GACY

John Wayne Gacy seems to be an inoffensive middle-aged man, a bit chubby, with a good family behind him. Despite the rumors circulating in the neighborhood about his homosexuality, the man is not too worried and seems to lead a normal life, with a well-established activity and a volunteer job at the hospital where he dresses up as a clown to cheer up the children. But behind the appearance of normality, Gacy hides a terrible secret: he is indeed a terrible serial killer who has killed more than 30 people, men and young boys, and who hides their bodies under his house. Is it possible to make a decent film about a serial killer who really existed? Is it possible that productions like "Dahmer", "Ed Gein" and "Ted Bundy" are TV-style films totally incapable of capturing the essence of those terrible people and endowed with a disarming flatness? Apparently, it is so and things do not improve with "Gacy", a film directed by Clive Saunders in 2003 but arrived in Italy in 2008 only for the home video market. "Gacy" turns out to be a poor quality product from many (almost all) points of view, starting from a botched and superficial screenplay too focused on the latent homosexuality of the serial killer (for pity's sake, extremely important for his "training" as a murderer) without being able to go to the root of this phenomenon. The eziopatogenesis of his mental disorders, apart from a miserable punch given by his father in his tender age, is totally neglected and we immediately find ourselves in the presence of a middle-aged Gacy just out of prison, for sodomy towards a boy. Poor choice of screenplay, which in this way has trivialized the figure of one of the most controversial serial killers in modern history without being able to capture its essence. We know little about his family situation as a child, except that his father probably beat him (but surely things did not stop there), while we know nothing about his evolution and it is rather annoying to find him directly out of prison: the choice not to show the path that led him from normality to psychosis was totally unfortunate and makes "Gacy" a film that aims high but is simply superficial. In cases like these, either we delve deeply into the head and history of the main character, trying to give the public a truthful and interesting glimpse of his life, or we simply draw inspiration from his actions trying to put together a thriller that can at least entertain the viewer. "Gacy" does not belong to either of these two groups. It wants to probe the psychological depths of the serial killer without possessing the means, it wants to play with the underlying morbidity but without having the slightest idea of how to do it. The defects do not stop there: given the TV-style production, Clive Saunders' film turns out to be an innocuous little work and anything but disturbing, a family-friendly work almost. The murders are never shown and not a drop of blood is seen so much that it is not even possible to understand what the serial killer's modus operandi was (did he have one? How did he choose his victims? How did he kill them?). The script does not succeed, and what is even worse, it does not even try to enter the head of the serial killer, does not find the trigger that makes him snap and totally neglects his thoughts and psychology. As if that were not enough, there is not even an attempt to play on the paradoxical life of Gacy, a terrible assassin and at the same time a clown who brought a smile to children in real life. In this case too, his volunteer work is barely mentioned halfway through the film, almost as if it were a detail of little importance. What remains then of a biography of a serial killer if you remove his evolution and his modus operandi? Little or nothing, if not a middle-aged man with increasingly unhidden homosexual tendencies and angry at the world. Banal, terribly banal and totally wrong. Rhythmically, the film presents itself rather flat and unable to attract the viewer's attention: there is not the necessary morbidity in cases like these and not a shadow of physical-psychological violence is seen. The production, as mentioned above, is TV-style, with flat direction and photography from a German Saturday night soap opera on Rai Due. The atrocities are totally non-existent and the director and screenwriters always do their best to make the film as correct and light as possible, with unfortunately disastrous consequences. The only positive note of "Gacy" is the male protagonist Mark Holton ("Madhouse"), who portrays the serial killer in a credible and inspired manner: it's a shame that, despite all his good will and his good level performance, he alone cannot make up for all the shortcomings in the screenplay phase and Saunders' inability to make the story interesting and worth watching. There is not much else to say about this film, if not to simply reiterate that it is a negligible film characterized by a flatness both formal and content-wise and an incredible slowness and that achieves, as the only result, that of trivializing a controversial and enigmatic figure like John Wayne Gacy. If you really want to discover something about him, forget the film and dive into one of the many books dedicated to serial killers.