Making a Monster

This really is trash tv at its worst. Melodramatic, prurient and sensationalist with the usual rent-an-expert contributors trotting out their fatuous remarks and pseudo-scientific opinions to make the whole thing look authoritative. Aside from the forensic findings at the various gravesites very little is known with any certainty about the true circumstances of these killings. Although his police interviews were very lengthy and extensive, Fred West was a boaster, fantasist and liar who produced several entirely contradictory accounts of what happened. None of them can be relied on with any degree of confidence. Yet this has not prevented endless cheaply produced 'documentaries' from filling in the gaps and speculating wildly for entertainment purposes.

Documentaries should present facts (not conjectures) in a neutral manner, not dress them up with cheap video effects more suitable to a second rate horror movie. Utter drivel.

Of course the ubiquitous Paul Britton rocks up in this, telling us how he was the one who informed the police that there would be more than two bodies under the patio of 25 Cromwell Street. It's funny, because no other material on the Wests credits him with that perceptive statement.

What really bothers me about this series is the re-enactments. Rose's younger versions still look like the frumpy housewife she is most associated with after her arrest, rather than teenager she was at the time of meeting Fred and being stepmum to Charmaine and Anne-Marie. As for Charmaine, the girl who plays her is white! Even the photo of the real Charmaine is heavily filtered, erasing her Asian heritage. Really poor decision from the producers.

As another reviewer says, there is nothing that this show adds to the genre. It's a lot of very well educated people who should know better, sitting around congratulating themselves on their superior understanding of the human psyche.

This is too disturbing. not because of the content revealed but bc of the absurd color-'correction' and distracting sound-design. each person interviewed, who sadly doesn't offer new information nor insight into old cases, serial killers, is drenched into a different color. magenta, sepia ..you'll get the whole rainbow..not one photograph or scene in normal color. why? the sounddesign, consisting of strings & crows cawing, i assume is supposed to induce horror..& those unneccessary filler scenes, re-enactments.. of nothing..

i should have known better, the choice of such a paradoxical title should have already revealed the sensationalistic approach to me. calling them monsters and attempting to uncover their reasons for doing what they did with psychologists..? certainly not happening here.

this is so bad, morality & a basic duty to truth - reality, prevents me from adding this to my docu list 'realities' - which really holds every docu i come across, to watch or have watched.

my opinion: skip the whole thing. there are much better documentaries unfolding the subject matter..

As the narrator introduces Paul Britton she states "this is his first time discussing his involvement in the case." While it may be the first time discussing this case in an American production of the West case there have been numerous documentaries made about this case that Criminally Profiler Paul Britton speaks directly on this case, he states as fact based in many of the earlier documentaries on either or both Fred and Rose West that he told the police if 'bodies were being found in the garden, it was only because the house was full.' This documentary also shows nine of the children's faces in an old photo whereas many even the older ones on this topic have the decency to blur all or at least six of the children who have never spoken publicly or said that they are children of either of the Wests.