VividSimon Simply Perfect

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

douglas lally First, anytime a film's tagline includes the five words "based on a true story" prepare for anything but the truth. This film is loosely connected to the real John Wayne Gacy and his rampant mid 1970's murder spree. However the story bears little resemblance to the actual events nor does it deliver an accurate portrayal of Gacy. In essence, most of the script is fictional. Once I accepted that then I had to accept a story line and direction style that I found quite frustrating. The tale sort of jumps around and introduces plot points, people, and events, that don't have any explanation or get fleshed out. These things just come and go throughout the film. It didn't seem to have flavor or focus, if I had to pick a word to describe this viewing experience it would be flat. There's not a lot of scary moments, thrilling moments, highs or lows, it's just sort of bland. I will say Mark Holton was believably creepy and disgusting in the title role. Otherwise this film serves no purpose historically, artistically, or otherwise. It just makes you want to take a shower after watching it.

Tss5078 These serial killer films are really hit or miss, most of them are misses, for a variety of reasons. They are usually cheaply made, direct-to-video films, with an inexperienced cast, trying to profiteer on the infamy of these evil men. That being said, I decided to watch Gacy anyway, because of all the insane people who became infamous, John Wayne Gacy, may have been the craziest. This married man with kids, ran a construction business, that only employed young boys, and on the weekends, he made extra money by dressing up as a clown for children's birthday parties. This man was seen as a wimpy, harmless, closeted guy, no one would have ever thought they'd find 27 bodies underneath his house. The producers of the film, Gacy, decided to take it in a different direction than similar films by introducing Gacy as this lovable loser. If you didn't know the story and just popped in the film for the hell of it, I'd have thought this was some kind of comedy....until it wasn't. Veteran character actor, Mark Holton, stars as Gacy and was terrific, he was honestly the only reason to watch the film, especially after it turned. The story is horrific and the rest of the cast amounts to little more than eye candy, but Holton really pulls everything together, takes you inside Gacy's tortured mind, and makes this movie more than just another slasher film. After watching Gacy, I did what everyone else would do and Wiki'ed John Wayne Gacy. I wasn't surprised to see that the film is considered to be wildly inaccurate. Obviously five people aren't going to live in a house with 27 rotting bodies underneath and be almost completely oblivious to it, so I knew the film probably had a lot of bull in it. The film does have a talented star that really makes this film much more interesting then the other serial killer bio-pics.

Scott LeBrun The filmmakers do state up front in their opening text that "Gacy" is a fictionalization of certain events in the serial killer's life, and not really intended as a full blown biography, but one can't help but feel that more detail would have been appreciated. We only get a brief prologue showing us Gacy's relationship with his tough guy father (Adam Baldwin) and how that affected him before fast forwarding dramatically to a point in his life where he was living with a wife and two (step) daughters after having served some time in prison for sodomizing a boy. That event is only referenced in text, and we don't learn anything about his prison time, or much about his life aside from his misdeeds. With a little more "meat" to it, this movie could have been quite good; as it is, it still achieves the goal of being genuinely creepy and disgusting, perfectly fitting for any story about a serial killer. After what could be perceived as something of a slow start, co-writer / director Clive Saunders shows us basically the lurid details of Gacy's life, and just touching lightly upon the public image he had of being an upstanding citizen. It would be hard not to be affected by the sight of so many cockroaches and maggots as the crawlspace underneath Gacy's suburban Chicago house has seen over two dozen victims buried there. (This leads to some amusing very dark humour as Gacy is forced to deal with the problem, including the use of lime and the hiring of an exterminator (played by comedy veteran Larry Hankin, in a great cameo).) It would also be impossible not to be deeply disturbed seeing Gacy in action as he either coddles, spies on, or molests, his victims. Actor Mark Holton does a fine job, despite not having a lot to work with. Other performers in this movie such as Tom Waldman, Charlie Weber, Allison Lange, Edith Jefferson, Joleen Lutz, Rick Dean, Glenn Morshower, Dan Bell, and John Laughlin all contribute solidly, but it's Holton's sufficiently scummy portrayal, along with the pervasive seedy atmosphere that Saunders and company create, that keeps this movie moving along efficiently to its conclusion. Six out of 10.

Matt_Layden Gacy tells the story of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a man whom many believed to be a noble and friendly man. His death toll is approximately 33 young men, who were found buried in his crawl space.Reading up on John Wayne Gacy is more terrifying than watching this half baked attempt at telling this man's story. Out of the three serial killer films I have seen,Ted Bundy, Dahmer and now Gacy, I have to say that this was the least interesting, the least inspired and the most boring. I thought Dahmer was pretty boring, but at least that film tried to get in the mind of the character, Gacy doesn't try to do anything except tell the bare bones story, at least what they decided to read about him, and put it on film. The film makes no real attempt at portraying the man behind the murders. We are introduced to his father abusing him as a child, then apparently he hears voices and kills young men. The torture sequences are tame and the death scenes come off as 'accidents'. You never fully experience the terror this man brought onto the lives of others. The film almost plays out like a comedy, I honestly can't tell if that's what it was trying to be. If so, bad taste, if not, bad filmmaking. The script is bad, full of ear bleeding dialogue. The actors seem to make no real effort here and the movie itself has a lot of inaccuracies. The film begins with the title card saying that names, places and events have been fictionalized to protect those people. This immediately gives you a bad feeling that the filmmakers have taken the story of Johny Wayne Gacy and purposely distorted facts to make an entertaining and emotional film. Fail on both accounts. It's more of a slap in the face to the families of those who went through this. The film seemed more fixated on the rotting stench beneath Gacy's house, rather than a cohesive story. I know what that smell was, not the dead bodies, but this excuse for a film.