Bazaar Bizarre

Bob Berdella was a fat whack-job with a handlebar mustache.

He had presumptions of decadent worldliness…a sort of self-styled, poor man's Baudelaire.

Berdella owned a Kansas City head shop and a now razed house.

In that house, and around it, he raped and tortured his victims.

A few he buried around that house.

Some victims were maybe set out with the weekly trash and now languish in some landfill.

A few others maybe ended up as entrees. Or so is theorized in Ben Meade's harrowing documentary, "Bazaar Bizarre."

Their killer died in prison of an apparent heart-attack. Berdella is credited with six kills.

Berdella's victims were all men. Meade points out as many as 47 were reported missing in and around K.C. concurrent with Berdella's period of activity.

Those familiar with Meade's "Vakvagany" are probably best prepared for the flavor of film experience they're in for.

It's take-no-prisoners territory again. Dark portentous music…sibilant whispers. Even a full-frontal reenactment of a bloody and nude run for his life by a victim. The man managed to escape Berdella, clad only in a dog-collar.

In the dark world of Ben Meade, the camera never shifts away.

The camera never blinks and never judges.

Meade has tracked down journalists, still-living victims and makes powerful use of an old jailhouse interview with Berdella, himself.

And there is James Ellroy.

The crime writer, clad in a yellow- and black-striped rugby shirt, looking for all the world like some avenging bee of logic and reason, chips in with his take on Berdella. Ellroy counsels no compassion for the rotting killer.

Ellroy shares his own rarified takes on the minds of sexual psychopaths: "Homosexual men kill men. Heterosexual men kill women. It goes like that. That's it: You kill within your racial profile.

You kill within your sexual profile."

Ellroy's most effective moments come when he is crosscut against Berdella's own filmed statements.

Bob Berdella "had a longstanding love affair with the male anatomy," Ellroy says. "If he wasn't incarcerated or dead," Ellroy asserts, Berdella would "still be killing people."

The serial killer shopkeeper whose Kansas City store, "Bazaar Bizarre" supplies the title for Meade's film, was equal parts John Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Like Gacy, he used his own home as a charnel house and dumping ground.

Like Dahmer, Berdella experimented with his victims.

Dahmer, another jailhouse dead man, attempted do-it-yourself brain surgery on his victims, hoping to create compliant sex zombies. Berdella injected Drano into the throats of his victims.

Berdella also kept diaries, so we know the suffering of his victims sometimes extended across several nightmarish days.

Meade, using grainy film stock and a held-hand camera, stages unflinching reenactments of Berdella's activities with his victims…rape, fisting…a disemboweling…disarticulation of bodies.

With such scenes, Meade has to walk a delicate line - skirting exploitation or possible glorification of Berdella…the opening of old wounds in Kansas City (although this is probably inevitable, under any circumstances).

The chorus of experts, and particularly James Ellroy, do much to contextualize Berdella. Several also decry the bewildering lack of local outrage regarding the killer's crimes.

The "Demon Dogs" weigh-in with garage-band style tunes about Berdella - working well within the venerable and violent American tradition of vintage folk murder ballads.

Rough?

Dark?

Sure, the film is all of that.

Not for the squeamish?

Probably.

But if you're signing on to watch a documentary about a serial killer, you know what you're going to be confronted with.

And Meade's graphic depictions of Berdella at work are well within the boundaries of films such as "The Silence of the Lambs," or even the various "CSI" series, where beheadings, vivisections and post-mortem manipulations of bodies and body parts are served up as entertainment.

This is the real thing: Riveting, revolting and, ultimately, illuminating…a bravura triumph of guerilla film-making.

This is the movie I have been waiting for someone to make. And Ben Meade did it, and he didn't disappoint! This movie is a guilty pleasure for me because of the way Ben structured it. At first you think this movie is going to be like the rag tabloids at the checkout stands where the headlines scream about Batboy and women giving birth to 300 pound alien babies, so you think, "OK, this is just going to be a crazy ride. Basically headlines and gore set to rock music. Let's go!" But before you realize it, Ben takes you on a trip through this demon's psychotic mind. It's only then you realize that Ben, (like Hitchcock maybe?) understands that what we are going to see and hear is so horrible we can't really take this medicine ... straight. (Well, maybe like Hitch on crack~) We are guided through this maze of torture and body parts by none other than James Elroy! Perfect! Who better to stand up to Berdella's whining self pity and lame defenses. (Berdella argues that he was mistreated because his torture logs were described as 'detailed dairies' rather than, oh, I don't know ...torture logs?!) The rock band Demon Dogs as a Greek chorus was a touch of genius as well. Who knew? They are speaking for all of us. The archival footage and interviews were astonishingly revealing. I can't believe Ben found Chris Bryson after all these years. Isn't this the first time he has spoken out about what happened to him? The reenactments were believable and sickening. This film was amazing because not only did it give us new and revealing information about the Berdella case but like all good art, it raises more questions than it answers. Now where exactly did that reporter say she dumped her notes?

I was wondering why James Ellroy never got in contact with me? I went to college with Bob - worked next door to him in the River Quey - was over at his house many times.

We bought and traded many esoteric collectibles - I was the one that the Police had come in and appraise the collection on the second floor gallery - warning them that if he could sell them his collection it would be worth well over $300,000 and he could afford to hire a good lawyer - that's when they claimed it as part of the crime.

Bob even borrowed my chainsaw -Euh- glad I never got it back.

The interesting fact the Judge Charlie that arranged him and the Detective Chester that was #2 in the investigation and Bob were at my wedding - I have a photo of them all in one photo together, this was less than a year before he was caught.

I was even the one that Phil Whitt from channel 4 interviewed - they incorrectly stated that I was Berdellas BEST FRIEND - Son of a B*t*ch lied to me. Ever notice how big Phil's butt is - it's really really big looks deformed.

Well I was never contacted so I wonder how much research James Ellroy really put into this. Guess I'll have to see it.

I still have the worry beads that are made for human bone that Bob gave me for Christmas one year - said they were Tibetian?

I thought the way this film was presented was very good, although I could do without "The Demon Dogs" playing songs as the film progressed. A documentary such as this has no business interjecting a rock band playing songs because it has nothing to do with the story. The film contains archival footage of Berdella's victims as well as actors portraying the people involved in the case. I would love to see a documentary on serial killer DEAN CORLL presented in this way, with actors portraying Corll doing what he did to the victims. The Dean Corll case is one of the spookiest, most disturbing case of serial murder that has ever happened and to date, nobody has ever devoted much time to the case. At any rate, I was very pleased with "Bazaar Bizarre" and would recommend the movie to any serial killer buffs out there. You won't be sorry.

I attended a screening of Bazaar Bizarre last night at the Glenwood Arts Theatre. Filmmaker Benjamin Meade was there to introduce the short film, which runs 86 minutes. As a Kansas Citian who used to buy stuff at Berdella's shop (much to my disgust), I'd been looking forward to seeing the movie for quite a long time.

It's OK. But that's about as far as I'd take it.

The good: Ellroy is always a stitch. His unapologetic lack of sympathy for Berdella is entertaining and even enlightening as he discusses the general MO and predilections of serial killers.

Most of the re-enactments are fine and pretty well filmed and acted -- a rarity for this type of movie. The gore is also pretty impressively convincing, largely because the footage has been artificially aged and damaged. I was surprised that the production values easily outshine some much higher-budget films, such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Now, whether the re-enactments amount to anything more than voyeurism is up to you. The chili-cooking scene in particular doesn't really do much for me, either as comedy or as documentary. It's one of the most highly speculative (and I think improbable) parts of Berdella lore.

The most valuable passages of the movie are undoubtedly the interviews with Berdella himself, as well as with the cops, prosecutors and Kansas City Star and Times reporters involved in uncovering the man's horrific misdeeds. Berdella was an absolute jerk as well as a murderer, and his repugnant personality comes through loud and clear. An interview with the only known surviving victim seems promising, but it really doesn't allow much insight. The man, now grown, stays in the shadows and describes his experiences with the detachment of a longtime drug addict who's undergone so many tortures that none of them stands out any longer.

The bad: The movie is really a mess from a structural standpoint. Meade jumps around his time line, which makes absolutely no difference. But he's strung his bits together with some truly embarrassing music videos by an absolutely execrable "rock" band singing vacuous, trite songs about Berdella. I'm sorry, but Meade obviously has absolutely no feeling for contemporary culture if he could center his film so fundamentally on this band's work.

Another clue and Meade isn't quite as up on what's au currant: Before the screening, he pretentiously declared that his movie would have trouble being exhibited -- probably receiving an NC-17 -- because it features male frontal nudity.

Uh, Mr. Meade, do you not GO to movies? Did you see Sideways? Did you see Kinsey? The mainstream comedies EuroTrip or Super Troopers? Scary Movie, a blockbuster hit released in every city in America, where a man is shown being stabbed in the head BY AN ERECT PENIS? For crying out loud, did you see Porky's 20 years ago? Meade's statement is ridiculously ignorant and provincial.

The nudity in Bazaar Bizarre is not sexual. It's a guy in his 20s with a flabby gut, jumping off a roof and running across the street. The totality of the footage is perhaps ten seconds, almost all framed from fairly far away. It doesn't even amount to controversial.

The problem is NOT with male frontal nudity from an obscenity standpoint. I can name you 20 Hollywood movies with a penis for every one that actually shows female pubic hair, not to mention female genitalia.

In fact, I don't think I can remember a single major American film that's shown actual female genitals. Basic Instinct? Watch it again. The Center of the World? Requiem for a Dream? Gus Van Sant's Psyhco? Again, re-watch them. No, you're not seeing what you think you're seeing. This is the sort of sloppy claims of persecution that make artists look like whiny babies.

Anyhow, Bazaar Bizarre is what it is. Worth a Netflix rental when it comes out. I don't think I'd drive to see it in theaters.