Peter Mladinic

HILLSIDE STRANGLERS

In Fritz Lang’s M
filmed in Germany in 1931
Peter Lorre plays the child murderer.
One by one, children disappear
off the streets. Who is it, taking
these lives? Finally found out,
chased, trapped in this huge cellar,
cornered, he turns on the crowd,
wild eyed, flailing, and accuses them.
You murdered the children!
It’s in German, so I had only
subtitles, but Lorre, trapped, cornered,
raging, is really good at playing evil.
A versatile, talented actor, he
emigrated from Germany, settled
in Hollywood and played many roles.
His one child, Cathy, in 1977
met up with the Hillside Stranglers,
cousins, Kenneth Bianchi and
Angelo Buono, imprisoned for life
after being convicted of killing numerous
women. They intended to kidnap
and kill her but when they learned she
was Lorre’s daughter, so enamored
were these two monsters of Lorre’s films,
if anyone deserved to be called
monsters, these two..they let her go.


Pete's YouTube video reading of "Hillside Stranglers":



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Pete confesses: "I am somewhat of a Peter Lorre fan, and somewhere in the media I learned that Lorre’s daughter, his only child, was taken by these serial killers, and when they learned who she was, being Lorre fans themselves, they let her go. It’s a bit ironic, to me. Also, in one of Lorre’s best films, M, he played a child killer."

PETER MLADINIC's poems have recently appeared in Neologism, Ariel Chart, Adelaide, Home Planet News, Detour Ahead, 433 and other online journals. He lives, with six dogs, in Hobbs, New Mexico.