Gacy (2003)

Gacy tells the story of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a man whom many believed to be a noble and friendly man. His death toll is approximately 33 young men, who were found buried in his crawl space.Reading up on John Wayne Gacy is more terrifying than watching this half baked attempt at telling this man's story. Out of the three serial killer films I have seen,Ted Bundy, Dahmer and now Gacy, I have to say that this was the least interesting, the least inspired and the most boring. I thought Dahmer was pretty boring, but at least that film tried to get in the mind of the character, Gacy doesn't try to do anything except tell the bare bones story, at least what they decided to read about him, and put it on film. The film makes no real attempt at portraying the man behind the murders. We are introduced to his father abusing him as a child, then apparently he hears voices and kills young men. The torture sequences are tame and the death scenes come off as 'accidents'. You never fully experience the terror this man brought onto the lives of others. The film almost plays out like a comedy, I honestly can't tell if that's what it was trying to be. If so, bad taste, if not, bad filmmaking. The script is bad, full of ear bleeding dialogue. The actors seem to make no real effort here and the movie itself has a lot of inaccuracies. The film begins with the title card saying that names, places and events have been fictionalized to protect those people. This immediately gives you a bad feeling that the filmmakers have taken the story of Johny Wayne Gacy and purposely distorted facts to make an entertaining and emotional film. Fail on both accounts. It's more of a slap in the face to the families of those who went through this. The film seemed more fixated on the rotting stench beneath Gacy's house, rather than a cohesive story. I know what that smell was, not the dead bodies, but this excuse for a film.

I have to say the only saving grace this movie had which is why I gave it a 3 vs a 1(awful) was due to the acting job of Mark Holton (Gacy). He did well in portraying what one would believe the actual Gacy would be like. Everything else was garbage how and I hate to say that. After watching the movie with my wife there were 3 things we were sure of... One,he came from an abusive father. Two he owned a business of some sort (the movie never clearly states what kind, landscaper,painter,etc.) Three he was a closet homosexual who preferred young boys. Everything else in the movie was very ambiguous or just eluded to. You get a little blurb after the first few opening scenes about him having serves some time in jail for sodomizing a boy before he was 18. Then it jumps into his life where he's married now with two children. (I'll never understand what a decent woman was doing with a fat slovenly creep of man like that anyhow) The movie jumps all over the place and is constantly introducing characters with no rhyme or reason explaining nothing behind their appearance in a given scene, often leaving the viewer wondering "who the hell is that, and what do they have to do with the price of onions ?" Leaving some details up to the imagination of the viewer is a good thing when carefully used by a skilled director. Flat out omitting important details however just leaves people scratching their heads. Even at the end of the movie you see a shot of Gacy behind bars for a split second saying "I won't spend a night in here!" then it fades to black. with a screen saying a few more words about his crimes and eventually getting put to death.In closing this could have been a very interesting movie if a little more work could have gone into the directing.

If I wanted to see a story about John Wayne Gacy, I would tune into A&E, as they do biographies. I was looking for something that had more horror and thriller than biography. The horror was that I sat through the whole thing.Forget the "stars" in this film. All of them are forgettable, including the one that played Gacy. It was a slow story that had so little horror that it could have been rated G.Gacy was someone who went after young men. He had sex with them, killed them and buried them in the crawlspace under his home. All you saw in this movie was him dragging bodies to the crawlspace. Exciting, huh? Maybe Gacy had a bad father, but you only get one incident in the film. That's not enough to make a decision. I want to know about his wife also. Why did she marry him after coming out of prison for molesting a boy? Serves you right, dummy.Fine something else to watch.

Having a low budget doesn't always mean having a bad movie, but in this case it does. While other directors use their minimal budget to produce the best film they can, Clive Saunders seems to have blown it all on something, because this film looks like it could have easily been made on $1,000. I found it to be dull, poorly written/acted/directed, and an insult to the intelligence of viewers who have actually done the research on Gacy that these film makers neglected to do.The setting is horrible. The movie is supposed to be taking place in Chicago, but the Southern California architecture, mountains and palm trees make it clear that the production never left Los Angeles. The film is supposed to take place in the seventies, but it doesn't give off the authentic feel at all. The script gives one the feeling that it was a first draft whipped up in one weekend and put to film without so much as one editing session. The dialogue is weak and unbelievable in many scenes, and there seemed no basic plot whatsoever. With directing, editing and shoddy camera work such as appears in this film, these people should be banned from ever making films again. Seriously, I could do better with a bunch of friends and a camcorder.Now, I want to start right off by saying that I did not go into this hoping for blood and guts and gore...what I wanted was to learn a little background on the man himself. Although I love those aspects of horror films, I wanted more of a psychological view of Gacy, and that is what the film failed to deliver. All it managed to do was show scenes of bugs in his crawl space, him going to and from work, him being harassed and beaten up for the money he owes, and the overwhelming emphasis placed on the stench of the decomposing bodies hidden under the house.Worst of all, Gacy is portrayed as somewhat of a bumbling idiot rather than the scarily intelligent being he was. All of the deaths that are shown seem to have been committed on accident - such as the boy he was drowning in the bathtub when he was interrupted. When the boy fell down dead, he looked like he'd "made a boo-boo."- Not to mention the fact that he would leave dead bodies lying around the house and his roommates wouldn't take any notice. I realize that some people don't make it their business to report suspicious crimes or get involved, but that is just ridiculous.Yes, I will admit that I wanted at least one scene of brutal violence from the film, but only for it to give me a full perspective of Gacy's crimes. I wanted a true story that did the story of the killer justice as well as creep me out, but instead I received this boring mess. Don't do like I did. Spare your intelligence and read up on Gacy instead, I guarantee you that what you read will entertain and scare you more than this film ever could.