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Title: Ted Bundy (2002)
Format: DVD
Score:
Starring: Michael Reilly Burke, Boti Ann Bliss, Steffani Brass, Marina Black, Wayne Morse
Director: Matthew Bright
Rating: R
Runtime: 100 minutes
Hits: 96
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Review of Ted Bundy

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Comments for Ted Bundy

• Posted on 2009-10-20
  has anyone read any of the books nefore you speak about a movie?
  
  ok, for everyone so upset about the disregard to the victims families, for one this is a movie about a serial killer and what gruesome things he did to these girls, not a tribute to them and the reason they all run together and appear to have no humanity as alot of you have pointed out is because THEY DIDN'T to Ted Bundy, they were just objects to him and he tried his best to keep it that way, which is why he found out through trial and error to incapacitate them early on not to subdue them to take them but mostly to shut them up so he didnt have to talk to them, get to know them, see them as human because to him they were not, they were just objects that he needed at that time to get the ever increasing release that he needed that had been building and building while out in about with Liz, in school, at work etc..People keep talking about needing more substance like seeing more of his childhood, when his childhood, if put into the film would have been a total snooze feast, he had a very unremarkable childhood with nothing very substantial that stuck out that you could disdain as a sociapath in the making, like Dahmer clearly had signs of becoming what he became, disecting roadkill and doing experiments on them and saving them in the shed, driving nails in them left alone alot to his own devices, then setting fires and putting dogheads on stakes in the ground kinda like Vlad Tempest. Ted on the other hand had a very strict grandfather that drank and was very voilent, he was a nobody in school and sort of a practical joker, he would masterbate in the janitors closet and was caught and made fun of when the other kids would swing the door open to tease him, he was developing a vivid fantasy life yes, but mostly from finding his granfathers nudey mags and detective magazines, he was a loner who was shy later who had only one or two dates, later when he discovered that he had a knack for reading and the the english language he found that by using his knowledge he could charm people and became sort of a class clown, he did so well in school that he used that to socialize because and learned from that that he could be 2 completely people, the introvert, shy at home an then the extrovert, the smartest in the class, he was then developing his mask of sanity and used this technique and hones it by observing other people and mimicking them, he knew he was different and he was made fun of cuz of it but by "acting" and using his intelligence he started to form what he was to become in the later years and perfected it as we saw in his short success, but by then, porn wasnt working anymore to fulfill his desires and his fantasy at first to take a girl was getting stronger and stronger. Everyone focuses on his childhood because of his unweb mother having him and then living as his sister and grandparents as parents as a pivotable thing that may have had something to do with what he did and became when in reality he was never told that his mother was his sister or her parents were his mom and dad, he just assumed and called his mom by name, the only notable incident told by one of his aunts happened way before any event that people think might have had something to do with the making of Ted Bundy, so it seems likely that he was just born, as with most of them, a sociapath, he came out of the womb that way and it slowly manifested itself over many years, especially when puberty set in. One day one of his aunts awoke to little Teddy placing kitchen knives all around her body on the bed under the covers all with the blades pointing toward her, he was 4 years old and it is the only odd event that ever happened to his families recollections. He didn't set fires, wet his bed,kill animals or anything like that. Later when his Mom married, she took Ted with her and moved with her new husband Mr. Bundy and changed Teds last name to Bundy. His Mom was Mom and his new Dad was his Dad, he was far to young to think anything else, so people that are having issues cuz the movie doesnt show his childhood are making way more out of Teds childhood because the childhood itself was very uneventful for future serial killer.
  And the victims, we all feel badly for the victims of course but the directly clearly was trying to show exactly what happened. Ted was a lonely boy and a lonely kid and then teen, he used his "genius" and charm to get what he wanted and he wanted alot! he learned early that it wasnt worth getting to know someone unless he was going to get something out of it too. He wanted things, he was poor and didnt have alot of the things other kids had and he had this very well educated rich uncle that played the piano and dressed in arguile socks and was so smooth with the words and he used to visit him as much as possible because that is what he wanted to be,,, he wanted things, he had rich taste, and he was a charmer, good looking young man, he also was a compulsive thief with the affinity for socks galore, many many many socks, he had a sock foot fetish of some kind, and when he started going to college he stole everything he could get his hands on, sometimes because he needed it and sometimes just for the thrill of it, cuz it was something he had power of and could get away with and if someone stopped him on the way he would talk his way out of his and it thrilled him and he was learning. People in these reviews talk about the humor being in bad taste etc etc, or not true, but it WAS true, around this time he not only was stealing and getting away with it, you know testing the waters to see how much he could get away with but he was becoming a peeping tom and a burgular, it was escalating, theif,petty burgular,peeping tom to actually breaking into houses and walking around while people slept, and he started to think how easy it would be to find a girl and go into her room and act out one of his fantasies that were growing and growing at the time, all the while he was working and going to school. He started working as a driver for a medical supply company were many things started to go missing, including crutches,cast material,gauze type stuff,cast stuff and a speculum I think if the movie tried to show all these things so far it would have seriously needed 5 more hours and a director like stephen king or something, so can you see why all of this was left out. I mean if they were going to do a life story from beginning to end then sure put all these key parts in there but come on, this movie was done at a pivitol point and for a serial killer that means theres body after body, they atleast showed the thievery and went from there and yes he really did steal that plant just like that, he stuck the top out of the sunroof in his voltswagon and took off.And yes he did sleep with the dead girls bodies out in the woods, he would go back to were he left them to check for one if they had been moved and two to have sex with them again and then sleep under the stars with them, just like the movie, so for everyone that said that was so contribed, it wasnt, he had a fascination for decomposing bodies, as sick as that is, especially the hue of blueish green the fingernails would turn, and yes he did take whole bodies home with him sometimes keeping the girl unconscious with the initial whack to the head with a sears model crowbar he would keep handy just like the movie. When he first tried to act out his fantasy he snuck into a girls house thinking it would be a breeze to take her but it didnt go as planned and the blood scarred him off, she was found severely hurt with a speculum jammed into her, the second attempt he was more prepared and snuck in and choked or hit her,dressed her,hung up her nightie,made her bed with hospital corners and vanished with her, they only found blood on the pillow and nightie that was neatly hung up in her closet, then he started toying with the idea of how to render a girl silent and make her unconscious so she wouldnt struggle,run and he could have time to drive her to a preselected spot to do what he wanted to her, he tried pulling distributer wires from cars then rushing to the girls aide but soon found out that other guys always appeared whenever a girl was having car trouble, he finally figured out that if he hit someone swiftly on the head with a crowbar or club, he could could just grab them and drive off or lead them into the car with a cast on my arm routine, pop them in the head close the door, handcuff them while they were still out tot he car and take off to his preselected spot up in the mountains, and this is what he continues to do, except for the bold 2 girls in less than 4 hours at lake sam, the hitchikers, the girl at he got at the school play and the failed attempt pretending to be a cop at the mall. all the while he was dating liz kendal he would often call her right after a kill in the middle of the night because she was his touch of reality, his "getting back to the real world" she was his center, his way back from becoming the entity. and like the Movie he did have her do kinky sex acts with him and later having her play dead and yes just like the movie he did bring heads home, at one time he had up to 5 heads at a time in his apartment, that he would wash their hair and apply make up just like the movie because when a couple of victims were found separate from their heads on taylor mountain, toward the end he finally told Keppel that he buries the heads apart and at different times than the bodies so a couple family members identifies the remains as not wearing that kind of make up or color or whatever and the coroners discovered that all the heads buried on the other side of taylor mountain had freshly shampooed hair. Even the pushing liz off the pier into the water was true just like the movie except in real life rafting friends witnessed it. I'm telling you that for anyone that wants to see the charming one minute and then the cold stare in a second serial killer Ted Bundy, watch the movie, yes it is graphic and yes you may think some of the things are a joke or can't possibly be real, well it will send chills down your spine and maybe the only bit that is lacking is most of the trial, but it is very very accurate and done very well. And yes he may have been able to dish it out and kill many women but when it came to him dying he was a total scardy cat using up his phone cards callinh everyone, offering himself up for science, trying to get a stay to do anything, even making last minute confessions, he did not want to do and had to be pulled and held in that chair because that monster surrounded himself with death but could not take dying himself! He was a coward trying to cut a deal all the way to the end and im so glad that monster got what he deserved, or us women would still not be safe to this day!
  
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• Posted on 2007-08-28
  No! No! No!
  
  Bright took tremendous "artistic" liberties in making this film, almost to the point where it borders on being a complete work of fiction.
  This movie leaves me with two baffling questions: WHY and HOW?
  Not in regard to the motivations of the featured serial killer, but WHY and HOW has this cinematic exploit made it into my DVD player?
  
  What was the point of this movie? Was it to showcase the limited talent of its director/writer, Matthew Bright? If so, then it was brilliant success!
  
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• Posted on 2007-04-13
  Sophmoric telling of a horrific story with bland acting
  
  Example, his stupid "girlfriend" never had an inkling that Ted was a little unbalanced? Plus she had her little daughter practically licking his hand, was she that desperate for a "man". I guess so. No insight into why he did these things, besides the obvious hatred for women. He was really free and easy on his killing spree and if it wasen't for the girl he tried to kidnap, escaping and turning in a report to the "police" he would still be on the loose today. Not too much gore, could have been a lot better, good mid-seventies feel to it. Rent "Monster" instead, much better movie.
  
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• Posted on 2006-08-29
  Succeeds at Shock Value
  
  "Ted Bundy" may have had every intention of being a serious look at the criminal life of Ted Bundy, but good intentions notwithstanding, the film only succeeds at the sheer shock value it projects.
  This film is hardly a feel-good or mainstream subject. It really seems to enjoy its subject's depravity - - was it really necessary to show Bundy playing with the head of a victim in his apartment? The film did very little to show Bundy's relationships with friends and family (his living victims, in a sense). The real Bundy allegedly had a troubled relationship with his mother and his stepfather, a subject that was never touched on. The character of Lee, Bundy's longstanding and suffering girlfriend (based on Bundy's real life girlfriend Liz Kendall) comes across as a needy, whiny character who agrees to go along with "playing dead" while having sex with her erratic and volatile boyfriend. Ugh. Were we supposed to feel sympathy for Lee? Or perhaps for Bundy, who always saw himself as a victim?
  Michael Reilly Burke does a good job playing Bundy as the degenerate he truly was. While Mark Harmon played Bundy as a suave, charismatic "gentleman" in "The Deliberate Stranger", Burke hits closer to the truth in his dark portrayal.
  That being said, even with Burke's chilling performance, the victims seem to get lost in the shuffle. While it is true that Bundy had a large amount of victims, the true number of which has never been known, and certain composites and consolidation must be done for theatrical purposes, playing the old classic "Rescue Me" imposed over images of Bundy bludgeoning various victims, kidnapping various victims, or playing with their dead bodies is vile. To Bundy, the victims were obviously playthings but to continue to perpetrate that myth years later is disrespectful to the victims themselves and their families.
  To better know about Bundy and his killing spree, "The Deliberate Stranger" is a much better choice. The characters are not so one dimensional and there is no shock value.
  
  
  
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• Posted on 2006-04-26
  Gripping, Gruesome, Provocative
  
  I find it odd that this film should have garnered so many negative reviews. Perhaps people's idea of serial killer is a cartoon like Hannibal Lector who, quite offensively, is depicted, particularly in Hannibal, both the book and the film, as a superhuman instead of a monster. This film never flinches from portraying Bundy as a true sadist. As Bundy, Michael Reilly Burke delivers a performance that is brave and brilliant. Director Matthew Sweet also gives us one of the best introductions to a serial killer ever. It begins with Ted Bundy waking up. We see his face from the front (cinema convention usually begins the main character being presented from behind). The idea is that the face we see is an illusion and the truth of who Bundy is slumbers beneath his blandly handsome features. At the start of the film, Bundy comes across as a dork. We see him in a club in a preppy suit pulling off bad John Travolta moves. Then he has water thrown over him while masturbating outside the window of a young woman's apartment. But he is dangerous dork. When he explodes into true violence, bashing a woman with a hammer to rid himself of his frustrations, the moment is truly savage and shocking. As Burke plays Bundy, there is beneath his smooth superficial charm, a perpetual sense of something dangerous and cruel just waiting for release. What the film gets right is the sociopath's unabiding selfishness. For all the cruelty he dishes out, even on those unfortunate enough to love him, Bundy always sees himself as the victim. The film is also one of the few serial killer films to ask some genuine questions about the nature of human violence. It ends with the question "Who is Ted Bundy?" and answers it with a series of children, including a cute little girl holding up a dead cat, giggling "I'm Ted Bundy." Still, what is being suggested here is not simply that baby Bundys are growing up as we speak but that depravity exists not only under cover of normalcy but within normalcy. The frenzy and violent joy of those calling for Bundy to be fried on the electric chair (here Sweet uses actual news footage), suggests there is a bloodlust in all of us waiting for an excuse to get out. Who is Ted Bundy? We are.
  
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