Kemper

Only for the most desperate true-crime buff, this TV movie-quality dramatization is about serial killer Ed Kemper and one certain cop's bond with him and his pursuit of him. Lame acting, worse dialogue (written by a former soft-core porn screenwriter), plot holes aplenty, and lackadaisical direction and editing. Many scenes are wide angle master-shots with no real framing, as the actors just meander on screen and recite their lines of dialogue. The plot is not very fact based considering it claims to be inspired by true events, it deviates from the facts of the case almost from square one. It seems like the screenwriters were not even familiar with the case when they wrote the screenplay. An interesting movie could have been made out of the story, but they did just about everything wrong here. And I did not know that people had laptop computers and cell phones with text messaging and photos in the 1970s?

Only thing I have to say is after 10 minutes, I was slack jawed. If you have read any of the history of Ed Kemper and his crimes, you would know that only a REAL director with REAL actors and REAL money could give this tale justice and paint it the way it should be. Maybe it is just to difficult because of how horrifying the truth is or to horrifying to revisit. But all the same, this has no worth. Rent Predator.

First of all, Ed Kemper was 6'9" tall - the actor playing him was short and way too old for the role. Kemper trolled college campuses for his victims and would not have been able to get to as many young women if he were in his 40's as he was portrayed.

Kemper was extremely intelligent and likable, but this merely portrays him as a one-note freak. Which he was not.

Dialogue terrible, and cell phones and computers in the 1970's! Who was the production designer? Glad I didn't pay to see this one. I wish a really fine movie would be made about this brilliant killer - too bad he wasn't able to use his smarts for the good of the world.

Even Kemper (he is still alive in prison) would roll with laughter at the way he's portrayed here.

Boring boring boring and pathetic piece of tripe.

This movie was downright wretched. I watched it on Showtime Extreme and found myself cleaning while it was on, it was THAT awful.

What offends me most is this has nothing to do with the killings.

The real story is so much more compelling. A 15 year old kills both grandparents, then gets committed, only to go on a killing spree when he gets out of the psychiatric facility at the age of 21. He was also 6'9".

This film has the era wrong...this was the late 60s and early 70s. It also has all the facts, essentially wrong. Kemper was not an average-size man in his 40s. He was a giant of a man in his early 20s.

A decent film would have recreated the entire case, so there would at least be come thought provoking questions (i.e. how do you let out a psychopath to kill again). Halloween (the remake), is probably closer to the true story than this one was.

This was just a cheesy, badly-done splatter film that slapped the name Kemper on it, for no apparent reason.

"Psycho" really had little to do with the Ed Gein case. But it didn't really pretend to, and it was extremely well made.

"Kemper," on the other hand.....bottom of the barrel.

I grew up in Santa Cruz when Kemper was doing his terrible work, and so I have some familiarity with the gory details of this story. I mean, I never researched it but one picks things up from local news and talk around town. And without giving anything away, you can be sure that NOTHING in this movie is based on anything that happened in real life. In fact, I'm almost certain that they took an existing serial killer screen play and did a search and replace, swapping out "Mike Killington" with "Ed Kemper."

The locations don't look like Santa Cruz. The characters don't talk like humans. The cars are incorrect cars. The cel phones are... wait THERE WERE NO CEL PHONES IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES. Seriously, if there was any detail that could have been authentic, they found a way to make the exact opposite choice. It's kind of a marvel to see a movie with literally no correct decisions behind it. How does a thing like that happen?

Even if you never heard of Kemper you can appreciate this as a bad movie on its own terms. The acting is wooden and one-dimensional, the music is mostly synths, everyone is too pretty, the plot twists are like straight road through the midwest on a high-visibility day.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you have the attention span for stuff like this, it's the best time you'll ever have.