Gacy (2003)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Good idea lost in the noise

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

I decided to give this movie a whirl, only because I had just recently learned about John Gacy, a real 30 person serial killer from the 1970's. Bad idea. The film seems to glorify the excessive amount of bugs under Gacy's house, rather than any sort of character development or plot movement. To my surprise, this movie even lacked a gruesome murder scene. The only violent part was Gacy thrusting a person's head in the water. The whole time it rambles on about Gacy taking a kid and putting him in his little house den, then the next kid, then the next kid, (x15). Seemingly no attempt was made by Saunders to engage, or attach the viewers to the characters; leaving this movie tough to watch for the wrong reason.

I wasn't expecting much going into this film. It was direct-to-VHS, so i figured it would be bad. It lived up to that. The writing is the main problem in this movie. Sometimes the scenes are set up to be akin to a horror movie, while others are written like a drama. The writing is so bad it's like a joke. In one scene, a man goes to Gacy's house and tells Gacy's elderly mother that her son is a serial rapist. Her response to the man is "You son of a b***h!" and slams the door. It was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. In another scene, two undercover cops go to Gacy's house. One of them asks Gacy, "We'd like to look around, if you don't mind," in what is either a terrible Canadian accent or a parody of a terrible Canadian accent. Gacy's response is "do you have a warrant," followed by "F**k off... d*****bags." It qualifies to be one of the worst lines in movie history. The acting for the most part is horrible. Gacy's wife in particular is a terrible actress in this film, but that goes for most of the acting. I could tell that Mark Holton was trying to act good in this, but it was impossible with the shitty, laughable script. The story is poorly structured with events not being tied together in any significant way. Gacy kills a boy, the cops look for the boy, then they forget about it until he kills someone else. Most of the movie is just isolated events. It doesn't even really show how the cops know he's the killer. I guess at one point they decide to assume he's the killer based on evidence we aren't shown they have. There is no character development but i wasn't expecting any. The first scene is Gacy being slapped by his father when he was a kid, and that is literally the only back story we get for Gacy, so it isn't even explained how that turned him into a killer. This movie could have been good if it was structured like a documentary or if the writing was good, but instead we get this. This movie might be worth a rent/view on the internet if you look at it as a B movie, even then it's not a good one. The only good part about it are the occasional "so bad it's funny" line or in one scene, Gacy hires an exterminator played by Carl from Billy Madison, so I thought that was cool. Still, if you want the real Gacy story, watch a documentary about it on Youtube. 2 out of 10

Gacy is set in the small Chicago, Illinois town of Des Plaines & starts during 1976 where local businessman John Wayne Gacy Jr. (Mark Holton) lives with his wife Kara (Joleen Lutz) & their two young twin daughter's. Gacy is a well respected member of the Des Plaines community, he holds huge parties, employs various young men & likes to do volunteer work in the community like attending children's parties dressed up as Pogo the Clown. However his respectable reputation seems at odds with the fact that he is a huge liar & brutal sadistic rapist & killer of young men...Co-written & directed by Clive Saunders this true-life biopic of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy is one of several Indie produced films that profile some infamous serial killer or other from Dahmer (2002) to the enjoyable Ted Bundy (2002) to the God awful The Hillside Strangler (2004), I can't say Gacy as a film did much for me & even at a short 80 odd minute run time I doubt I would ever want to watch it again. The film starts with a caption that explicitly states several character's & events in the film have been fictionalised so Gacy is maybe not as true to life as some may like, having said that whether it's true to life or not it's still not a very good film. It's rather slow going for the most part & almost all of Gacy's crimes are omitted, at no point in Gacy do we actually see Gacy kill anyone which, considering it's a film about a serial killer, could be thought of as a definite flaw. Gacy is more of a drama than an exploitation flick, I thought the story & character's were alright but a distinct lack of gruesome incident & the total omission of Gacy's crimes meant that Gacy didn't really feel like a biopic of one of the most notorious serial killers ever. Surely those crimes & evil acts were a huge part of him? Surely they are the only reason anyone even knows who he is? How can the film almost totally ignore them?The film looks alright, it's reasonably well made although there's a distinct lack of blood or gore, there's plenty of maggots & cockroaches in Gacy's corpse strewn crawlspace but surely they would have totally overrun the entire house & not just stayed down in the crawlspace. Apparently Gacy is also known as 'The Killer Clown', in reality he was convicted & later executed (he was given 21 consecutive life sentences & 12 death sentences) for the rape & murder of 33 boys & young men (ranging between the ages of 14 & 21) between 1972 & his arrest in 1978 (27 of whom he actually buried in his crawlspace). Rumour has it Gacy's last words before his execution on May 10th in 1994 were 'kiss my ass!'. Bizarrely after his execution Gacy's brain was removed & is now in the possession of Dr. Helen Morrison although I have no idea what she intends to do with it or why she has it.Although set in Chicago the film was actually shot in California, it looks alright & has reasonable production values but it doesn't have much of a 70's feel or vibe to it. The acting is alright, Adam Baldwin has a small role at the start.Gacy is a film about a serial killer that completely misses out all of the killings, as a drama it's alright I suppose & at least it's short but I doubt I would ever want to see it again & by all accounts it's not that accurate.

The reason I watch any movie is for entertainment and this one certainly did that. I was largely unfamiliar with the Gacy story so I had no preconceptions. I found it believable and well acted. Judged on holding my attention and the scare factor I give it a 10. It surely deserves better ratings than it's been getting from the majority of the people who've posted thus far and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking for a way to spend an evening and enjoyable viewing experience. While it might not be exactly accurate in all details I did not watch it expecting a biography, just entertainment and that is what I got. So don't be put off by all the negative comments, see it and make your own opinion.