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"Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" is the latest true-crime dramatization to feature a famously good-looking actor as an infamous murderer. Evan Peters stars as the titular real-life serial killer in the September 2022 release, following the likes of Ross Lynch as Dahmer in 2017's "My Friend Dahmer," Zac Efron as Ted Bundy in 2019's "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile," and many others. But despite its high production value, successful ratings, and supposed aim to educate its audience, the series is sparking long overdue conversations about how true-crime dramatizations tend to capitalize on shock value, exploit victims while romanticizing perpetrators, and ultimately do more harm than good.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer who murdered 17 young men and boys between 1978 and 1991. He sought out his victims - mostly Black, Latino, and Asian men - at gay bars, bus stops, and malls, luring them into his home and drugging them before strangling them to death.

When Intervision Picture Corp announced their first releases back in the fall of 2010, these two titles were on the list.  They opened with a couple of minor Jess Franco films, and among the initial slate of DVDs, this double helping of Aussie Mondo madness was supposed to come out directly thereafter.  However, Ipc got waylaid by a focus on bizarro horror from the '80s and we got a series of too gooey to be true Sov horrors like Sledgehammer, Things, and The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer. It looked like the label was ready to run screaming from these two films who had no release in sight for a while there.  Fortunately, Intervision have finally delivered this pair of naughty mondo sexploitation flicks, and we...

Most of us are well aware that truth is often stranger - and more horrific - than anything a genre filmmaker can come up with. Case in point: serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who is the subject of this week's Motion Picture Purgatory review - The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer from director David R. Bowen and screenwriter Carl Crew, who pulls double duty portraying the title character in the film.

Synopsis:

The shocking assaults. The grisly murders. The horrific story you only thought you knew: Carl Crew stars as infamous sex offender, serial killer, and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, whose 14-year odyssey of evil continues to shock the world. Take a graphic trip inside the mind of a madman, from his sick fantasies and inner torments to his gruesome experiments and depraved souvenirs. This is the still-controversial film directed by David R. Bowen and produced two years before Dahmer was beaten to...

Prior to writing this review, I considered quoting several clunkers from the dreadful narration featured in this film. Carl Crew, who plays Dahmer despite looking not even a little like the infamous serial killer, wrote the screenplay, which piggybacks on facts while detailing the murders with little tact and a grisly fascination. Not helped by a minuscule budget, tone-deaf performances and music that sounds like it’s on rent from a skin flick, The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer is just plain bad.

The DVD transfer…ahem, I’m sorry, the scratched up film print or beat-up VHS tape that was ported unceremoniously to DVD looks almost intentionally beat, with print scratches, dull colors, all rendered in disappointing full-screen and a stereo soundtrack. More than the technical problems plaguing this film, artistically speaking the narration hurts the film more than I can express. Crew must have willfully ignored the golden rule of “show,...

Not to be overshadowed by the Things release, Intervision's other new DVD this week, The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer, is a must-see for those with any passing interest in how real-life serial killers are portrayed on screen. Filmed after his imprisonment and before he was murdered two years into his life sentence, this film chronicles Dahmer's life from first kill to capture. Director David R. Bowen and star Carl Crew keep things accurate and unsettlingly clinical. Narrated by Crew, the killer's voice in constantly in the viewer's head and, whereas this type of voice over work is used too often as a crutch, it becomes extremely effective in keeping the viewer connected directly to the Dahmer.

Read more on DVD Review: The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer from Intervision...

The good people at Intervision Picture Corporation have announced two unique DVD releases scheduled for July 12th, one a twisted little piece of filmmaking from our neighbors to the north and the other based on a famous serial killer.

First up is Things, the 1989 Canadian gorefest starring Amber Lynn and Barry J. Gillis. Things will be resurrected from its VHS roots and reborn on DVD dripping with over four hours of special features for you to sink your teeth into.

And speaking of sinking teeth, also being released on July 12th is The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer, an accurate retelling of the serial killer's gruesome true life tale. This 1993 film is directed by David R. Bowen and stars Carl Crew, who appeared in the 80's cult film Blood Diner.

From the Press Release

Things

In 1989 it became the first Canadian shot-on-Super 8 gore shocker commercially released on VHS. Today...

Intervision has another title debuting on DVD this July. It's called The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer . Look for it on July 12. Details below! The shocking assaults. The grisly murders. The horrific story you only thought you knew: Carl Crew (Blood Diner) stars as infamous sex offender, serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, whose 14 year odyssey of evil continues to shock the world. Take a graphic trip inside the mind of a madman, from his sick fantasies and inner torments to his gruesome experiments and depraved .souvenirs.. This is the still-controversial film directed by David R. Bowen . and produced two years before Dahmer was beaten to death in prison . whose release outraged the media, the victims. families and the public, yet remains acclaimed as an uncompromising...