John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahlmer, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy
Richard Speck? If you are reading the names above and singing the Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong", then you might want to google the events of July 14th 1966.
It was on this date that Richard Speck, a violent and unstable man, high on alcohol and drugs, took hostage and murdered eight nurses in a quiet Chicago, Illinois community.
The details of the evening as later uncovered and recounted by the one surviving witness Corazon Amurao, a nurse who hid under a bed during the hours long ordeal are as graphic and repulsive as any mass murder in American history.
The fateful evening started when Speck broke into a townhouse located at 2319 East 100th Street where he soon took the nurses and huddled them together bound on the floor. One by one, Speck would separate each nurse and rape and repeatedly stab or strangle the victim. While the other nurses lay helpless on the floor awaiting Speck's return between victims, they were terrorized by the sounds of screams and then the deathly silence of their friends being picked off one by one.
Chicago Massacre : Richard Speck, tells the story of the man who took headlines on July 15tgh 1966. We first get introduced to the man who would be monster back in his home town outside of Dallas Texas. Immediately we recognize someone who puts a capital "A" in the word "Asshole". But as the film chronicles, nothing in Speck's past would have alerted authorities to the atrocities that he would later commit.
Directed lazily by Michael Feifer, who's directorial history log has six films and counting including Ed Gein : The Butcher of Plainfield, Chicago Massacre quickly goes from a character study of a serial killer and into full made-for-TV type schlock. Sorry horror fans but there is little to see here in terms of capturing the terror Speck reigned down upon those girls and the city until his capture.
In the role of Speck is actor Corin Nemec who is entirely unconvincing and probably miscast. I am more inclined however to give Nemec a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card and instead point the finger directly at director/writer Feifer who gave the actor very little to work with in what could have been a fascinating look into the darkest hours of a madman's killing spree.
For those of you looking for a film that would delve into the horror of the infamous event, you will be disappointed. There is absolutely no drama, no sense of terror and no atmosphere surrounding the fateful night. The atrocities and blood spilling are enacted with a PG-13 type direction and the non-linear storytelling just takes two steps forwards and one step back on a DVD that I kept checking the time on the LED display to figure out how many more minutes I had to endure before I finally saw the mercy of the end credits. The lone bright spot was seeing Tony Todd (Candyman) in a cameo just so that my mind could wander to remembering the details of a better film.
So stay away from this clunker and do yourself a favor and try and catch the Bill Kurtis narrated American Justice that dealt with Specks life in and out of prison. Otherwise, leave this one on the shelf and don't be fooled by the lure of an emotional attachment with the words "based on a true story" draped across the DVD cover package.
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