For me True Crime Movies are always unsettling because you know the actual facts are true. It´s not some sort of Horror-Entertainment but the visual depiction of true life atrocity, which adds some sort of authentification fictional Films always struggle for. In this case one hell of cynical campy director walks on the edge of sensationalism, serial killer fandom, critics of death-penalty and honest depiction of a truly evil and disturbed person. Ted Bundy is the trustworthy, educated, well dressed guy who gets quiet a lot of girls, delves into sadism and necrophilia and raises hell for so many female victims. For friends of torture and sadism the film doesn´t deliver too much except one scene I won´t spoil. But try this: Identify with the female victim that is awfully abused and destroyed by this talky misanthrope mother****er while another victim has to watch in handcuffs. This is one scene where the director gets serious and doesn´t turn the act into farce. It would be hard to stand to go more into details in depicting the cruelties, so the director lays more focus to show the killer´s deformed personality in more close-to-life scenes. Decide for yourself if you would have had the balls to just film the killing of one victim after another for shock value while knowing maybe relatives of the victims will watch your movie. The film centers most of the time on the killers perspective or stays very close to him, whereas the female victims are portrait ranging from naive and unsuspicious to pretty tough (Carol DaRonch). We don´t get much of an idea why Ted turned into this acts except one unsatisfying self-explaining attempt to his girlfriend. The film has production-weeknesses that could be intended, I don´t know how many times we saw the boom-mic. At first you think it´s a mistake, then you think it´s high-camp and later it adds some unintended trash-factor, as well as the relaxing soundtrack during the end-credits. The Film is probably more interesting if you know the facts already and you can identify what´s going on. As final result the movie gives Ted credit in how demented and tough in killing he was but a weakling in facing the consequences of his unhuman deeds. A truly despicable person with insight what hell is really like.
