Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck

This film should have been pretty easy to make watchable. You've got an intriguing subject - a serial killer - so pretty much just telling his story, documentary-style, would be interesting enough. The film pretty much writes and directs itself.

Yet writer-director Michael Feifer manages to turn an easy win into a massive loss. The plot is absolutely dull and lifeless, performances are unconvincing, production is basic. Hardly the Mindhunter-type story I was expecting.

Avoid.

This story and the victims deserved so much better than this film. The story line jumps around without any regard for fitting the pieces together. You get small glimpses of his childhood, marriage and previous criminal behavior without ever following through and finishing connecting to why we're being shown that. The acting is absolutely terrible, the actors look nothing like the people they're portraying, the "dorm" where the murders were committed looks nothing like the true location and worst of all is the movie isn't even that accurate. Having spent some time reading up about the events that transpired it's very clear that the movie did not care at all about accuracy. It's very hard to believe that the movie won an award of any kind.

If I had wanted to see an A&E Biography on Richard Speck, I would have tuned into A&E. I got this DVD because of Debbie Rochon, and it was an extreme disappointment on so many levels.

First, Debbie played a prostitute and was only in the film for five minutes. No. she didn't get naked. In fact, the only titties you see in this movie are on a video of Speck in prison. That is really creepy.

Secondly, the Chicago Police Department, as portrayed in this film, must be equal to the Keystone Cops. Andrew Divoff ("Lost", Wishmaster) played the lead investigator, and he was in a bar with Speck, knowing what he looked like, and lost him. His boss, Tony Todd (Wishmaster, Candyman) was more concerned about keeping things quiet and protecting Mayor Daley. It was so bad that two cops, after they had Specks name and description, interviewed him on a complaint by Rochon and looked at his ID and still walked away. BOLO anyone??? Thank goodness for Chicago that the emergency room doctor was on the ball.

The actual murders had nothing more that a little blood spatter and off-camera horror. Ther were no rapes, unless you count the time Speck supposed raped on girl WITH HIS PANTS STILL ON! Neat trick, if you can do it.

I have to give Corin Nemec props for his performance. He really did a good job in playing a slime-bucket. I wonder if he is so good because he has experience in portraying murderers (Boston Strangler: The Untold Story, Bundy: An American Icon). He was the best thing about this movie.

The camera-work was terrible and the flashbacks to Speck's earlier life were way too short and obscure to give any insight into the man. Did he hate women because of his stepfather? Was it just low self-esteem that made him a wife-beater, drunk and all-around jerk? Did he just think he could get away with anything? Unanswered questions abound.

Don't waste you time here. There is nothing to see unless you want to see a man with titties. Yech!

An armed male intruder breaks into a women's dorm and with a gun and a butcher's knife binds and gags all the residents.Then one by one he stabs them cruelly and with great brutality.All of that happened in Chicago on the night of July 14,1966 in a dormitory that housed eight nurses who worked at the South Chicago Community Hospital.The perpetrator was Richard Speck,then 24,a drifter born in Illinois,raised in Texas,wandering from petty crime to petty crime and bar to bar.He had the words "Born to Raise Hell" tattooed on his arm."Chicago Massacre:Richard Speck" is a fairly accurate portrayal of this murderous loser.Of course some scenes are obviously fictionalized,so true crime buffs may be disappointed.The central performance of Corin Nemec is pretty good and menacing.The film is not as grimly effective as "Born for Hell" from 1976.Worth a rental but nothing more.

Being extremely interested in true crime, I decided to watch this movie last night. It was not good. The only thing good at all about it was the fact that Corin Nemec is a great actor. However, he is the only good actor in this movie. Actually, it was so bad, I am not sure how he could have worked along side such terrible acting. We have Candyman and the Wishmaster as very unconvincing police officers. Not to mention, almost every other actor and extra was terrible.

In my opinion, If your interested in the actual case of Richard Speck, Then I suggest you spend 15-20 minutes reading about him on the internet as opposed to wasting an hour and a half watching this movie. Besides, Reading up on it will give you much more insight than this movie ever could.

Don't say I didn't warn you.