Directed by Joshua Zeman
Starring Joshua Zeman and Rachel Mills
It's a first here on the blog - an Honest-to-Christ Documentary. Not only that, it's pretty damn good!
Sometimes it's funny the things that you unearth on Netflix without even actively looking for it. Killer Legends popped up in the "Recommended for You" section, and I've got to hand the automaton drones at this faceless company credit, because they picked out a good one. The subject of urban legends has always been one that I've been fascinated by, dating all the way back to my childhood love for the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" books and those amazing illustrations that used to haunt my nightmares. A lot of the stories in those books could be classified as urban legends. And then the movie came out, complete with one of the worst ending twists of all time. Fortunately, Joshua Zeman is ALSO fascinated by this subject, and has rescued this stuff in perhaps the best way - telling us stuff that's real.
Real life is scarier than fiction 99 times out of 100, and this flick is living proof. With that, the movie.
It's a documentary with a simple crux. Take four legendary Urban...um...Legends, and tie them in with some creepy true crime stories of the past that may or may not have inspired the stories in the first place. Writer-director Joshua Zeman is the main man in front of the camera, along with researcher Rachel Mills. Both are immensely engaging and likable, and while they might be on screen a BIT too much, they don't hammer you over the head with their presence. Presentation wise, it's kind of like Law and Order meets a slasher flick, and I mean that in the good way.
The story of the escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand is explored first. Welcome to Texarkana, where a legendary serial murer spree took place in the 1940s that remains unsolved to this day. It really was the classic "lovers' lane" murder scene brought to life, as a dude that the press dubbed the "Phantom Killer" attacked and killed several parking teenagers over a three-month period. If these incidents sound familiar, there's a reason for it, as this was the basis for the 1976 Charles B. Pierce movie The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Now THAT's a flick that I really need to get around to reviewing. This segment consists of some very fascinating stuff, exploring both the murders and the town of Texarkana's to-this-day fascination with the murders and the film that made them famous.
Next up is the story of the Candyman, complete with sections of the 1992 masterpiece to remind us what we're dealing with. This segment, however, is more concerned with some literal candy and the story involving children being handed razor-bladed or poisoned Halloween candy. The narrative leads us to one of the most tragically evil things I've ever seen. Ronald Clark O'Bryan's son turns up dead after eating a pixie stick, and a furor erupts when O'Bryan asserts that the candy was poisoned. Well, it WAS poisoned...by O'Bryan himself, in a heinous insurance fraud plot. This segment tells the true story masterfully, weaving the insightful comments from Zeman and Mills in seamlessly with archival footage of the O'Bryan trial and interviews before his execution. Electric stuff all around.
The creep factor turns up another notch with the next story - the Babysitter Killer. Once again, film footage lulls us into the narrative, with stuff from When a Stranger Calls, Halloween and Black Christmas setting the mood. Zeman and Mills then travel to a small Missouri town where two unsolved rape-murders took place in the 1950s. Both involved babysitters, and both were absolutely brutal. We get an autopsy photograph of one of the victims that will stick out in your mind after you turn out the lights. We DO get some social commentary here, as the fact that both victims' deaths were blamed on a pair of African-American criminals who were most likely innocent of the murders is explored. This did take me out of the movie a little bit, but it's a minor complaint. Another winner.
And then we get the most fashionable nightmare fuel this side of the zombies that I'm still sick to death of. Ladies and gentlemen, creepy clowns. I wasn't even aware that there is a story circulating in the Chicago area that there is a gang of clowns abducting children. Now I do, and now I'm terrified. As opposed to focusing on any one particular story, we get several tracing the journey of the clown from happy-go-lucky Three Stooges clone to something with an actual phobia name. Bozo the Clown's haunted TV set and John Wayne Gacy are explored in depth, but the story that really hits a home run is the tragic tale of Showmen's Rest, the final resting place of many clowns and circus performers who burned to death after a train accident. One word can describe that idea: BRRRRRRRRR.
It's been a while since I've seen a scary film that made me type out such a prolonged praise dump. I never would've dreamed that it would come from a documentary. Zeman deserves a ton of credit for his approach to this material; in the hands of a lesser director, it really could have read like a boring history lesson. But the presentation, the hosting, the investigation and most especially the choice of chilling background music makes for some extremely riveting, scary stuff. The standouts are the story of Ronald Clark O'Bryan and the visit to Showmen's Rest, but you'd be really hard-pressed to find much in Killer Legends that will bore you. And if you watch it at night like I did, it'll scare the daylights out of you.
*** 1/2 out of ****. Highly recommended for people who like some true-life with their scary stuff. Hell, I'll recommend it even if you don't.
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