TED BUNDY (2002) If this guy got laid, anyone can If the portrayal of the title character in this movie is accurate, Ted Bundy should've walked around every day with a big red "L" stamped into his forehead. This guy was a big enough loser that when people called him a loser, while holding up thumb and index finger at the ninety-degree universal sign of loserdom, they would've pronounced it "Loo-hoo-hooser". This is the first of the (so far) five serial-killer biopics that I saw, and while it's got the most gore and on-screen violence, it's got the least thought, style, and character of any of them. It looks the most like a TV movie, it revels the most in cheesy ironies (like who's under that hood at the end...that hair's awfully long for a prison guard), and it comes up as the biggest failure as a peek into its subject's head. Maybe that's the idea. I don't know how much there was to the real Ted Bundy, but there isn't much more to this guy beyond his hatred of women, and by the time this movie was over, I still had no idea why there was even that. Michael Reilly fuck-this-guy-was-in-Octopus-2 Burke plays Ted, and he's the first problem. That the movie's Ted Bundy is completely transparent to us is a necessity of the form; of course we know he's a serial killer, why else would we rent the movie? But the characterization is unsubtle and charmless. I cannot imagine how he could carry on with his sordid deeds under the guise of a normal life. I can't even imagine how he could get any other person to put up with him for any length of time. The real Ted Bundy had a sort of stark handsomeness about him, but this guy has more of a boyish look - which maybe is all that could conceivably make his nice-guy act work. Regardless, his girlfriend (Boti Bliss) is conned, as are the many women he kills. Much time is spent showing us the methods Ted uses to lure women into his car (sometimes with wackily cheerful music), and I guess it's easy for me to say that it's hard to feel sorry for anyone dumb enough to fall for these tricks, but to be fair, a lot of women did - I assume the real Ted Bundy was a lot better at this. A con man can needs a con man's charisma and skill with bullshit - Burke shows us neither, and I don't see how this guy could get strange women into his car, or fool his girlfriend into sticking around with him even after the "FUCK!!! BITCH!!!" scene. Perhaps overeager to avoid making a movie that was sympathetic to its subject, the makers of Ted Bundy have taken care to show him as a capital-L Loser throughout. A compulsive thief who absentmindedly rubs his crotch every time a hot chick walks by, we see him jerking off under a woman's window, fleecing his girlfriend so he can flunk out of school, twice...if she has a reason for staying with him, the movie shouldn't let it remain unsaid. It finally takes a kidnapping conviction and a murder charge for her to leave, though go figure, he does get himself a serial-killer groupie once he's in the clink. Even by serial killer standards, I think she could've done better. As a villain, few people are gonna be rooting for him. In one scene he ties up one woman, and rapes and then murders another woman (crushing her head under a big rock!) in front of her, laughing, all of them covered in blood the whole time. He not only lacks compassion, but humility; he kinda pats himself on the back late in the film, telling his landlord that this killer preying on young women should be admired for his cleverness. At the end, we see Ted break down, and down, and down as his trip to the electric chair nears its end, pleading with the authorities to give him a little more time, offering them the locations of bodies they don't know about yet, all while sobbing uncontrollably. Not exactly dying with dignity. By the time this was over, I wondered to myself, what's so cruel and unusual about the guillotine? I'm sure that's not what the makers of Ted Bundy wanted me to be thinking. If it was, then this wasn't made with very lofty aspirations. BACK TO THE T's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE