Hey, how about all those neighbors that were always wondering what that awful smell was that was coming from under his house? Gacy as the unenviable distinction of being one of the few serial killers to rival the depravity of fellow psychopath Ed Gein, whose antisocial antics led to the inspiration of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, and Psycho. Gacy was less into wearing other people's skin as he was into strangling and sodomizing young men, providing plenty of material for a sick biography like this, which of course lots of sick people like me will go out and rent.
Why we all get such a kick out watching things like this (by "we all," of course, I am referring to all of us sick people who get such a kick out of watching things like this) I am not sure I rightly know, but I think Gacy is a well made film, given its subject matter and it's limited production capabilities. Sure, there are numerous holes, none of the acting is very impressive other than Mark Holton's (who played Gacy himself), and the movie commits that cardinal sin of the movies, it throws logic out the window. The whole premise of the movie, as was the case in Gacy's life, is that John Wayne Gacy was a regular guy next door that no one would ever have suspected, but in the movie the quickness with which everyone dismisses the smell of rotting meat coming from under his house is a little trying. I don't know enough about the details of Gacy's life to know is people actually did smell decay from under his house and ignore, but I can't help but think that even if that did happen, it was dramatized for effect, as they say, in the movie.
The thing that is most disturbing about a movie like this is that if someone had written a screenplay like this that was entirely fictional, they would probably have gotten a similar response that Wes Craven got when Last House on the Left was released. People didn't want him to be allowed to work in film again, and yet when it is based on true events people have this morbid fascination with it. Not that that's anything new, it just seems odd to me that people are more offended by fictional violence than true violence.
I like that the movie has a lot of restraint when it comes to showing the things that Gacy actually did to his victims. We are not entirely spared a look at how he killed some of his victims (this would have offended some of Gacy's fans, if you can believe that such a man has them), but the movie leaves most of the more heinous acts offscreen, concentrating more on things like thousands of crawling maggots and the inevitable smell emitted from the rotting corpses under his house. Most estimate that Gacy killed something like 30 young men, others say we may never know how many he killed.
Holton does a great job with the script, which is not the best, and is especially good at making us believe that Gacy was able to be charming despite how frightening he could be when he was visiting the other half of his personality. It is indeed unsettling to think that a man who dressed up like a clown to entertain sick kids at a hospital could be killing large numbers of young men and doing things much more horrible than sodomy to them, but if you want to get a few insights into how and why he did it, this film is not a bad place to start.
Note: I've read that, while this movie concentrates on the story from Gacy's point of view, there is also a television movie called To Catch A Killer that focuses more on the police investigation side of the story.
Why we all get such a kick out watching things like this (by "we all," of course, I am referring to all of us sick people who get such a kick out of watching things like this) I am not sure I rightly know, but I think Gacy is a well made film, given its subject matter and it's limited production capabilities. Sure, there are numerous holes, none of the acting is very impressive other than Mark Holton's (who played Gacy himself), and the movie commits that cardinal sin of the movies, it throws logic out the window. The whole premise of the movie, as was the case in Gacy's life, is that John Wayne Gacy was a regular guy next door that no one would ever have suspected, but in the movie the quickness with which everyone dismisses the smell of rotting meat coming from under his house is a little trying. I don't know enough about the details of Gacy's life to know is people actually did smell decay from under his house and ignore, but I can't help but think that even if that did happen, it was dramatized for effect, as they say, in the movie.
The thing that is most disturbing about a movie like this is that if someone had written a screenplay like this that was entirely fictional, they would probably have gotten a similar response that Wes Craven got when Last House on the Left was released. People didn't want him to be allowed to work in film again, and yet when it is based on true events people have this morbid fascination with it. Not that that's anything new, it just seems odd to me that people are more offended by fictional violence than true violence.
I like that the movie has a lot of restraint when it comes to showing the things that Gacy actually did to his victims. We are not entirely spared a look at how he killed some of his victims (this would have offended some of Gacy's fans, if you can believe that such a man has them), but the movie leaves most of the more heinous acts offscreen, concentrating more on things like thousands of crawling maggots and the inevitable smell emitted from the rotting corpses under his house. Most estimate that Gacy killed something like 30 young men, others say we may never know how many he killed.
Holton does a great job with the script, which is not the best, and is especially good at making us believe that Gacy was able to be charming despite how frightening he could be when he was visiting the other half of his personality. It is indeed unsettling to think that a man who dressed up like a clown to entertain sick kids at a hospital could be killing large numbers of young men and doing things much more horrible than sodomy to them, but if you want to get a few insights into how and why he did it, this film is not a bad place to start.
Note: I've read that, while this movie concentrates on the story from Gacy's point of view, there is also a television movie called To Catch A Killer that focuses more on the police investigation side of the story.