The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer

"The Secret Life" starts with the worst possible narrative intro: "The crimes committed by Jeffrey Dahmer are too horrible to make a film about...". Okay, so what are you suggesting? That we shouldn't bother to continue watching as the film won't be accurate or bloody, anyway? And they were right, too! The film isn't the least bit shocking and contains almost no blood or gore at all. Although I think that's mainly due to the low budget production values and not because of Dahmer's crimes being too horrific. Basically, "The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer" is just one sequence repeated over and over again. Young, pitiful and mentally confused Jeffrey picks up victims (always males, as he was a homosexual), kills them and then talks about how it wasn't his intention to hurt them and about how lonely he is. This gets boring really quick and even the admirable performance by unknown actor Carl Crew can't save this movie from being a total dud. Still, this version is much better than the pretentious and hopelessly muddled "Dahmer" that got released in 2002.

The life of disturbed man Jeffrey Dahmer (Carl Crew) is chronicled from 1978 to his capture in 1991 chronicling the various murders and encounters with law enforcement.

The Secret Life (aka The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer) is a 1993 direct to video biographical crime drama produced and directed by David Bowen (whose prior credits are mostly associate producer duties on low budget genre flicks) and written by and starring Carl Crew who some know from his sideshow museum/nightclub California Institute of Abnormalarts (now closed as of 2022) and long time viewers of the Cinema Snob will know of him from his work co-starring and writing the film Gross Out. Beginning production in January of 1992 before Dahmer's trial had even finished, the movie was filmed independently and in secret with Crew using newspaper stories and court transcripts as the primary research for the film. The movie was derided by the families of the victims, escaped victims, and critics with a notable climax to the controversy captured in an episode of Maury Povich's tabloid talk show wherein Bowen and Crew defending themselves against accusations from a survivor of Dahmer's spree and the mothers of two of Dahmer's victims. The Povich interview is also where I got most of the information related to the research on this movie (as smaller productions from the 80s and 90s aren't well documented) and while the victims in the movie don't have the real life names of the actual victims, a cursory glance at the timeline of events shows how detailed the murder sections are and how transparently they serve as analogues to real life people. Controversy aside, The Secret Life has largely fallen by the wayside in the years since its release as it has never been re-released passed the initial VHS run, and has largely gone the way of one of those "Ripped from the headlines" TV films like The O. J. Simpson Story that were made quickly, cheaply, and fed off the hot button issue of the time. Upon a look back, The Secret Life is just another hot button movie where competence and purpose were a distant second to quickness and first mover advantage.

Movies based off of real life atrocities are nothing new as the Robert Bloch novel Psycho and the Hitchcock film adaptation of the same name both take influence from Ed Gein "The Butcher of Plainfield" with later films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs also using Gein as a basis for their killers Leatherface and Buffalo Bill. Smaller films were especially noted for this approach such as the surprisingly decent Arch Hall Jr. Film The Sadist which was inspired by Charles Starkweather or even something rather silly like 1971's The Zodiac Killer which was actually part of an elaborate plan by director Tom Hanson to make a ridiculous backstory for the unknown serial killer in the hopes he'd arouse the killer's curiosity and be able to lead police to catch him (true story). But with something like Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence of the Lambs, and even The Sadist those weren't direct adaptations of real life events and only took inspiration from them so they could be afforded a degree of leeway in terms of what they were. The Zodiac Killer is another matter, but at least Hanson was trying to bring about something positive with his movie (silly as it may be in hindsight). When it comes to the genre of True Crime, you need to have a point as to "why" you're telling this story. If your point is "it's a big story and we wanted to get to it first" that's not a good reason and that's just being exploitative, to The Secret Life's credit it doesn't linger on the torture scenes of sadism any longer than it needs to and does try to look at the human core of Jeffrey Dahmer, but it's also not very good at it.

Throughout the film Carl Crew provides voice over narration as Dahmer narrating his internal struggle from Dahmer's first kill in 1978. The movie notes Dahmer's latent homosexual attractions that are intertwined with violent desires, but while the movie acknowledges that point it's never really built upon as we just travel linearly through the killings from 1978 to Dahmer's capture in 1991 with a predictable rhythm of Dahmer lures men to his apartment with a job offer of taking pictures of them, he drugs them, then he tortures or kills them in various ways. The sequences with Dahmer luring and killing the men are accurate to the details of real life events (making the name change of characters pretty pointless as they're basically 1:1 recreations) but aside from a few scenes where police dismissed claims of witness and neighbors of Dahmer which seems like where the real richness of this material should come from, there's not much commentary on why this story needed to be told with Crew's ending monologue about "straying too far from God" just feeling like a hollow wrap-up because they couldn't figure out a more satisfying way of ending this story because there is no story and it's just a loose sequence of events daisy chained together.

From a production standpoint the movie looks cheap and low quality. Not only is the production design and scope very limited, but Crew plays Dahmer from the age of 18 to 31 and at the time Crew was 30 years old and looks it and there's no real effort giving to aging him throughout the movie with makeup or wardrobe and were it not for the title texts telling us where we are in the story you wouldn't be able to know where we are exactly. The movie also shows its budget with the usage of these title texts as it uses them as sticky tape to hold this movie together, glossing over elements like court proceedings such as Dahmer's arrest for enticing a minor. We also get some very odd choices that defy description like flashbacks to 6 year old Jeffrey playing with toy trucks in the yard run through a black and white filter, or a weird scene where Jeffrey is called by a man in a phone booth dressed like a catholic priest who laughs maniacally (yes, really), and all this coupled with the already sloppy production makes for a frustrating and directionless sit that can't justify itself.

The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer is about on the level of any average poorly produced "movie of the week" that was thrown together for the sake of tapping into some controversial topic. The only thing that differentiates Secret Life from The O. J. Simpson Story is that the movie is a little bloodier I guess, but not to the point where it delivers any real exploitative "passed the real of good taste" shock factor and is just a dull directionless movie that doesn't have anything to say about Dahmer other than "we covered him first!". Because that's what this movie is, it's the 1993 VHS equivalent of a comment on a YouTube video that says "FIRST!". Great, you're first.....and?

I bought this used and only payed $1.99 for it. That said, it's worth that kind of money. It's pretty decent for an extreme-low-budget film, but it could have been much better. To me, Carl Crew wasn't believable as Jeffrey Dahmer. He wasn't the right physical type, nor did he speak with Dahmer's distinctive nasal accent. And frankly, the constant "I should have stayed with God" diatribe becomes annoying after a while.

For a more realistic and subdued look at Dahmer's life, see the new film "Dahmer" with Jeremy Renner. Renner's performance as Jeffrey is so dead-on, it's scary. And while it doesn't get into as many of Jeffrey's killings, everyone should already know the basic story by now.

Bottom Line: If you can see this movie cheap, it's worth a look. But the 2002 movie is far superior, in my opinion.

The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer is slightly interesting, but it goes around in circles too much. It never really taps into his mind, or shows why he is, what he is. It just shows Dahmer luring countless victims, and that's it. The special they did on Dahmer on the show Mugshots, was much more informational and interesting. Overall, slightly interesting, but the special they did on the show Mugshots, is far better. ** (out of four)

This movie was fantastic and boy was it a powerful look at Dahmer. I liked it much better then the newer movie that came out this year. What ever happened to Carl Crew who plays Dahmer in this film? Not only is he damn good looking but he was a great actor. It's sad he did not have a longer and more exciting career in the business,especially when you consider the many undeserving talentless actors out there going strong. Anyway,the film is very entertaining,Carl Crew is a breath of fresh air to watch and the plot moves along great. See the movie. I only wish the DVD was better quality,but it's better then nothing.