100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck

" Richard Benjamin Speck (December 6, 1941 - December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who killed eight student nurses in their South Deering, Chicago, residence via stabbing, strangling, slashing their throats, or a combination of the three on the night of July 13-14, 1966. One victim was also raped prior to her murder. A ninth potential victim, student nurse Corazon Amurao, survived by hiding beneath a bed.

Shortly before December 5, 1991, Speck was transported from Stateville Correctional Center to Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet, Illinois after complaining of severe chest pains. Speck later died in the early morning hours of December 5, of what was believed to be a heart attack, one day shy of what would have been his 50th birthday. The coroner stated that Speck had an "enlarged heart, emphysema and clogged arteries" which most likely contributed to his fatal heart attack." - Wikipedia

I tried watching this movie a few times, but I kept getting distracted. I finally decided to look up who the Mass murderer was since I've never heard of him. Was after that point where I finally became interested and at least the beginning of the movie. Towards the middle of the movie, I lost interest again. The did catch my attention again. The acting was not bad, that is the reason I gave it a five.

I would not recommend this movie.

Like so many of these movies, it was made on a way to low of budget, with no talent whatsoever. The idea is sound, of course, lock a crew in a hospital, of course over night, of course with a ghost the loose, and of course nobody believes in ghosts. The acting was super horrible, the plot I liked, but the whining of the actors made me want to turn it off. Round and round in circles it felt this movie went, most of it wasn't believable but hey, these movies aren't supposed to win Academy Awards now are they? I wouldn't watch this movie if unless if you really had to, or if you are like and love these types of movies, its a definite watch!

The first rule of reviewing 'found footage' horror films is to take them for what they are. So, I review this in the context of the sub-genre only and not in the wider context of film generally.

The found footage genre is massively over-saturated with poor quality films. When done right, these films are fantastically scary (Blair Witch etc). I have watched over 30 of these films and, bearing in mind this film is only a year old, my only reaction is 'why was this film even made?'. It offers absolutely nothing new whatsoever, and trots out the same clichés as most other of these films (scary abandoned property, investigated at night, shaky camera work, annoying characters etc etc). Although it is no worse than many other found footage films, those other films came first and so it is up to newer films to expand on and develop the genre - this film totally fails to do that.

The one positive for me was that I thought the acting was a lot better than usual. I'm not talking about great acting as such, just appropriate acting for this type of film.

Yet another poor addition to the pool, for die-hard found footage fans only, and even those people will wonder why they bothered watching.

What happened to the last 84 minutes of my life?

What happened to filmmaking standards?

What happened to hope?

One thing that The Asylum films pretty much has going for it is consistency. 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck is an Asylum film in every way - but sadly, that's not a compliment. As far as found footage films go, this is one of the worst that I've had the misfortune of seeing.

And I'm easy.

The setup is similar to what we're accustomed to in films of this ilk, so I can't actually take any points away for that. The technical aspects of the film follows time-worn convention; it's pretty much what you'd expect to see for a micro-budget film of this particular sub- genre. Low light, jerky camera movements, and poor sound. Again, no surprises there.

Where this film really excels at ineptitude is in the low level of acting involved and in its extremely poor storytelling. For 3/4 of the film's running time, viewers are treated to excessive yelling, frantic posturing and hysterical emotional bursts from an earnestly amateurish cast. Bad acting has been a staple of this type of film since Blair Witch, so I for one, EXPECT it. However, it's the LAST 1/4 of the film that really bites; the actors collectively go into this whole other realm of over-emoting that I've rarely ever seen outside of a badly- directed grade school stage play.

Please people, for God's sake, take more acting classes. Improvisation is an art; please take it seriously. And if you know what's good for your "career", I'd suggest steering clear of films produced under the Asylum banner. Clearly, no good can come of it.

The atrocious acting in this film is outdone only by the extremely lazy storytelling which has characters making the stupidest choices possible and taking the most inexplicable courses of action. Repeatedly.

Finally (just because a lack of accuracy happens to be a pet peeve of mine), I'd give this film a huge "fail" in the research department. For the record, the building where the actual murders of the nurses took place was in a townhouse. Also, in actuality, Richard Speck killed 8 nurses in that townhouse, not 7 which this film repeatedly and erroneously mentions. The manner in which Speck's original victims were killed is also misrepresented in this film. There are more factual errors that I could mention, but chances are, you already get the picture. For future, it'd be nice if writers who work on dreck like this would actually take the time to at least get facts right, so here's a little shout-out to all those inspiring, creatively-deficient screenwriters out there that intend on tackling real-life events: it's not that difficult - Wikipedia is only a few mouse clicks away and it's freely available to anyone.

There's a good thing/bad thing dynamic to Instant Netflix, good in that all the dubious Asylum 'films' go on it before too long which means aside from the monthly fee, one doesn't have to spend a dime on this crap. The bad news is what you save in money, you lose in sanity. So a toss-up if you will.

This particular pile of excrement is one of the endless "found footage" movies that are as numerous as they are atrocious. A few friends go to the boarding house that Richard Speck murdered in half a century ago only to be stalked by a poltergeist. Yawn. Bad all the way around. The fact that its unwatchable is redundant as its an Asylum film.