Bundy: L'esprit du mal

This has got to be the most awful film I have watched in a long time. In fact, I will as go as far as to say that it's worse than my all time movie low (which near enough caused me to have a mental breakdown and was only saved by disappearing out of the cinema to do some retail therapy) Scooby Doo the movie.

This is a waste of time, the acting is poor and I mean POOR - low budget doesn't have to mean this BAD. I am a little tired of these so called biography films where the writer and director get off on scenes of violence (in between scenes of pure mind numbing tedious acting).

SO - if you get your kicks from listening to piercing screams, with not one great attempt at acting in site, this is the film for you! If they had to tell this lunatics story, then they could have done it so much better than this. I shudder to think who would call it a great film - but then the word 'cult' will no doubt be used instead of the word 'crap'. But hey, you never know how drunk you need to be to get through to the end.

I happened to find this movie by random coincidence at the local secondhand DVD store for about $2. I do enjoy horror movies, and a movie based on the actual serial killer couldn't be all bad. But I was a bit hesitant about it when I saw who had the lead part.

Without going into much details about the story, then it can be easily summarized as a movie about notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.

Story-wise then "Bundy: A Legacy of Evil" was unfathomably boring and rather uneventful actually. You don't care for any of the characters in the movie, be it victims or killer. Why? Well, because everything was so superficial and shallow that you can't emerge yourself into anything. And the actual killing scenes were just unimpressive.

One thing that did work for the movie, and which was much of a surprise for me. This was perhaps one of the best performances by Corin Nemec. It was just a shame that he was held back by a flaccid storyline and script. Also, Kane Hodder is in the movie, which was a bonus for any horror fan, but it was nowhere near enough to salvage this movie, not by a long shot.

"Bundy: A Legacy of Evil" is really not worth wasting your time or money on. If you like movies about real serial killers, then there are some better choices available.

I read the book by Ann Rule The Stranger Beside Me and this movie was a complete failure at portraying Ted Bundy. The judge who sentenced Bundy to death in the case of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman was NOT Foggerty it was Edward Cowart. He was not picked up and his car was NOT searched in the middle of the desert, his car was searched by 3 policemen not one. And the Warden was NOT the one who recorded the confessions it was Bob Keppel. He killed 2 girls at the Chi Omega house with a WOOD CLUB not a baseball bat that was in the girls' room, and he seriously injured 2 more girls in the same sorority house, then he killed another woman down the road from them. The movie left out SOOOO many important details. Like where was Ann Rule at the Crisis Center, and what about Carol Ann Boone?, the woman he had a daughter with? It is a TERRIBLE, AWFUL, movie don't bother to rent it or buy it, Read Ann Rule's book along with Bob Keppel's for the real story of Ted Bundy!

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.

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.