The Serial Killers

Really good with one interview after another with the killers. The thing that makes this almost unwatchable is the incessant audible typing keyboard sounds when introducing a new topic. Just frustration.

It IS a must watch for the fanatic however

DVD Review "The Serial Killers" By Marcus Pan

Three DVDs, six and a half hours, of death and perversion is enough for just about anybody methinks. On Dark Sky Films' 2005 release of "The Serial Killers", we have thirteen episodes of biographies, discussion and interviews with men and women that have struck fear into the hearts of millions during their heyday. Going as far back as The Lipstick Killer (William Heirens), one of the USA's first, and occasionally looking at items such as the true story of The Amityville Horror (Ronald DeFeo Jr.), The Serial Killers 3 disc box set will satisfy your murderous cravings.

Well made and produced and some of the best documentaries of any genre, the discs cover many aspects of all of the serial and mass murderer's rampages. As good as law enforcement could piece together from confessions and evidence, the makers didn't concentrate on any one point of view. Local law enforcement officers, prosecutors, victims and their families are given equal screen time. The killers themselves are usually interviewed directly for heady insight into the minds of the deranged.

This isn't your "Silence of the Lambs" standard fare fiction. The crimes discussed and shown are real. It's enough for anybody, really, who has even a cursory interest in psychology, law enforcement, forensics and criminal behavior. The Lethal Lovers duo (Catherine May Wood & Gwendolyn Graham), The Hillside Strangler (Kenneth Bianchi) and the notorious Lady Killer (Theodore Robert Bundy) are here. We stay in the recent few decades of the past in order to show us a full storyline instead of delving too far into the current where stories are still being developed and change as each yelp of the messed up minds of today's killers run awry. And many of the murderers here I have only known about cursorily. This will give you an in-depth look at some of the more obscure serial killers of our country.

The soundtrack of the series is an eerie combination of jazz fusion and spookiness, giving the production as a whole a slick sound and feel. Videography is top notch and direction is superb. The killers themselves are near remorseless and just seeing them on screen knowing what they have done as it is explained to you step by step, in gory brutal detail, is haunting. Equally scary is the statistics stated at the beginning of each episode - that there are as many as two hundred serial killers still plying their trade in the world at large. I find it interesting that just about all of the convicted murderers never accept what they've done - they always refer to their victims in the third person. "Yes, she was killed." Not, "Yes, I killed her/him."

The success of such films as "Silence of the Lambs" and its prequel/sequels, "Seven" and television shows like The "X-Files", "CSI", and "24" shows a country-wide (and worldwide) fascination with the macabre. Wanting to see either things that you don't have the balls to do - or just can't accept having being done. It's this that makes DVDs like "The Serial Killers" fascinating. What if you were raised by a bad mother like Henry Lee Lucas? What if your young life was as unfulfilling and rife with money problems as Lipstick Killer William Heirens? Would you snap just as boldly and all-encompassingly as these men? Could you be a part of a Lethal Lover duo if your life was just as messed up?

Motivations of these men and women range from the grotesquely insane to the perversely sexual and everything in between...vengeance, hatred, fear. All of what made "Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal" dark, twisted and evil makes "The Serial Killers" tenfold as dark because, here, it's real. It's not Hollywood made up story time - actual crimes, actual victims, actual derangement. If you thought a Hollywood thriller was frightening, give this a shot - and know it can happen to you.

--- Originally published in Legends #153. Minor edits since. De-offensified.

Honestly this show is old school. And it is awesome. It is to the point informative and fairly graphic with out being obscene. But overall the interviews with the actual killers are an insight to a criminals mind. Overall the show is dated but I will say this, very underrated show that should have many more episodes. This show it is better than most of the modern shows. Eerily spoken the stories are narrated by the actual killers, they describe their crimes in chilling details. The investigations are old school with no dna and if no eye witness or fingerprint, no case. I highly recommend this show!

Dillon.

THE ANNOYING TYPING AND MUSIC they used throughout!!

Oh my gosh, it was HORRIBLE!! If it was just the typing, I could deal with it, but then they would play this jazzy/piano music that would increase in volume like 30% in between shots, and then it'd return to normal volume. It drove me NUTS! I was SO glad to see the other reviews for this documentary that pointed this annoyance out, I'm not alone! Lol. Anyways, on to the actual documentary.

The documentary is very good. Stories are straight from the serial killers themselves along with the police and others that were involved with the case. Overall, each episode was really informative and interesting. The only episode that bothers me was episode 3, but that is only because I've ALWAYS had issues with Henry Lee Lucas's case. How those Texas Rangers could be taken for fools by that moron still boggles my mind. It was so obvious that Lucas couldn't have killed all those people all over the country. He was definitely a serial killer, I don't deny that. I do, though, deny the claim that he killed 3,000 people. Rarely do serial killers change their M. O and their victim type. Lucas was claiming he shot an elderly woman in one state, then raped and strangled a teenager in another state 1000 miles away the next day. It was RIDICULOUS! It bothers me so much because he claimed murders that he couldn't have done, which means the REAL murderer got away completely free, and could do it again. Absolutely infuriating! Lazy, lazy police work. This documentary doesn't go into too much detail, but there is a documentary that does point out the ridiculousness of Lucas's "cases", I think it's on Netflix?

Regardless of my rant, this is a great series with A LOT of information and interviews with the killers themselves and the police who caught them. It's definitely worth of watching for anyone like myself who LOVES studying/watching serial killers.

Enjoy!!

-Amy.

Forget about any intrigue that you may have expected in this documentary style The Serial Killers such as was delivered in the value Bill Kurtis always added to the Cold Case Files television series from 1979-2017. What you get are the cold hard facts from the mouths of the serial killers themselves and delivered in more of a clinical documentary style.

I found the periodic sound throughout the series of the typing on a computer keyboard to introduce some related text such as the following text "Jack Blake went missing on 7th May 1972" very irritating. Along with the keyboard typing sound it was usually accompanied by a musical jazz and piano piece which was even more irritating as the sound of the jazz music increased the audio volume by about 20 percent and then the audio volume would go back down to normal.

The series benefit was that it did a great job of just relaying the facts and not sensationalizing any of these serial killers murders with any gruesome crime scene visuals. What I would have preferred though was to hear more from the actual detectives who worked each of these serial killer murders to successfully find the serial killers guilty in a court of law.

Obviously each of these serial killers are not normal peace loving human beings and family oriented. Instead, they each describe some of their early childhood experiences as being abnormal childhoods which eventually would lead them on a path of heinous crimes resulting in a string of murders.

This documentary series focuses more or less on the factual events of the serial killers early childhood, through to their series of murders and followed by some cold calculated explanations by each of the serial killers not why they did it but "how" they committed their murders. Throughout this documentary series we hear the recounted stories by people directly associated and/or harmed by each of the serial killers as well as the opinions of the various judges, prosecutors, forensic scientists, detectives and psychologists.

Overall I give the series a respectable 7 out of 10 rating