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Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy

List Price: $9.98
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A criminal genius! Pure genius
Review: I have'nt seen the other mase murder movies (Gacy, Dahmer, etc.),but I have seen the Bundy movie. I'm facinated about serial killers, mostly Ted Bundy. He just was'nt an abused, or neglected child. He did all of it because he truely enjoyed it, no matter who or what tried to stop him.

A part of the movie that i enjoyed is how the direcor, and to my knowledge, added that he is the only one and no other film has shown or explained the procedure before the exection. Truely, you cant end a movie better than that. I also liked the real news and photo footage provided of Bundy, ohh yeah and how they did'nt sugar-coat the killings. Just straight down to the necrophilia.

Good movie with a small budget they were probably provided with. I'd love to see more movies of Bundy and my other favorites to come.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Yipes
Review: This film chronicles Bundys devastating trail of murder and mayhem throughout the 1970's. From Utah, to Colorado, to Florida Ted Bundy left a trail of bodies of horrific amounts. It truly shows just how much of an incredibly dangerous psychopath Ted Bundy was.....the modern day Jack the Ripper.

Put the kids to bed cause it has a lot of disturbing content. Adults only!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fast forward review
Review: I was late getting to this film because I figured it would be lamo, but lo and behold they actually made a sleaze flick out of it, something rare in these Janet sunburst boob back to morality days.

Anyway, we got several rambunctious Ted scenes clobbering screaming babes with tire irons and hunks of wood, lots of blood, and surprisingly a lot of nudity, even chasing around partially clad babes through the woods, something missing from the screen since the days of House on the Left, eh?

Unfortunately, we also got several scenes marred by closeups of the straining Ted's face as he's humping, always objectional even in a porno loop, and several instances of flashing from nude babes to long ago dead nude babes, which edges the flick out of the sleaze category and into gore.

So, 2 stars for the good parts, and an extra star just for daring to make something this nasty these days.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: One sick S.O.B.
Review: First let me say this: My husband taped this for me because he knows I am interested in forensic psychology. Well, this movie summed up the "psychology" in one scene, while leaving out the major points completely. "Ted" mentions that it was upsetting to find out that his sister was really his mother, and that his father wasn't really his father...ok....and???? What about the girl whom he was in love with earlier in life who ditched him? I think by leaving out this crucial, emotional event in Ted's life, it makes his whole trail of murder and mayhem less believable. Of course, the fact remains, he was just plain, flippin' nuts....

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Waiting for an accurate Bundy movie...?
Review: ...well, you're still going to be waiting.

As in "The Deliberate Stranger," the details of Bundy's crimes and victims are shuffled around (although this movie is more true to life as far as plain facts go) and very few real names are used. For example, Bundy is seen kidnapping his last victim, "Suzanne," but then footage from the actual press conference after his execution is shown, and is it said he was executed for the murder of Kimberly Diane Leach (her real name). It can be confusing for a viewer familiar with the facts of the case; I spent chunks of time trying to keep straight in my head which character represented which victim.

There are other small film clips of the real Bundy, which really make you sit up and pay attention. I thought they were a good addition to the film; to me, it reminds viewers that this is not just a story, it actually happened.

Disappointingly, the movie puts much of its focus on Bundy's relationship with "Lee," the model for Elizabeth Kendall (who later wrote "The Phantom Prince"), and virtually ignores his friendship with true crime writer Ann Rule (who was writing stories about the missing girls during the time Ted was killing them) and marriage to Carole Ann Boone, who later gave birth to his daughter.

The movie seems to draw on Robert Keppel's "Riverman: Ted Bundy & I Hunt the Green River Killer," which included gory details of Bundy's last minute confessions to Keppel. Some details are recreated for the movie, with very disturbing images. Hopefully, that would be a sure-fire cure for the "over 200 women" who wrote Ted while he was on Death Row to tell him they loved him (a fact mentioned at the end of this movie).

Another reviewer mentioned that the execution scenes were a protest against the death penalty. I disagree; by the end of the movie, after watching Bundy commit henious crimes in full, Technicolor detail, you don't much care what happens to him, and if he suffered, it's only a fraction of what his many victims suffered.

I could have done without the collection of "I'm Ted Bundy!" children in the final scene. I get the point: even your average, clean-cut person, as Ted seemed to be, can be a monster. Bundy himself said serial killers are husbands, brothers, sons, etc. I just think there was another way that point could have been made, and I found the children distracting from the story as a whole. However, if the film makers went for shock value with that scene, they certainly succeeded.

All in all, the movie is worth a watch (if the disturbing images and graphic violence don't bother you) if you're interested in Bundy's story but already aware of the facts. For the casual viewer, or someone wanting to learn more about Bundy, not so much.

POSTSCRIPT: A few days after this review was posted, I received a long, rambling, rather disturbing email from someone claiming to be Matthew Bright, the director of this film. One can only hope it was an impostor, and that the real Matthew Bright has better things to do than email people who give negative reviews to his movie (and I am not by far the only one; check out Rottentomatoes.com for more).

Bright claimed that Carole Ann Boone was not worthy of inclusion in his movie (one of my criticisms) because "her relationship with Bundy was based on lies." I highly doubt that Bundy's relationship with Liz Kendall, explored at length in the movie, was based on total honesty. By Kendall's own admission in "The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy," she was lied to from the very beginning. So that takes care of that argument.

Bright went on to say that Ann Rule was also not worthy of mention in his film because she was just an "ordinary person" who was fooled by Bundy. Well, that's the point; she was also an ordinary person who happened to be a close friend of Bundy's for many years, and corresponded with him while in prison. This argument negates his later claim that Bundy was not as normal as he seemed. Obviously not, but he did manage to fool a lot of people for a very long time, as documented in other sources, both print and other media (notably A&E's Biography of Bundy).

Personally, I don't care whether Bright likes or respects Boone and Rule or not. The fact remains, they were both major figures in Bundy's life, and as such must be included in any film hoping to tell Bundy's story in an accurate manner.

Which brings me back to my main gripe about the film in the first place: it's not accurate. Other than that, someone who actually reads my review closely will note that I found several things that impressed me about the film: news clips of the real Bundy, the mention of women who wrote to Bundy on Death Row, and the shock value of the scene with the children at the end.

The fact that the director (or someone claiming to be the director) got so very defensive about the film due to a review that isn't really all that negative, should tell you something right there.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Thoughts on Ted Bundy DVD
Review: There is one reason that warrants that I recommend watching this film - The performance of the lead actor, Michael Reilly Burke.
Michael Reilly Burke does a good job of capturing some of the more elusive of many facets that made Ted Bundy the criminal sociopath that he was. You can see in this performance that Ted Bundy was clearly an angry and unhappy man, and that it was these elements of his personality that motivated his actions not only towards the women he killed, but also every other living being he came into contact with.
The scripting of the film is where it falls down somewhat. There are seens of the film that add little to the film bar sock value. The scenes that depict the interactions between Bundy and his long-time girlfriend are particularly strong as they show (I think) more effectively the mans dysfunction than the various scenes where he is raping and killing young women.
Overall, I give the film 4 stars in that the performance of the lead captures much of the essence of what was Bundy, even though the scripting and the pacing of the film falls down somewhat.
The Directors Commentary that accompanies the DVD is also a worthy extra.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: As crazy as this man was his actions can teach us alot
Review: As hashed and jumbled together as the facts may be this movie does take a serious look at Ted Bundy the man. Bundy is protrayed hear as some misunderstood guy lashing out at an uncaring society something is just unhinged in his head. The movie does its best although haphazardly to make us the audience understand what it was that made this guy tick. Maybe I am just easily scared but I did not have a problem with how the killer was portrayed or how the various actors plied their trade.

Overall-I don't know what to say I can't imagine anyone wanting to watch this for fun but it is a must for all physiology minors/majors

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: One sick S.O.B.
Review: First let me say this: My husband taped this for me because he knows I am interested in forensic psychology. Well, this movie summed up the "psychology" in one scene, while leaving out the major points completely. "Ted" mentions that it was upsetting to find out that his sister was really his mother, and that his father wasn't really his father...ok....and???? What about the girl whom he was in love with earlier in life who ditched him? I think by leaving out this crucial, emotional event in Ted's life, it makes his whole trail of murder and mayhem less believable. Of course, the fact remains, he was just plain, flippin' nuts....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: not bad
Review: This film is graphic and disturbing and not entirely accurate.But Michael Reilly Burke delivers a powerful performance as Ted Bundy.This is certainly better than your typical serial killer movie,this one has some action.There is quite a bit of [love making] in this film between Ted and his girlfriends.One scene shows Ted [move swiftly] one of his lovers standing up in jail in the visitors room!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: NON-gratuitous violence!
Review: I specificially signed onto amazon to leave a review of this film. I'm surprised in the extreme as to what other reviewers had to say. I thought the real horror and violence of Bundy's crimes were perfectly captured- far from being titillating, it made me want to vomit. The sheer brutality of it, the casual way he dumped bodies as if bags of trash, I'm at a loss to see how anyone could describe it as "exploitation." The man was beguiling, intelligent, charming, and a monster. The version with Mark Harmon, though absorbing, didn't begin to capture the "reality", the HORROR of Bundy's crimes. He may have killed over 100 women. What would you have instead, an intellectual treatise on serial killing? I thought the director's intent was to depict the brutality in a NON-gratuitous fashion, and I think he (or she) succeeded admirably. Women were not depicted as sex objects in this film- there were no shots of sexy cleavage or lovely long lashes; women were depicted as human beings who were unlucky enough to encounter Ted Bundy. The film did a stellar job of showing that the perversion, the view of women being mere faceless objects was in TED. It was fascinating, compelling from beginning to end. To my mind, this film almost ranks up there with A Clockwork Orange or Midnight Cowboy in its realistic depiction of violence. I always think of exploitative, gratuitious violence as violence that is arousing, exciting, and I found it to be the antithesis of this. I thought it was honest, gut-wrenching, horrifying, and very thought-provoking. We don't understand what drives people like Ted Bundy, so there IS no examining what makes people like him tick, the best we can do is look at the pattern of their behavior as this film does. For those of you who have seen the Mark Harmon version and not this one I won't give the details away, but the first film tried to paint him as a paradox, a decent person in other aspects of his life and that simply wasn't true. This film sticks to the facts. Highly recommended.


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