Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes

Interesting and very eerie to hear Dahmers voice speak about these horrific acts, as we have never heard this before.

The thing that bothered me was the over the top and near CONSTANT cut scenes of creepy masks, melted face masks, film, and other super random imagery that honestly reminded me of Gabes Cinema of the Unsettling video from The Office which took me out of it.

The editing was weird and annoying. There's so much information and it would have been absorbed and more compelling if you weren't constantly distracted by the stupid choppy and unrelated videos interspersed throughout. They're trying to overly dramatise something that is already dramatic enough.

Netflix has done the same thing it did the Ted Bundy duo. They released 'Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile' (2019 with Lily Colin's & Zac Efron), and a week later released 'Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes'. The latter being far superior to the former. If I knew 'Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes' was being released, I wouldn't have watched 'Dahmer - Monster'.

These confessional documentary type mini series are full of witness accounts, conversations with his defence attorney, the people who knew the victims & were the last people to see them before Dahmer took their life. This is the stuff that makes a series interesting, news report clips, policemen on the record saying they stand by the actions of those on duty at the time.

Everything is laid out in a very logical fashion. It made things clear which had been muddied by the 'Dahmer - Monster' dramatisation. No recreation. You HEAR the phone call made by the neighbour asking about the 14 year old boy who was found stumbling out the apartment building, no clothes on, incoherent. You HEAR the officer inform her it had "been dealt with" & the boy had been returned to his boyfriend's (Dahmer's) apartment.

The final episode closes off with individual testimony that is deeply respectful to the victims. Their friends, their neighbours talk about the kind souls who were taken by Dahmer. Victim names are repeated, displayed at the end.

The series ended with my thoughts reverent for everyone who had been forever changed by the hurt caused by Dahmer that had spread like a disease in that community. I wish I could erase that Netflix dramatisation from my mind, by comparison it is camp, jumbled and very distanced from the facts.

Excellent review of the horrific events unfolding. Even though i liked the series DAHMER now i understand some of the backlash about glorification.

In some way after seeing CWaK seems the series feel like My Little Pony........

The events are unfolding are told in an excellent way. And this is all about the terror this man committed and the sick**** that he was. There are many more details here then in the series. I felt Dread throughout all the way, and sometimes i really got nauxious. Also had a few moments of total goosbumps.

The, pace, narrative, interviews, audio score, cinematography, details and time line are top notch 10 stars here.

Also they really made me feel much more attached for the victims and made me see Dahmer as much more of a monster that he was.

Stuff of nightmares right here..

Excellent documentary making though.

Netflix's "Dahmer - Monster" that aired before this documentary is an effective dramatization of this shocking moment in history. It garners curiosity as to just how a person could wind up like this, with a hodgepodge of paraphilia and personality disorders. So you might end up finding and watching both the Stone Phillips and Inside Edition interviews done in the early 90s. Those are a chilling watch, as you get to hear from the horse's mouth and witness just how calm his demeanor is despite his heinous crimes and depravity. As much as "The Dahmer Tapes" documentary is excellently put together, it would have been more fascinating to hear the raw audio of the interview, all 32 hours of it, conducted by the defense lawyer Wendy. Instead, we get snippets and carefully curated sound bites to match the narrative from the experts, all condensed into a measly 3 hours, which is not as effective as a straight continuous interview which is what a viewer might expect from the title "Conversations with a Killer."

After the more than excellent dramatization of the Dahmer murders in Netflix' release in september 2022 - which I rated with an exceptional 9 stars - any follow-up documentary will have a difficult time to even come close to the experience of that dramatization.

The documentary makers however were able to get not only on board the prosecutor and defense attorney, but also the more than renowned psychiatrist dr. Park Dietz. The latter one is not only famous for his link with the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI, but also for his interviews with several serial killers. Apart from Dahmer, he is known for his very excellent interview of the "iceman killer": i.e. Richard Kuklinski. I have seen those interviews several times already.

What makes this documentary also interesting, is that it explains some things that I couldn't explain after watchting the dramatization of the Dahmer murders. It for instance explains why Dahmer decided to buy and use yellow contact lenses.

Overall, I think this documentary may come a little too soon after the release of the Dahmer show. Many events are still so fresh in my memory that the documentary is in part just a repeat of events. Instead of two weeks, I would have preferred this documentary to be released at least one year after the drama show was released. Watching the documentary in one year would surely trigger me to again watch (part of) the drama show.

Overall, I still think this documentary deserves 6.8/10, which I round up to a 7 star IMBd rating. This documentary would have scored way better if they had included more of dr. Park Dietz.