Bundy: An American Icon

This movie is awful. It's as if someone scanned through the Ted Bundy wiki page and then wrote a screenplay from what they could remember. I can count on my hand the moments in the film that were accurate (not including character names) - and most of them were very small aspects.

Besides the obvious COMPLETE butchery of all the facts, the movie was poorly paced. The acting was often very cheesy. The lead actor might have done a decent job with a good script and director. However, he seemed to have a pallet of creepy facial expressions he'd rotate through. Furthermore, he limped for the whole movie. I realize that some of the only footage available of Ted Bundy walking shows him limping, but it was because he had shackles around his ankles.

This movie was made out of an obsession with serial killers, which is probably why the focus was so helplessly off of the REAL Ted Bundy case - and who he actually was as a person. The part where he howls like a werewolf? Please. They even missed the boat on the method he used to kill. So many things missed - and for no apparent reason. Anyone who has read any account of his killing spree, or trials, would be able to write a better screenplay.

Also: This movie literally took me a month to finish. I'd stop about every three times something was so bad that I couldn't continue anymore. And it took me a month to get through the entire thing.

Corin Nemec is a talented actor and best remembered for his performance on the Fox series, "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," and playing Steven Stayner in "I Know My First Name is Steven." In this low budget thriller, he plays Ted Bundy. He has already played Richard Speck and the Boston strangler. Ted Bundy was a complex man and one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. The scene where he opens a file and closes it without mentioning what was in it about his birth father. As somebody who read Ann Rule's book, his paternity has never been explained. Ted was attractive, charming and intelligent but he couldn't overcome his inner demons. Unlike the Green River Killer, his victims were not the usual prostitutes. Bundy killed women after tricking them into his car. We never really know what he with his victims besides killing them. Nemec's performance is the only salvageable part of this forgettable film. You should watch Mark Harmon in the role.

Seriously, all I got from this storyline was that Ted Bundy was a monster. I already knew that because I've seen a couple of other films that tell Bundy's tale in an interesting manner. This one does not. However, the sound editing, along with the musical contributions from Andres Boulton, Diane Hall and Johnny Childe, are intriguing enough to make me want to seek out this film on DVD. Diane Hall's rendition of "Renegade Girl" (a la D. Hall & Friends) yanked me out of disinterest and led me in a direction I wasn't really prepared for. From that point on, I paid more attention to the music and background audio than I remember ever doing during a first viewing of any film. Now, I want to hear it again.

When I saw this movie, the other day, on cable, it played with the title, "Bundy: A Legacy Of Evil," which is a much better title than the original one. As far as the film goes, I don't know what to complain about first. I guess the poor acting is a good start. The actor who played Bundy in this movie was not very convincing. Neither was anyone else for that matter. What was worse was the story line, or lack of it. At times, they would go from any particular scene and cut to a random shot where he is killing a woman while some crappy Alternative Rock music loudly plays. Now I know that Alternative Rock gets its roots from 60s and 70s rock, but it doesn't quite sound the same. I didn't know if they had momentarily slipped into the 90s or what? The music was so annoying I started to hit the mute button whenever it would come on.

They also got several facts wrong, but what movie doesn't do that anyway? I wouldn't have minded that so much if they had just pieced the story together somehow. By cutting to random killings and scenes in different cities or situations with no explanation or setup, I would not have had any idea what was going on without knowing what I already knew before seeing the movie.

An episodic plot renders this film structurally inane. One scene has Ted in the desert on his hands and knees howling like a wolf. Cut to an interior scene in some house at Christmas where Ted is on the phone as a suicide prevention counselor. Where's the connection between these two events? The film doesn't tell us. The plot is filled with these random scenes from random periods in Bundy's life, sans any sense of flow or continuity.

Slow, dull, and boring, this film reeks of a quickly written script and overall quick, superficial production. There's not an ounce of suspense or tension. Episodes are long and drawn out. Bundy's manipulation skills are not well displayed, though the one sequence at the restaurant wherein he proposes marriage comes close to showing how he could deceive. Dialogue lacks subtext. The final twenty-minute segment is marginally interesting but only because the real-life outcome is so gripping.

Corin Nemec is dreadfully miscast as Bundy. Nemec, who vaguely resembles a youthful Pat Boone, looks nothing at all like the real Ted Bundy. The crooked smile comes across as contrived. And Nemec plays Bundy like a caricature. Many of the supporting performances are overplayed.

If ever there was a real-life serial killer whose public persona offers the potential for a riveting movie, surely Ted Bundy is the one. Unfortunately, a dreadful script makes for a muddled, incoherent storyline, helped not at all by poor casting and bad acting.