The 5 words that saved Monique Hoyt from a serial killer.

"Bachelor number one is a successful photographer. Between takes, you might find him skydiving or motorcycling." That's how Rodney Alcala was introduced on the TV show Dating Game in September 1978.

With his smooth-talking charm and suggestive quips, the Texas-born man won over bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw that day. After three rounds of questioning, she chose him from among three anonymous suitors. But once the cameras stopped rolling and Alcala promised her an unforgettable date, Bradshaw grew uneasy.

"I started to feel ill. He was acting really creepy," she later told The Sunday Telegraph. "I turned down his offer. I didn't want to see him again."

That instinct may have saved her life.

Had producers of Dating Game performed a background check before casting Alcala, they would have discovered an extensive criminal record and an entry on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

By then, Alcala had killed four women. But that was only the beginning of a rampage that is believed to have claimed the lives of dozens more.

Netflix's new film Woman of the Hour, directed by Anna Kendrick, is based on this chilling true story. But Bradshaw wasn't the only woman to narrowly escape from Alcala.

Watch: Rodney Alcala appears on Dating Game. Story continues below.

Woman of the Hour.

The film incorporates some very tragic real-life details, along with fictionalised additions to bring the story to the screen.

Surprisingly, one of the most interesting and unbelievable sequences of the film — which sees a teenage runaway, Amy, successfully escape from Alcala after being assaulted — is actually true.

The character of Amy is based on Monique Hoyt, who was only 15-years old when she was knocked unconscious and raped by Alcala. In February 1979, Hoyt was hitchhiking when she was picked up by Alcala. He brought her back to his apartment where he first sexually assaulted her, before driving to an isolated area near Banning, California. There, he assaulted her again and hit her over the head with a rock.

Similar to the portrayal in the movie, when Hoyt awoke, she was very aware that she had been assaulted, but in a fight for her life she managed to convince Alcala that she was not upset and that she actually wanted to continue a relationship with him. The words she spoke in those critical moments saved her life.

"It's okay baby. Everything's okay," the character of Amy is heard saying to Alcala in the film, when he apologises for being too rough with her.

Hoyt and Alcala got back into this car and drove off. During a pitstop at a petrol station, she ran from the car and raised the alarm to the authorities. As revealed at the end of Woman of the Hour, though Alcala was taken into custody, he was released on bail shortly after and killed two more women before his final arrest in July 1979.

During Alcala's trial, a little over three decades later, Hoyt testified in court against him. As reported by LA Weekly, a detective sat beside Hoyt the whole time in order for her to feel safe in Alcala's presence.

In Kendrick's directorial debut, she plays Sheryl (based on the real-life Cheryl Bradshaw) and has spoken about the significance of the dark material of this film.

"There was something in the script that felt really personal to me," Kendrick told Rolling Stone. "I felt like the question in the air for a lot of Sheryl's story is 'Hang on, do you see me as human or something else?' It's this nameless, amorphous threat that's in the room all the time — but you can't fight it if you can't even really find it."

"There is kind of a secret language of women that we frequently use to get ourselves out of jams," Kendrick further told Variety. "And the tricky piece about it is that part of the reason that it's so helpful is that it's a fucking secret."

The question that hangs over so many interactions that people have is: "Do you see me as human? Am I safe with you? Who are you underneath your mask?" she explains. "And the fact that we won't get satisfying answers to that, and yet we have to continue living our lives, is complicated."

What is the true story behind Woman Of The Hour? We unpack the chilling true story of Rodney Alcala.

The crimes of Rodney Alcala.

In 1968, eight-year-old Tali Shapiro was walking to school along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles when a stranger offered her a lift.

The schoolgirl hesitated, but he claimed to know her family and enticed her into his car by saying he had a beautiful picture to show her.

“I remember being shown a picture, and that was the last thing I remember," Shapiro later told a court, according to LA Weekly.

That stranger was Rodney Alcala.

Alcala took Shapiro to his nearby apartment where he strangled her with a metal bar and raped her.

Fortunately, a witness had seen a young girl being lured into a car and phoned police to report their suspicions. As officers burst into Alcala's home to find Shapiro clinging to life, he fled out a back door.

Alcala spent years on the run, using the aliases 'John Berger' and 'John Burger' to enrol in NYU film school and even obtain a job at a New Hampshire arts camp for children in 1971.

That same year, he raped and murdered 23-year-old flight attendant Cornelia Michel Crilley in her Manhattan apartment; a crime that would remain unsolved for forty years.

A few months later, Alcala was arrested and charged with the rape and attempted murder of Shapiro after students at the arts camp recognised him on an FBI wanted poster hanging at a post office.

But Alcala was convicted on a lesser charge of assault after Shapiro's family declined to let her testify. He spent just 34 months in prison.

After only two months on parole, he was arrested for the rape of a 13-year-old girl whom he'd offered a lift to school. Again he was paroled, and even permitted to travel to New York. It was there, in 1977, he claimed his next victim: Ellen Jane Hover, 23, the daughter of a famous nightclub owner.

Alcala roamed across the United States for two more years, during which time he killed 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, 27-year-old Georgia Wixted, 31-year-old Charlotte Lamb, 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, and 12-year-old Robin Samsoe.

Alcala was ultimately convicted of a total of seven murders, but investigators firmly believe the count is likely to be far higher — as high as 130, according to some reports.

When police raided Alcala's mother's home while investigating Samsoe's murder, they discovered a receipt to a storage locker. Inside was a cache of hundreds of photographs of women and girls.

More than 100 were released to the public in 2010, resulting in an additional murder charge. But more than 900 were deemed too sexually explicit for publication.

Police fear that among them may be the faces of more victims.

Rodney Alcala passed away from natural causes in 2021. He was 77.

You can watch Woman of the Hour on Netflix. Watch the trailer below.

Feature image: Netflix.