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Gacy (2003) (V)

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17 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
What's that smell? Oh, it's just the movie., 19 December 2004

Author: LCShackley from United States

I'd like to know what the purpose was behind the making of this film. The Gacy story would have been served better by a more documentary approach, instead of this weak "grand guignol" version which spends more time focusing on maggots and bad smells than on Gacy and his background. Are we to believe that he's a psychopath because his dad whacked him around on a fishing trip (and maybe elsewhere)? His married life is brushed over casually (what happened in all the OTHER years of his marriage?), and his business and social life was also given short shrift. Why did he kill the first boy? When did he lose control over his anger and perversion? He's just a hair-trigger, vulgar and angry guy through the entire film.

BUT HERE'S WHAT BUGS (sic) ME MOST ABOUT THIS FILM...when will L.A. producers realize that other parts of the country look different from California? This story took place in Des Plaines, IL, my wife's home town. (In fact, Gacy's last "pickup" was at a store just a few blocks from her house.) In the movie, Gacy's house and neighborhood look nothing like Chicago. The trees are wrong, the sky is wrong, the other buildings are wrong. They didn't even get the colors quite right on the Chicago police cars. Worst of all...as in many other Hollywood productions about Chicago...you can actually see MOUNTAINS in the background (during Gacy's party scene). Hollywood morons need to get out a little more! There is life beyond L.A. (At least they confessed to it in the closing credits.)

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13 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Lacking exposition, but adequately, appropriately disturbing, 3 May 2005

Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

This film is part biopic, part psychological portrait of real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (played here by Mark Holton). It begins with a brief scene of an 11-year old Gacy with his father, before jumping to Gacy's later life with his second wife, when he was living just outside of Chicago. It roughly covers a number of events up to Gacy's arrest, but not his trial or later years.

This is one heck of a difficult film to rate. Co-writer David Birke also co-wrote another serial killer biopic/psychological portrait, Dahmer (2002), and both films suffer from many of the same flaws. Gacy may have even more problems. There are countless things that could have been done better.

Yet in combination with co-writer and director Clive Saunders, Gacy manages to retain your interest, and excels at the prime directive of serial killer flicks--it makes the viewer feel profoundly uncomfortable. If judged solely on that aspect, the film would deserve a 10 out of 10. Of course, not everyone wants that kind of emotional experience with a film, but it seems to me that if a serial killer flick doesn't make you uncomfortable, something went wrong. The subject isn't exactly puppy dogs and pixie sticks, unless we're talking about barbecuing puppies and using the pixie sticks for spice.

Let's get out of the way that the film isn't precisely, historically accurate, and it's far more historically incomplete. I don't consider that a flaw. Saunders makes it more than clear a couple times that he's used facts about Gacy's life as inspiration. This is not a documentary, but a fictionalization--specifically it's "historical fiction". Gacy had a relatively complicated life, and understanding his crimes "realistically" involves looking at a huge time span of complex events. There's no way it could be done in 90 minutes, or even 180 minutes.

However, the events that Birke and Saunders choose to show too often seem random, and there's too much exposition missing. We get one scene of Gacy-as-a-boy with his dad, whom we see being mildly abusive. This isn't sufficient to establish anything significant about Gacy's youth. There either should have been more material like this, or it should have been dropped altogether and simply mentioned at some point, perhaps during a bit of self-reflective dialogue (which we get later anyway).

Next we jump to a screen full of text telling us that Gacy was convicted of sodomizing a boy and spent 18 months in prison. Then we jump again, and suddenly we see Gacy living with a woman about his age, two younger girls and an older woman. We can figure out that this is his wife (it was actually his second wife) and mother, and we assume it's his kids (they weren't, they were stepdaughters). Eventually we're told their relationships (except my parenthetical facts), but it doesn't help that it is initially presented as something of a mystery.

There's a general lack of exposition as exemplified above that makes the film play more surrealistically if you're not familiar with Gacy's story. Sometimes this works--the inserts of Gacy eating chicken and dressed up as an alternate world Colonel Sanders (Gacy's first wife's family owned a number of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Iowa) are particularly striking, even if the viewer can't quite figure out why they're present. But just as often the lack of exposition is more of a problem, as with the two hippie-looking guys who are staking out Gacy near the end of the film. It's never quite clear who they are, why they're around, or why in some cases they appear to have lawn chairs set up within about 30 feet of Gacy's front door.

There are a lot of interesting facts about Gacy that are hinted at but not shown very well. For example, he was actually well liked by a number of people and he was very involved with community groups such as the Jaycees at one point. His fascination with clowns was also much more bizarre than is shown in the film. He had unusual makeup that friends recommended he change because it had potential to scare children, and he was an amateur artist who painted weird but wonderful clown/skeleton canvases (well, I like it at least, but I have a taste for outsider art, including psychotic stuff). In conjunction with the clown fascination, Saunders employs subtle carnival music in the score at one point. This worked well, but would have been better if more regular and prominent.

What Saunders focuses on instead are those elements that provide that uncomfortableness I was talking about earlier. Gacy had a crawl space beneath his house that served as a dumping ground for bodies and that produced an infamous stench. Saunders dwells on the crawl space, appropriately. He also fills it with cockroaches, maggots and other insects. Gacy comes across as consistently pathetic, almost sad, as does most of the rest of the cast, surprisingly enough, including Gacy's family and most of his victims. It's difficult when watching the film to believe that some of the victims would make themselves as available as they did, especially over time, but this is based on truth. A lot of small, subtle "beats" add to the pathetic feeling, including the driving shots through the dirty windshield, and a lot of white trash characters who look unkempt, who drive wrecks, and who work in dilapidated environments. Even though I ended up wishing there was more of the carnival music, I also loved the melancholy score that is prominent about two-thirds of the way through the film.

While the film might not provide a lot of psychological insight into Gacy, if such would be possible--he truly comes across as very rational and completely insane at the same time, and it might have benefited from a more linear, in-depth look at some of the victims, the film still succeeds by delivering a deeply disturbing atmosphere.

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16 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Worst movie since Plan 9, 26 March 2005

Author: tax_man from United States

So, possibly not the worst, but damned near to it. Here's the thing; I'm a psychology major with a specialization in criminal psychology. I've been working in a prison with small-time serial murderers for the past 3 years north of Atlanta, Georgia for my internship and occupation. I've extensively studied all the famous ones, Fish, Sutcliffe, Gacy, Dahmer, Gein, etc. so that I could make headway on treatment and understanding in the prison I've been working in. For all of you out there interested in the subject, the best book on the subject for those not doing, well, graduate study or anything, is My Life Among the Serial Killers by Dr. Helen Morrison. Excellent book with a large section on Gacy, her studies with him, and even his trial and execution. Not even talking from a standpoint of how it incorrectly portrays Gacy the man, but plainly from the standpoint of movies, it's terrible. It's an absolute bore; the whole movie drags and chops its way through a largely fabricated story with terrible editing, directing, and acting. Much worse, Gacy is portrayed as if his murders are driven by revenge at points, unconscious drives at others (closer to, but still not getting to the most likely causes). There is one thing that the movie did decently, and still it was nothing more than hinting at the truth. Jeff Rignall, one of his few surviving victims, was depicted as that male prostitute. He suffered severely from Gacy's treatment, including permanent and nearly fatal liver damage from the chloroform, brain damage from the near-death suffocation, and several other major medical issues along with severe developmental and psychological issues. The other victim that survived and came forward, Robert Donnelly reported almost identical occurrences as far as abduction and torture. Even then, his life did not need extra, fictitious events to dramatize it. He was an interesting enough person even when the truth is told. Come to think of it, some of the most interesting things he did were during his imprisonment up until his sentence was carried out in March of '94. Either way, if you think this movie gave you any insight into the veiled monster that Gacy really was, you're deeply mistaken. The biggest thing this movie was lacking was recognition of his inability to view other people as separate sentient human beings. That is what makes a serial killer. This movie did not portray that in any reasonable way, and it did not bring to the public any sort of idea of what Gacy was.

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11 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
I feel violated, 22 June 2003

Author: DaADA1 from Oxford, United Kingdom

I truly cannot express what I have just seen. Almost like an unfurling of a psychotic mind onto the screen. Honestly, I would enjoy a shower right about now and I never want to see another clown as long as I live (irony). As a 17-year-old boy, I feel like I've just been taken advantage of. Regardless of your background, "Gacy" is one of the most horrifying movies I've ever seen. Partly because the film is based on a true story, and includes information about the real killer John Gacy (played superbly by Michael Holton). I watched this film with my sister (and just ended 10 minutes ago) and we could not help but squeal and speculate over the fate of the next on screen victim. Some of the acting is pretty B-list, but then again, so is the film. The direction is decent and the 1970s time period is pulled off very convincingly. The screenplay is nothing special but is carried along perfectly by Holton. This movie is truly disturbing and I advise that not only do you see it, but make sure you've got someone to share your thoughts with. -8/10

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Thankfully not going for cheesy scares, but it's still inaccurate and badly acted!, 24 December 2004

Author: the amorphousmachine from Australia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

'Gacy' is a low-budget dramatised B-grade version of one of America's most famous serial killers in John Wayne Gacy. It is not a horror movie, nor should it ever be made with the "oh look, he's gonna get it" clichés. It's a true story based on real events, and real people. I'm glad that Clive Saunders chose to not to try and make a slasher/horror flick. Instead, he opted to display the creepiness of John Wayne Gacy, and perhaps, frustrate the audience at how this man got away with so much.

'Gacy' is a hard film to make, and I can see why it was dramatised the way it was because it's too graphic a crime to really show what he did to his victims- and the circumstances of his capture and the reasons for targeting his victims weren't as dramatic in real life. ***MAJOR SPOILERS*** The climax of the film where Tom narrowly escapes was not the reason the cops decided to make the arrest. It makes for good drama, but that was not how it happened. The truth is, the evidence began to accumulate due to objects found in the house, and also because many of the victims also knew each other. Other scenes such as neighbours threatening to sue over the smell is also inaccurate since Gacy's real neighbours defended him at the trial. Similarly, the boy who wanted his pay did not beat Gacy up and take his money to become a future victim- all the kid did was threaten to go to the police over the pay dispute. So, the film does take some liberties with the truth for dramatic effect, but I personally would like to have seen the true story, and more about how the cops managed to discover his crimes, and why it took them so long to clue on.

'Gacy' as a film, feels b-grade, and never really convinces you that it's representing a true event. The acting in general is substandard, although Mark Holton does look more like John Wayne Gacy than Brian Dennehy did in "To Catch a Killer" mini-series- yet the latter was a better representation. Holton is okay in some moments, but the rest of the cast don't add much to this movie. You never really get a satisfying conclusion, nor does Gacy's family ever get explored as characters. They are just basically wallpaper. Director, Clive Saunders, tries to represent the psychology behind Gacy's actions through his childhood, but it's never really convincingly connected, and Adam Baldwin seems farcical as Gacy Snr! Granted, Saunders manages to give a creepy uncomfortable feeling in this movie as the "normality" of Gacy's everyday life is played out, and the use of clowns is quite effective in this movie too. However, 'Gacy' never displays the true horror of John Wayne Gacy, and some scenes are so unconvincing and badly acted (as well as scripted) that it's hard to take this film seriously at all! While I respect the fact that Saunders got away from selling a real-life serial killer story as a horror movie, and instead go for the creepier aspect of John Wayne Gacy with implications! Saunders still should have made a film that was as accurate as possible, and given more substance to other characters in the film. However, as it stands, he neither had the means or the talent to portray a chilling exposition of this extremely evil human being. 'Gacy' is simply not a good movie, but at least it didn't go down the road of cliché horror flicks, and one can respect that I guess! ** out of *****!

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Beware of Killer Clowns, 9 November 2005

Author: domino1003 from East Texas, USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

After watching "Gacy" and knowing the story behind the film, you can understand a little why so many people have a fear of clowns.

John Wayne Gacy (Mark Holton, who many people may remember from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure")seems like the typical old man next door. However, he has problems with his crawlspace. There's a constant smell coming from it. And there's a reason for it: Gacy buries his victims under his house, his mother totally oblivious to what is going on in her son's house and his wife is wondering about her husband's strange behavior (Like the porn mags with guys and his little "hideaway."). Even his new house guest, Tom (Charlie Webber)is wondering about him, although he still stays with him despite the weird vibes: sounds coming from the crawlspace, the films with boys and the box loaded with watches. It's only a matter of time when all of Gacy's secrets are revealed (Especially when he runs out of room in his crawlspace).

The film is incredibly creepy (the constant views of a bug infested crawlspace;dragging a body past his sleeping mother;killing a boy while dressed as a clown)and just as disturbing (Especially as he just walks around a body that's just lying around in his house). Gacy was a monster and Holton does an incredible performance in his portrayal of Gacy.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Wow!!, 5 July 2003

Author: chaplins_charlie from USA

I remember the intent on watching this movie was because it was where Stephen King got his idea for the movie "It". Well, this is the true story about a middle-aged man, John Wayne Lacy, who is an ordinary husband and father living in an ordinary town. He works as a clown for children's birthday parties and seems to live a good life despite living through a very abusive childhood. However, no one knows that this ordinary and kind man has a sick and twisted deep dark secret. It goes on until neighbors, friends and even his own wife start to grow suspicious and that's when hell breaks loose. The ending surprised me and if you watch it, you will be too! Mark Holton did a fantastic job as John Wayne Gacy. I didn't know Holton had such talent, I mean after seeing him play Francis in the Pee-Wee Herman movie, I didn't think much of him, but he was great in this one!! His facial expressions and his emotions were so real that it was really convincing. Rent it and you'll find out for yourself!! I give it 7 stars out of 10!!

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
More like a documentary than a film., 15 August 2003
Author: Chris Bush from London, United Kingdom

I hadn't heard much about the Gacy Killings before I saw this movie. I guess you could say I'm uncultured considering he is one of the most well known serial killers of America. Anyway, I decided to give this movie a go, because I'm starting to open up to movies that aren't all about comedy and this seemed like a good contrast to try.

I was quite disappointed by the lack of depth. It seemed to just fill time with the same thing over and over again. He goes out, picks up a boy, brings him home and well...we know the rest. I suppose the main problem was the fact that we never really got an insight into him and how he thought and his real reasons for doing what he did. We had a little taste of his childhood and his abusive father right at the beginning of the film and heard a few flashback sounds throughout the film as constant reminders but that was it.

We also never really saw how this affected everybody else around him. His co-workers, friends, neighbours, wife, mother, children. I mean they were all a part of his life and even lived in the same house. It would have been nice to include this in the storyline. I feel this film was more of a documentary to tell people who he was and what he did rather than open up a bit of light as to what went on behind it all.

I've seen other serial killer movies and they all seem to at least explain a little as to what is going on. We never really got a look at it through his eyes, which is what I guess everybody will be expecting to see.

Overall, it was a pretty boring account of what happened and although my thoughts go out to those that were lost and the people that were affected by these real life events. I feel this film has done nothing but bring back painful memories for those involved. A film best left alone...

If you're thinking of watching this movie. I suggest you do it on a night where you've got nothing better to do because it really isn't that entertaining.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
I also feel violated but for different reasons, 22 February 2007

Author: matty-thedoctor from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This film is the most boring horror film ever made! Im currently still watching it and he hasn't killed anyone yet 49 Min's in..........I DEMAND BLOOD. First things first the acting in this film is pretty lame by the twins (when you watch it you'll understand) but the guy who plays john Wayne gacy is brilliant seems nice but is a nut job! This may be based on true events but who gives a hoot the guy got killed a while back so we are pretty safe....i think! this film doesn't scare me one bit its just poor poor film avoid if you value your mind! if you like watching boring films though be my guest and watch. Let me know what you think of it because i want to know if i'm the only dude that doesn't like this film

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Gacy??.. more like GAYcy, 9 September 2003
Author: NoTZ from Rutherford.. NJ

my god was i fooled. shouldve followed the ole' saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." this movie was absolutely terrible. I was hoping to see a lot of gore and killing and stuff, but instead i saw maggots and mealworms and molestation. This movie made me sick to my stomach.. plus it's suppose to be a horror right?? it's kinda hard when the main character is played by Francis in Pee Wee's Big Adventure... "Hey PeeWee.. guess what today is??? It's myyyyy birthday!" ha... that made me chuckle.. but if ya wanna see a bad ass movie with clowns.. Killer Klowns from Outer Space.. or IT... if you wanna be bulemic, eat a meal and then watch this movie.

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