Black Dahlia on AllMovie

The Polish-born character actor-cum-slasher film director Ulli Lommel helms the 2006 direct-to-video horror picture The Black Dahlia, not to be confused with Brian De Palma's A-budget feature The Black Dahlia from the same year. Whereas the De Palma film dramatizes the infamous 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short and the investigation that ensued, Lommel's picture instead concerns a series of contemporary L.A.-area homicides patterned after the 1947 slaying. It stars Elissa Dowling, Sutton Christopher, and Christian Behm, and tells of a "copycat" serial killer who reads of the 1947 murder and goes on a rampage in modern-day Los Angeles, producing a series of partially mutilated female bodies in dumpsters in emulation of Elizabeth Short's murderer. A rookie cop and his partner happen upon several of the corpses and must track down the psychopath in order to end his menace forever.