard period of time it would take to trace calls back. It might be just a few minutes or it could take 20 minutes... it just depended on the type of switches the connection went through & the number of switches that the connection had to go through. Local calls were quicker to trace than long-distance ones for example.
I looked up call tracing. It's digital today so it's all immediately traceable as soon as the call happens. But according to an article I read "Back in the bell-bottomed pre-digital 1970s, telephone switchboards required operators to manually connect circuits, leaving the cops to cool their heels for 10 to 20 minutes while Ma Bell pinpointed the caller's location."
When I was a new police officer in San Francisco, I got a chance to go into the records room and saw the boxes of evidence from the Zodiac case
"I could watch an entire movie of people just, like, figuring stuff out like that."
"Lone Star" from 1996, with Matthew McConaghey and Chris Cooper is intriguing like that.
not all cars are like that yet. My headlights turn completely off as well as every other light and its not a very old car