Product Details

• Actors: Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy
• Directors: Various
• Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Mill Creek Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: January 27, 2009
• Run Time: 300 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001LN6NRE
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,207 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Studio: Digital1stop Release Date: 01/27/2009 Run time: 600 minutes Rating: Nr

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I also got this for $5 at Wal-Mart..., March 5, 2009

By 

ac (Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: America's Serial Killers: Portraits in Evil (DVD)

...and it was worth every penny. You only get what you pay for, right?

The 5-star reviews and the 1-star reviews for those are both a joke, it's not terrible and it's CERTAINLY not perfect. You just kind of have to ask yourself why you plan on watching this. If you're looking for new insight into the mind of serial killers, there is nothing new to see or hear here. If you're looking for plenty of videos of the killers being interviewed or appearances in court or old news reels or whatever... well, there's SOME of that, but for the most part it's mainly clips that are available on youtube with narration over top. If you're looking for a look at a lot of obscure killers and not just the big names, well, honestly there are a few here or there that I was surprised about (I rarely see Albert Fish get mentioned elsewhere, and there were a few killer couples on the "buddies" segment that hardly ever get talked about).

If you're looking for high production values, sorry! While everything is competently-filmed and -edited, the creators of this made the mistake of interviewing the same 2 or 3 people for the entire 7 1/2 hours. So, if you don't like 1 of them (or all of them), you're out of luck... get used to seeing 'em over and over again! Also, if you're looking for something comprehensive, forget it. Did it even MENTION the Manson Family killing Sharon Tate?! Either I fell asleep for that brief part or they just skimmed right over it and started talking about the media's role in the Manson case.

The narration is great; don't let the other reviewers fool you, and the narrator himself doesn't do the voices of the killers, they have separate people doing the voices, and it works just fine. The soundtrack is amazing if you care about that when watching a documentary. The whole thing held my interest with no problem, even though I knew all of this stuff. There actually were a few tidbits here or there that I'd never heard before, and I've read plenty of true crime books and watch truTV/CourtTV religiously.

One nitpick: Every single disc starts with the same 3 minute "title sequence", with a reenactment of a fat cowboy getting shot and clips of Hitler and such. The same exact 3 minute title sequence. While it's easy to skip past, it was extremely annoying. Oh, and as for "showing clips of old movies", yeah, they do that on the first couple of segments, but it's not like they could have shown ACTUAL CLIPS from the late 1800s, now could they?

I enjoyed this thing for what it is, and I think it actually probably would be a good introduction to people just getting into serial killers, especially for $5. I will say, disc 2 is WAY better than disc 1. So, 5 stars for the price if you can get it cheap, 2 stars of the production values, 3 stars of the content... 3 stars overall.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Weep with me, May 11, 2009

By 

VooDoo (Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: America's Serial Killers: Portraits in Evil (DVD)

Yes, I bought it at Walmart for five bucks too. Which I thought was a bargain price even if it didn't turn out to be all that good. I was wrong. This collection is not even worth that much.

I literally cried through the whole thing. Either because the voice-over was so terribly hilarious, or because of all the innacuracies that were presented as utter truth. This whole DVD comes off as something smashed together by someone who has only done the slightest bit of surface research on the subject matter and then padded the whole thing with vaguely related clips. Such was the case with H. H. Holmes. The only media to be found are some pictures and news-clippings, no movie was made about his killings. So what is used when focusing on him? Clips from an old movie that might have been what meeting the man was like?

Skip this one. It's not a good introduction to the subject matter, it's not a good representation of the history of it. You're better off keeping that 8 or 5 bucks and treating yourself to lunch.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive, shallow and terribly inaccurate, April 2, 2010

By 

David Jimenez "DJ" (College Station, TX) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: America's Serial Killers: Portraits in Evil (DVD)

I did not get it from Walmart, I actually got it from Best Buy for about twice as much, and I regret each of those nine hundred and ninety nine cents. Two stars may be a bit too much for this "production".

First, this is a very very repetitive, having an almost five minutes introduction, identical on each of the episodes, what, made more concise, would have made its running time already an episode shorter. After that, the narrative is terribly repetitive, gets to similar simplistic conclusions for each of the serial killers they "analyze", goes on and on over pointless arguments, making forced pauses that make it feel very sensationalist.

With all the repetition on it, it really does not tell you much about the individuals they analyze, even referring to their victims as "the less dead" because they were in marginal parts of society, and thus, they were "less alive" before they were killed. When they talk about the "buddy serial killers", they say that "the partners turn on each other, like the animals they were", or that "this or that other serial killer was bad from the beginning", and similar statements that try to drive the attention away from the lack of substance to the sensationalized gruesomeness of their crimes.

Finally, there are gross inaccuracies on the contents of this "documentary". I have to admit, serial killers is one of those topics I like to study as a hobby, and I have read over a dozen books on the topic, and watch many more documentaries that are in general consistent with each other and refute some minor and not so minor points exposed here.

My advise, don't waste your money on this.