Reviews

This has to be one of the worst movies ever made. The overacting is constant, and the characters aren't the least bit realistic for the setting. I expect a certain amount of melodrama in the older pictures; but this one will make you shake your head. The whole story, at least as it's portrayed in the movie, is contrived and absurd. The accents aren't even remotely accurate, except of course where the actors don't even attempt to adopt a Southern accent; then they sound just like where they're from (Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, etc.). The rest of the time the actors and actresses simply sound like they're trying to make a Western... here's a little hint: people from the South, particularly during this period, DO NOT sound like they're from Texas. All Southern accents are not the same. I'm not even going to get started on the feasibility of a man getting shot and killed simply for turning the power on at a small mill... suffice it to say it's simply too stupid a notion to go into at length.

So, in summation, the story itself (at least in this medium) is complete and utter nonsense. The sets don't look the first thing like the real South. And the terrible acting is further amplified by the ridiculous dialogue in which half of the characters sound like they're cowboys, and the other half sound like they're either from the Midwest or the Bronx.

I explored my thesaurus to come up with an adjective that properly describes just how bad this movie is; and I'm caught between dreadful and inane. Perhaps I should just say the premise of the film is inane, and the execution was truly dreadful.

This one was pretty bad. As others have said, virtually no part of the setting was realistic for the time. Additionally, and contrary to some other opinions, Mauro Lannini's portrayal of Albert DeSalvo is absolutely terrible... not chilling or the least bit believable. The only thing going for Lannini is that he does look a lot like DeSalvo. However, DeSalvo was born and raised in Massachusetts, so he wouldn't have had the decidedly Italian accent that Lannini had and couldn't disguise in the movie. This one is certainly worth missing, and I actually wish I hadn't wasted my time. There seem to be a lot of lame efforts at making a good serial killer movie lately from true stories that have a lot of potential without any added "artistic" or "creative" contributions; yet filmmakers continue to ruin them. This is another.

I almost NEVER give movies a 1 rating; but this movie definitely tempted me and is pretty bad. Frankly, I'm tired of film makers destroying stories that have so much potential. This could have been a great movie if only the makers had chosen to depict the story accurately. But, they decided to use wide-ranging license, even when unnecessary, and completely ruined it. This is one of those stories, like most serial killers' stories, where adding or changing the circumstances or facts really isn't needed to make a truly horrific movie. The REAL story is far more terrifying than this lame version they served up. They even chose to give Rader 2 daughters, when it's common knowledge that he has a daughter and a son... why change that? It even would have made more sense when the time came for him to go on the Boy Scout camping trip as a Scout leader, since his real son really was a Boy Scout, and Rader really was a Scout leader. Changing that was just plain stupid. Then, none of the murders is portrayed correctly; and were in reality far more gruesome and terrible than what they turned them into for the movie. He murdered 4 members of a single family, and that wasn't even in the movie. He also never killed anyone's husband, but did shoot a girl's brother. Again, why change such an insignificant detail? It's better just keeping it accurate.

How do these lousy movie makers keep getting the rights to the best true horror stories, and then completely and utterly ruining them on film? It seems like all the tragic stories with the most potential for making a good movie get snapped up by the people least likely to make something powerful and entertaining out of it.