As the wikipedia article on this film correctly suggests, the plot is a cross between Psycho and The Pink Panther series. Can there be a more deranged pairing of plots? Only the soundtrack is particularly serious, with plenty of kettledrum so you can throw up your devil horns. It's not easy to pull off a decent horror comedy, especially in the 80's, without it coming out very corny. Since no other reviewers here from areas far from the intended audience have commented, I can't imagine there would be much of a market for getting a DVD release of this in the States.The strangler is a middle-aged, fat fellow who lives with his overbearing mother. She disciplines him nightly for not selling enough carnations. Thus, when he is out trying to sell his wares, any woman who refuses his flowers suddenly becomes a victim. He stalks and strangles any woman who refuses his flowers, with an amusing musical theme that reminds me of the old vaudeville bit, "Niagra Falls! Slowly I turned....!" Eventually, he's murdered enough women that the townsfolk feel they have a real serial killer on their hands. The police are baffled, as usual, and a local aspiring rock star imagines he's connected mentally to the strangler. He gets inspired to write a song about the strangler and the piece becomes a local hit, getting heavy airplay on the radio and local TV coverage from a poor-man's MTV. As the police set up more and more elaborate plans to catch the strangler, including putting male officers in drag because the department doesn't have enough female officers, the rocker suddenly thinks he might like to choke out a few girls. From here, we get the translated title, Strangler vs Strangler. It slightly reminds me of The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher, though SvS is considerably better and intentionally hilarious.There isn't much gore to be found, with the exception of some severed ears. There is some nudity as well, but much less than typical 80's comedies. I watched this online and the subtitles were terrible and quite often seemingly direct translations, which lose the viewer on some local slang, but this also makes the movie funnier.I'd like to see a remastered version on DVD, but don't hold your breath, unless you're being strangled.

Strangler's handling of deadpan, grotesque cruelty and black humour is somewhat similar to the mixture Alex de la Iglesia would perfect in his movies a decade later. The tonal shifts from horror to humour and back again are done well, with only an occasional unevenness, but the film's artificiality (voiceover narration, intertitles, grotesque exaggeration, etc.) may alienate some viewers. Sijan is to be commended for his courage in parodying a genre that has never been too popular with Serbian moviegoers in the first place. Strangler's thematic and stylistic subversiveness was part of the fresh air in Serbian cinema at the time, inspired by the New Wave movement: a wide front of artists and critics based around Belgrade's Student Cultural Center, involved in alternative rock'n'roll, literature, arts and the movies.The picture was shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the mid-'80s, and I was surprised to meet an American poet there who could recite memorable lines from Strangler a full twenty years later (some of them in Serbian!). It is a testament to this film's lasting power which, unfortunately, remains limited only to Serbian filmgoers since an English-dubbed DVD is still nowhere in sight.

When it comes to Serbian (Yugoslavian) horror movies, only masterpieces can be found. They all have unique stories, great actors, excellent camera, good pace and very odd twists in stories."Davitelj" have cult status in Serbia. It is a story about real people in real situations. Scariest thing is fact that serial killer can be your neighbor, or you can be killed 'cose you wearing pants and dislike flowers! When you watching "Davitelj" you laugh, then you scream, and so on. And you scream very loud. And laugh too.The movie that you will watch again and again and again,...And you'll be infected by very good soundtrack.

Making fun of one city's urge to become metropolis, at the time that eventually became known as vintage for Belgrade's rock 'n' roll scene whose talented members highly contributed to this Sijan's first big urban movie after two masterpieces placed in rural ("Ko to tamo peva") and small town ("Maratonci...") surroundings.