Merolliv
I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.
fedor8
The documentary starts off in an annoying manner, with Harold Scheckter (who can barely form a sentence) giving us the old liberal garbage about most serial-killers stemming from problematic and abusive homes, bla bla bla. First of all, this is not true. Many, like Ted Bundy, have had very cozy childhoods. Dahmer, who is featured here, certainly didn't have a particularly bad set of (step-)parents; no worse than the average. Secondly, for every man who suffered (greatly) as a child and developed into a serial killer there are thousands of those who didn't. Just because events A and B occur in the same time-frame does not mean they explain each other or cause one another. (Basic logic-rape.) After all, how many of us can say we truly grew up without any problems? You can always dig something up and present it as a (very flimsy) excuse/explanation for someone's anti-social behaviour. We live in an age where personal responsibility diminishes by the hour: a result of political correctness, THE social disease of Western civilization. The real reason serial-killers are what they are is genetic: nearly all of them have very high INBORN psychopathy levels hence their behaviour is minimally influenced by what happens to them during their lifetimes. But I'm not going to waste my time defining psychopaths here. Look it up, ye bleedin' heart liberals who think that unredeemable evil people do not exist...Another misleading statement was that America, England and Germany lead the world in serial killers. As if developed nations had higher levels of psychopathy and violence! In fact, the opposite is true: the poorer a nation the more psychopaths live and breathe in it. (Look up Richard Lynn, o ye liberals...) The reason for this very fallacious claim is simple: those three countries have some of the best detective agencies and police forces in the world hence they identify and catch serial killers far more frequently. Any given undeveloped African or Latin American nation probably has dozens of undiscovered serial killers which is hardly a reason for us to deny their existence! The corpses just keep piling up but nothing is being done, due to a lack of will and/or funds. These deaths/disappearances just get filed under "missing" i.e. often a connection is never even made between various victims. Chikatilo's case (which was first a Soviet and then a Ukranian matter) is a good example. (Yes, of course the USSR was an undeveloped nation.) However, once the awful intro to this documentary is over, and the three "celebrity" cases finally kick off, things get decidedly more interesting. I had expected that the Fish case would be the most interesting, as he was arguably one of the sickest psychopaths in history, but the Chikatilo segment turned out to be the most fascinating one, due to the very interesting info provided by Lourie, an author of a Chikatilo book. He discussed cannibalism during the Stalin era, and provides some very interesting theories as to how frequent indulging in cannibalism might affect the human body and mind. The most interesting aspect of the Dahmer segment is that he didn't revel in torturing his victims but wanted them dead, or at least "pacified", as quickly as possible. Hence I agree - for once - with the bushy-haired mad-scientist-looking psychologist (Levin?) that Dahmer remains a bit of an enigma.I utterly disagree with the theory that some remnants of cannibalistic urges may be lying dormant in all of us. Just because 0.00001 % of the population decide to eat some kids, suddenly we're all potential cannibals? Yeah, right...Unsurprisingly, the Hannibal Lector character is dismissed as utterly unrealistic. In fact, this documentary is far more interesting than the movie which is featured on that DVD... Speaking of which, for a good Chikatilo movie check out "Citizen X", but avoid "Evilenko" (plenty of unnecessary fact-twisting there).
jmcgee-1
Not only do i watch a lot of movies,I also watch documentaries.And this is by far the best i've ever seen.I got this free when I brought Hannibal on DVD.Looking at the case I knew somthing was creepy about this,because everything seem so real when I was watching it.The reason I said this,because this film has reactments,except none of that fake crap.The people playing the killers are really into the role.Especially the one with Albert Fish and Andrei Chikatilo.This film even gives more infor on the world's most dangerous killers.Watch it,you won't be dissapointed.P.S. watch this with company if you get scared easily.
