If you don’t know who Macabre is (I’m sure Brother R mentioned them before, they’re more his band than mine), they’re a ridiculously talented metal band that almost exclusively plays “Murder Metal” – songs about real-life murderers and serial killers. They just might be the most talented three-piece in the world. Unfortunately, most of their catalog ("Grim Reality", "Gloom", "Sinister Slaughter", "Unabomber") is out-of-print and hard to find. But you can still get a hold of their masterpiece, "Dahmer" (a concept record all about the life and times of Jeffrey Dahmer) and "Murder Metal" and "Morbid Campfire Songs", their latest efforts. If you even consider yourself to be a fan of metal, concept records, true crime or horror movies for one second, you need to hear these records. They also have an awesome live DVD, "True Tales of Slaughter and Slaying'. This band is the triple crown of cool: they fucking rock, their lyrics are funny as hell and they’re informative too – you will know everything you ever wanted to know about Jeffrey Dahmer with just a few listens.

So, in celebration of my Macabre collection becoming whole, I spent last week taking in serial killer movies, almost all of them featured in Macabre songs, as well as one who may find himself on the next record. The first selection in my own little murderous reviewing rampage needs no murdering. It’s Zodiac, the latest offering from David Fincher. As a fan of true crime and real-life killers (only in fascination, most of these guys were complete douchebags – Jerry Brudos, I’m looking right at you), I love a movie that sticks close to the original story, and Zodiac shoots the target right in the back five times. It’s also one of the best songs on the "Sinister Slaughter" record and one of the highlights of "True Tales"… Back to the movie, this is perhaps the finest piece of true-crime cinema ever offered, though I’d have a hard time placing it above Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer without a second view. As it is, I’m losing memory of its details, so I’d better get to the review before I get mixed up and right another review for Fight Club by accident.

The movie actually picks up at the second Zodiac Killer attack, only to revisit the first attack later. Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin (this movie keeps all the real names) are parked on a lonely dirt road. After being harassed by some rowdy teenagers, another car pulls up. Darlene supposedly recognizes who it is, but she won’t say who. She isn’t saying much of anything soon, because it’s the man soon to be known as the Zodiac Killer. In a brutal, striking exchange, he blinds them with a flood light and shoots both of them repeatedly. Mageau survives, but Ferrin isn’t so lucky. Soon after, the San Francisco Chronicle receives a letter from ZK threatening to kill again if they don’t publish his cryptic letter.

ZK, who killed two teenagers in a nearby town at Christmas the year before, was at it two months later. In the movie’s most terrifying exchange, he emerges from a bush he was peeping behind wearing an all-black costume (complete with his signature “circle-and-cross” logo) and attacks two college students. He ties them up under the guise of robbing them but ends up stabbing both in a shocking realistic kill scene. This is the kind of chillingly brutal stuff the retards who make slick slasher movies today have no chance to touching – in a related story, I’m sure Dead Silence is doing very well as we speak. Once again, he leaves the guy alive. A month later, ZK blows an unsuspecting cab driver away, robs him and walks away in the night as police drive right past him (as the story goes, the witnesses to the crime reported him as a black man, so the police didn’t bother interrogating the white guy – not that they wouldn’t have preferred a black guy anyway if given the chance).

Surprisingly, with two hours of movie left, that’s all the killing. There’s no climactic shootout between police and the killer, no long drawn-out final Friday the 13th-style showdown between ZK and the virgin protagonist. The remainder of the movie is all about area police, as well as local reporters, trying to figure out who this killer with the editorial flare is. As we all know, they never caught him. This was the biggest challenge in front of the project: How the hell do you make a movie dramatic when you know the good guys are not going to catch the bad guys?

The answer to this is a wealth of great acting, expert cinematography and a wonderfully faithful adherence to the story. Of course, the story itself could be heavily fabricated, we can’t know for sure. The best performances come from Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith (who wrote the Zodiac book); Robert Downey Jr. as smart-ass journalist and Zodiac enthusiast Paul Avery; Phillip Baker Hall in a small role as a handwriting analyst; and John Carroll Lynch (who you may remember as Drew Carey’s cross-dressing brother) as Arthur Allen, the most plausible suspect in the Zodiac case before he died. Everyone else is good too; there is no Keanu Reeves to crap all over this movie.

I’m not going to go into all the details of the Zodiac case because they’re well-documented and you can get them elsewhere. But Fincher perfectly captures the baffling nature of the case – was ZK a criminal genius who covered his tracks deftly or a lucky buffoon who lucked out thanks to a lack of cooperation between various police organizations (the crimes occurred in a few different jurisdictions, and the police didn’t always play nice and share all their information)? Like Henry Lee Lucas, he either made up crimes to confess to or claimed responsibility for ones he didn’t. Despite a lack of conventional horror conventions, Fincher manages to create some truly horrifying situations, including the first two kills and an intense basement cat-and-mouse game between Graysmith and a possible suspect. The climax, though by nature unable to provide any closure, is as good as it could have been.

I really don’t have anything to complain about here, or anything interesting to say. Some fans of slasher crap like Saw might find this movie too long and bloodless, but those people are retards. If you want fast action and tons of stupid kills, go rent House of the Dead and choke on your Ridalin after you’re done. If asked to describe this movie, I’d call it a near-perfect crossbreed of The Town That Dreaded Sundown (one of my all-time faves) and All the President’s Men. The main difference between this and Sundown (they were similar cases with killers who were never caught) is Sundown made up an ending encounter to manufacture a climax. Henry did the same thing but made up a completely false ending that we all know didn’t happen. All three are kick-ass movies, but I was glad to see one that doesn’t shy away from ambiguity. The less we know about the Zodiac Killer, the more fascinating the story becomes.

Who knows, he might live next door to you … or you … or you … or you! Or your neighbor might just be a creepy pedophile with a cellulite fetish who tapes you as you use the bathroom, has sex with neighborhood stray cats and digs through your garbage in hopes of finding your used boxer shorts to make a skid-mark suit out of. Or it could be Ned Flanders. Or Wendell Corey. God, I wish I lived in the country.

Second Opinion: Check out what Anubis had to think...