The
biopic Ted Bundy, directed by Matthew
Bright, spares no obscenity in depicting the world's worst
mass murderer. With more than one hundred deaths in his path
of rape, titles at the end tell us that the term "serial
killer" was coined to describe him. Although the film
begins with stills of Bundy (played by Michael Reilly Burke)
displaying cherubic boyishness, the drama begins at Seattle
in 1974. He has a loving girlfriend and daughter, but he presumably
puts off marriage until he can get a decent job. He has flunked
out of law school, and he is flunking out of psychology when
the film begins. In a short scene, the psychology professor
defines the term "sociopath" as someone who will
lie pathologically and who cannot be stopped in his determination
to engage in anti-social behavior. The purpose of the scene
is obviously to provide the only explanation provided in the
film for his misbehavior. How does Bundy seduce and rape?
His most common ploy is to catch the attention of pretty girls
in their twenties with his boyish charm, then he tells them
a seductive story that they want to believe in order to get
them into his yellow VW Beetle, and soon they are somewhere
in the woods at his mercy. At first, his rapes are uncomplicated,
but in time they become more and more kinky. With the authorities
after him in Seattle, in 1975 he heads for Salt Lake City,
and by 1976 he is in Colorado, raping and killing as he travels
east. A Colorado girl, however, fights back, reports him to
the police, he is arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. He
escapes from a Colorado prison, and soon he is in Tallahassee,
Florida, repeating his crimes. After another escape and recapture,
he is sentenced to the electric chair in Florida. The film
shows the step-by-step procedure taken in preparation for
the execution as well as the pulling of the switch, presumably
to demonstrate that the state showed more care in killing
Bundy than he did in his serial rapes and murders, though
opponents of the death penalty might claim that the procedure
is more brutal, recalling The
Green Mile (1999). Flashbacks to his youth
end the film, but we are left with no clear psychological
reason to account for his sociopathic behavior. MH
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