Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck

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.

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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.

I am very familiar with the true life case of Richard Speck and have to say that if you are at all interested in learning about him, his victims and the crime, this movie will not give you an accurate representation at all. Like the 2004 movie "Speck" with Doug Cole, this movie lacks realism and strays far from the true story it is supposed to be telling. First off, the dormitory Speck murders the nurses in, in the movie is one story and spread out like a hospital ward with several rooms. The two-story South Chicago townhouse that the real murders took place in was cramped, with three small bedrooms upstairs and a living room and kitchen downstairs. This may seem like nitpicking but it's actually a major mistake that the filmmaker commits, because much of the horror of the real life story comes from the fact that Speck was able to murder all of these women in such close, claustrophobic quarters. It would have added so much to the movie if they had gotten this right. Secondly, Speck was not vicious, violent and murderous all the time whether drunk or sober in real life as the movie portrays him. In actuality the real Speck, when sober, was a sniveling coward who was afraid to fight, lacked self-confidence, was ashamed and embarrassed of his pockmarked face and a mama's boy who, even as an adult, relied on his mother to bail him out of jail and get him out of whatever trouble he got himself into. He only had a modicum of self-confidence and mostly just became nasty, violent and obnoxious when he got drunk and/or high. In prison, the other prisoners turned him into their bitch and forced him into humiliating sexual practices at their whim. Not exactly the scary cowboy-hat wearing outlaw portrayed in the movie. I'm not minimizing the fact that Richard Speck was a dangerous and vicious killer. But it would've been nice to have seen a more accurate 3 dimensional portrayal of what he was really like. Thirdly, the actors in this movie who play the cops are lousy. Their overacting and over-reacting would do William Shatner proud. The performances are laughable and the writing is on par with a cheesy cop show from the sixties or an Ed Wood movie. Fourthly, this ceases to be a horror movie and is just downright nasty and unpleasant in it's, perhaps, too graphic depiction of the murders of the nurses. This is not cartoonish Michael Myers, Halloween horror here. It's a tragic real life story that had horrific, sad and awful consequences. This movie insults the viewer's intelligence and is patronizing in it's spoon fed violence. Richard Speck was a worthless shard of human debris who can't and shouldn't be celebrated or mythologized in any way. After watching this train wreck of a so-called movie, I can only say may no more would-be John Carpenters or George Romeros try to put his vile life to film again, unless of course they do it on a larger budget, with a better script, better director and better actors. I agree with what the other person said about Corin Nemec, his performance is good, but only his performance is good. I am in shock and awe that somebody thought this movie was better than David Fincher's "Zodiac"!

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!

Being extremely interested in true crime, I decided to watch this movie last night. It was not good. The only thing good at all about it was the fact that Corin Nemec is a great actor. However, he is the only good actor in this movie. Actually, it was so bad, I am not sure how he could have worked along side such terrible acting. We have Candyman and the Wishmaster as very unconvincing police officers. Not to mention, almost every other actor and extra was terrible.

In my opinion, If your interested in the actual case of Richard Speck, Then I suggest you spend 15-20 minutes reading about him on the internet as opposed to wasting an hour and a half watching this movie. Besides, Reading up on it will give you much more insight than this movie ever could.

Don't say I didn't warn you.