Gacy

Current IMDB Rating: 4.6/10
My Rating: 5.2/10

Although this movie went straight to video, it seemed like a late night movie you could catch on some lower cable network. Everything was nothing more or less than mediocre. I would actually say that the direction was worse than most of the acting.

The movie starts out with a very short scene from Gacy's childhood which would imply that his father was the cause of all of the events to play out later in life. The movie then switches to his middle age where he is surrounded by people who seem completely oblivious to anything that is going on around them - especially his mother who, when confronted by one of the boys Gacy has attacked, calls him a son-of-a-bitch and slams the door in his face.

The acting in the movie leaves more to be desired, mostly because all of the supporting characters do not appear to have much experience, but it's the directing that brings down the movie. Instead of focusing on Gacy and his murders, the movie spends way too much time establishing Gacy's relationships with people who ultimately become unimportant. This only leaves time for the murders to be shown in short snippets and does not even begin to illustrate the number of murders the man actually committed.

People come into the movie knowing exactly who Gacy is. They know he killed many people, they know that nobody suspected him of anything up to the very end, and they expect to see this in the movie. Instead we get a story about a man who seems to ignore his family, ignore the cleanliness of his house, does a large amount of drugs, swears up a storm, and does not do his job well, but is highly regarded in the community for some reason. It is this man who gets away with murder even though people should be expecting it from someone who is depicted this way. With decent enough actors and a budget that would have allowed for a good story to develop, it seemed as though the people making the film did not know what direction they wanted to go in and made a movie that reflected that lack of preperation.

This movie is a good one for a late night one-off viewing, but if you want to know the real story of the man behind the crimes, find another way to learn about it.