Bundy
(2002)
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The accounts vary and the actual number will never be known, but the deaths of at least 36 women can be attributed to Theodore Robert Bundy. This biographical horror film begins in Seattle in 1974 where the duplicitous nature of Bundy (Michael Reilly Burke) becomes unmistakably evident. He is working as a polite crisis hotline volunteer, but his callers don't know that he is secretly a sexual deviant in a bow tie whose sexual desires become increasingly perverse until they culminate in his killing spree. Meanwhile, an unsuspecting girlfriend (named "Lee" in the film, this woman--played by Boti Ann Bliss--wrote a book about her life with Bundy under the alias Elizabeth Kendall) dotes on her lover, whose crimes would go unsolved for years. The film follows Bundy's murderous trail through two prison escapes and his eventual execution in Florida. |
Screenshots
This biopic of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy (he was the first multiple murderer to whom the term was applied, having systematically bludgeoned, raped and mutilated a large number of women in the 1970s) never really attempts to find a motive for his actions — which is perhaps an impossible task. Instead, director Matthew Bright concentrates on re-creating his brutal, sadistic attacks in as much unpleasant detail as possible. Michael Reilly Burke is plausible as the suave psychopath and Bright's visuals are sometimes inventive and even darkly witty, but the screenplay engages in unwarranted speculation about what Bundy did with his victims as well as delivering a leering, gratuitous final scene. Despite its occasional technical strengths, the overall effect of this shallow film is to leave you feeling not much the wiser — and in need of a shower.