Customer Reviews

To Catch a Killer

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I taped this off the tv i long time ago now, & i was astounded by Brian Dennehy's sheer power in this role, he is just so brilliant for the role, if you would put a photo of the real John Wayne Gacy alongside with one of Brian Dennehy, you would swear they are almost twins! Kudos goes to actor Michael Riley who played the detective detrmined to bring Gacy to justice for the brutal crimes Gacy commited, as a result of his relentless pursuit of Gacy, his home life suffers beacuse of this. One of the best acting roles of a real life Serial Killer i have ever seen.

I first saw this movie years ago and still pick it every now and then because first it's a true crime story, and then Brian Denehy's acting is so extraordinary accurate. If you want to start a collection on thrillers or if you're interested in true crime, and more specifically about the cat and mouse game that Gacy played to the very end, buy this movie, you won't regret it.

This is one of my alltime favourite movies. Brian Dennehy is really scary as Gacy. If you want to watch a great movie, watch this one, but not alone. You really get the feeling that Mr Gacy must have been one sick man, but quite clever, until he got caught, that is. Thank God for Kozenzyk and his team and that they were so persistent catching him, otherwise, who knows how many more men he would have killed unnoticed.....

An absolutely fantastic movie portraying the life of John Gacy, a simple man who runs a building contractor company. In his spare time, he loves entertaining sick children in hospital, dressing up as Pongo the clown. But what John does in his spare time is both inconcievable and terrifying. This film is based on a true story - that of John Gacy, and how in his spare time he sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered thirty-three young men, making him America's single-most brutal serial killer of all time. "To Catch a Killer" begins as yet another young man goes missing, Gacy having lured him into his house and taken it from there. When his mother notices him gone, she calls the police. And in steps Michael Riley, who plays Lieutenant Packer, a man struggling to balance his job with his family, much to his son's dislike. Packer spends every waking moment pursuing Gacy, uncovering vital and astonishing clues along the way, revealling more and more about Gacy's twisted actions, bringing the movie to a terrifying ending where at last the boy's body is found. An excellent movie, with Dennehy's best performance ever, and a one even as good by Riley. It revealls the horrifying truth about "stranger-danger", and portrays that, like a breakdown on a lost and lonely highway late at night, it could happen to you. One memorable and terrifying scene has Gacy doing his performance as a clown at the children's hospital. Riley and his men track him down and watch him as he entertains away, showing off tricks and telling jokes. Then as Gacy notices Riley is watching, he performs a cunning trick in which he borrows Riley's handcuffs and demonstrates on a young boy a trick, to see if the boy can get himself out of the handcuffs without the key. Riley watches intently, and Dennehy's role is highlighted with the terror and fear he gives us.

Let me start by saying that i am not normally a fan of TV movies, i have often found them formulaic, bland compromised and badly acted. This film is superbly put together, while watching you cannot help but feel the pain of the victims and their famillies, the director took great pains to show the human side of the horrors which Gacy inflicted on Chicago. The face of this sadness is the detective who is hunting Gacy for the abduction and murder of teenagers, we see him deteriorating mentally throughout the film, often crying tears, he suffers physically and emotionally simply by being in proximity to the horror of the investigation. On the other hand we have Gacy played brilliantly by Dennehy, whoever cast him in this role deserves a lot of credit, he even looks like Gacy. Dennehy injects a massive amount of unpleasantness into his portrayal of the sadistic killer, when he leers and shows his teeth biting his lower lip as he taunts the cops you get the measure that this is a fully fleshed three dimensional monster you are watching. The film is extraordinarily sensitive to the subject matter and despite (or because of) being low on gore the overall effect is completely unsettling and incredibly disturbing, we do not see the horror but it is suggested brilliantly, from the droning noise of the furnace in Gacy's house to the puddles of filth accumulating on the surface of the soil in the crawlspace under his house where the bodies are buried, we take a peek into hell. The pacing and tension throughout the film is maintained well despite the long running time of over three hours. Again, the people who made the film should be congratulated that their work was not only immensely enjoyable, it really made me feel for the victims of this real-life monster - so few serial killer movies bother with the victims, relegating them to meat puppets to be ripped apart in the most vulgar way possible. The horror component of the film is just barely surpassed by the humanity of the detective at the end, in truth it seemed the detective was himself battling Gacy for possession of his own soul throughout. When asked how he feels after the gruesome discovery is made he utters a single word which couldn't be surpassed in my opinion...'sad'.

This is probably the finest made for T.V.(true crime) movie ever made. Dennehy and Riley are absolutely superb. Check it out......

Having lived in Chicago when the actual Gacy horror story was first disclosed, I thought that this film (which I think was first made for TV) captured the eerie personality of a serial killer who dressed up as a clown to entertain kids. Dennehey is great.

I saw this film when it first came out on television. The film listed on this website is not the complete film. It has been cut from it's original version and format. To Catch A killer was just recienly on the Lifetime channel, and it is spli into to parts. This film is at least almost 4 hours long, and not 95 minutes. Anyone wanted to get this great film starring Brian Dennehey should try to search for the original un-cut version. To Catch A Killer is an intense, and horrifying depiction of the infamous killer (John Wayne Gasey), and the hard working dedicated detectives who built a case and to put this man away in prision where he needed to be.

I have the 95 minute VHS tape, but you are missing some of it's most griping moments in the 4 hour version, that any film collecter should want to own.

This is the best movie ever made about the crimes of a serial killer. From the beginning to the end it's a chilling movie! Great actors, Brian Dennahy in one of his best roles!

This is one of the best movies about Gacy and Brian Dennehy is superb in it. But, $95.00 used you'd have to be drunk on a Saturday Nite to pay that!! I'd like to own it but $95.00 Come on!! and $452.00 for it new...(sigh)...sounds more like a Jack instead of a DVD...Be serious. Maybe Dennehy is included for that price he comes to your home makes popcorn and works the remote for ya. Let's only hope