My friend, writer-director Pete Jacelone, premiered his new serial killer horror satire Son of Gacy last night at the Hawthorne Theatre in Hawthorne, New Jersey.  I was there along with forty or fifty other friends, family and fans to witness his latest exploration of the cult of celebrity that surrounds the most famous bad people who ever lived among us, those modern monsters known as serial killers.  This fictional story (with large doses of fact mixed in) follows, continues, references and extends Pete’s previous two serial killer portraits, The Killer Clown Meets the Candy Man (2019) and The Cannibal Killer: The Real Story of Jeffrey Dahmer (2020), both of which I have previously reviewed.  Now Pete has a triumvirate of terror involving these human monsters, and from what he said after the premiere last night he may have more on the way.  But let’s focus on this one.

Pete Jacelone’s film posits that killer John Wayne Gacy (Jeremy Woodworth, both in costume as Pogo the clown and without) learns he has a grown son named Duke (Sam Foster, in his acting debut), who wants nothing more than to follow in his infamous father’s footsteps and kill — although he would specialize in bullies and “people who deserve it.”  Duke turns to his father for help as he learns that murder is far more difficult that he thought, but taking his father’s advice doesn’t work.  Gacy turns to his old pal Dean Corll (Edward X. Young, who also co-wrote the story) and Corll turns to his “serial killer address book” to contact other famous killers to solicit their advice for young Duke.  Thus, Duke receives murderous advice from Aileen Wuornos (Debbie D), Ted Bundy (John Sierra), “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz (Carlos William Gonzalez), Squeaky Fromme (Tina Krause), the Zodiac Killer (voice of John Russo) and Edmond Kemper (Rocco Petrullo).  Even Charles Manson (John Link) makes a brief appearance in the story.  Can Duke finally put someone out of their human misery and join the gang that all seem to know and respect one another?

Pete’s movie attempts a delicate balancing act between suspenseful terror and wacky comedy.  It maneuvers adroitly between stark, gruesome killings of innocents, sometimes in flashback (and sometimes from the earlier films) and sequences of Duke trying gamely to put the advice he is given to use, which almost always fails spectacularly and comically.  This mix doesn’t work very well from my perspective; the comedy is rather forced and is amusing rather than funny, while the sequences of killing range from disappointing to grotesque and disturbing, with Ted Bundy’s and Edmond Kemper’s being the harshest.  It is satirical to interrupt these killers’ actual processes with phone calls asking for advice on Duke’s behalf, but the effect is blunt rather than pointed.

The gimmick in this story — and it does seem like a gimmick — is its inclusion of infamous figures of the past, there just for the purpose of transforming Duke from a lazy slob to a polished serial killer.  It’s like Forrest Gump with Dean Corll as our guide through the wickedest segment of society, all of whom he seems to know personally.  And all of these killers are freely roaming the streets, harvesting their victims without any police presence in sight, hammering or shooting their victims in broad daylight and secluded spots at night without fear of apprehension.  In that regard this movie is at its most chilling; that any one of these monsters might be in your neighborhood right now ready to overpower you to do whatever unspeakable thing enters their mind.  That is certainly a powerful and harrowing image, but it is not what drives this story, unfortunately.

Instead, this is a rather twisted coming-of-age story with unrepentant evil as the goal — but mixing in laughs, too.  Imagine the classic “Dick Van Dyke Show” episode where Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) gets her toe stuck in a bathtub faucet.  Only in this modern version, after Laura is rescued by the plumber she disembowels him and eats his liver.  That’s the kind of satirical malevolence and dichotomy of effect for which Pete and Edward X. are striving.  I find this is an uneasy, sometimes awkward and intentionally offensive melange of real-life murderers (speaking actual dialogue much of the time) being exploited with no real purpose in mind other than to gross out the audience with a reminder that evil can flourish just about anywhere.  Actually for me the film is most worthy for showing the late Jeremy Woodworth without his clown makeup (I met him several times, but he was always in costume), as well as the late John Link and the late dog who controls David Berkowitz, all of whom died during the long, COVID-delayed production of this movie.  Rest in peace, fellas.  ☆ ☆.  6 December 2024.