Le Massacre de Chicago

If ONLY I had bothered to look this flick up on IMDb before buying it On Demand, I could have saved myself $3.95 and 11 minutes I'll never get back....that's how long I watched before being nearly overwhelmed by a compulsion to pluck out my eyes and slam them in a hardcover edition of War and Peace to ease my pain and heighten my entertainment.

I am a true crime buff, so I took a chance on this one.... lesson learned.

Of COURSE when I started to read the comments on IMDb, the first thing I read was "Don't say I didn't warn you".... you did, it was just my bad timing...

this movie FAILS.... i mean, it's an offense to any viewer, whether you're into true crime, thrillers, acting, cinematography, directing-it's a non-discriminating disappointment for all.... the set design is pretty bland, so at least that's not AWFUL....

I'm still trying to watch it, but only because I haven't yet decided what to watch instead...

this film is DREADFUL. I haven't felt this betrayed by a movie since the Black Dahlia. and THAT was a betrayal of biblical proportions...

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.

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!

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.

www.robertsreview.com www.killerreviews.com

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.