FRIEND, Short Film, Dir: Saga Spjuth-Sall, Review by Case Wright

Posted on October 11, 2023 by casewright

Hello Horror Friends! I am taking a break from making meatball sliders and studying for Drilling to review something truly great. WHAAA? Yes, this is legit, guys. I was really worried that I was going to have to review a series of turds and just embrace them, but when I did my search this popped up and it is straight-up scary. It has Hitchcock levels of suspense with a simple story that ratchets up the tension for the entire film. It’s so great to see talent. From what I can tell, they’re Swedish artists and their story craft, directing, and acting just grabs you right by the proverbials and does not let go!

Nathalie is a teleworking IT customer service agent and she gets a rude call. She takes a break and we see a shadow of a man is in her house; I’m still a little goose-fleshed. I know some of my readers are anti-gun. I used to have one for work, but I get your point of view……sort of. What I mean is this, if I were a single woman, I would be armed- ALWAYS….ALWAYS…ALWAYS- the shower, taking out the trash, playing pickle ball, maybe have a shotgun swung around my back The Last of Us style when I’m cooking marinara, and just a wee .22 caliber in an ankle holster when I’m cooking my Nutella gelato (oh yeah I make that, sup?).

The entire film you’re so worried for Nathalie because the actress imbues the character with this sweet sort-of Audrey Hepburn in “Wait Until Dark” quality. Nathalie becomes a Rorschach image of every “girl next door/ nice college roommate” and knowing that she’s in peril is almost too much. I will NOT lie: I had … no joke…. 4 jump out of my seat moments. This is one of the best short films that I have ever seen; in fact, it might be the best short-film I’ve ever seen; now, I need to think on that. One thing is certain, it’s absolutely going to be impossible to top this short film for the 2023 Horrorthon; so, I wish the rest of the filmmakers well in all of their future endeavors.

This film will grab you by the proverbials!

The Devil’s Mistress (1965, directed by Orville Wanzer)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

In the Old West, four outlaws are trying to keep one step ahead of the posse when they comes across an isolated cabin sitting the middle of nowhere. The oldest of the outlaws say that they should stay away from the cabin because it is too far away from civilization and whoever lives there is trying to hide something. He is outvoted by the other outlaws, who are hungry and hoping the cabin will have some food.

It turns out that cabin belongs to a bearded man who claims to be a pilgrim of some sort. He lives with his mute wife. He welcomes the men and gives them food. Two of the outlaws repay him by murdering him and then raping his wife. They decide to take the wife with them as they make their way to Mexico. The wife silently follows but the men soon start to die, one-by-one. Are the men unlucky or is the woman they kidnapped somehow causing it all to happen? Given the film’s title, it’s not hard to guess.

The Devil’s Mistress is a mico-budget, independently-produced mix of the western and horror genres. The film looks cheap and the actors playing the outlaws are all pretty inexpressive but Joan Stapleton’s otherworldly beauty is perfect for the role of the abducted woman who turns out to be far more clever and dangerous than the outlaws assumed. With a good deal of philosophical dialogue about life, death, and guilt, the film has a lot more on its mind than the average indie western, with each outlaw forced to confront their own mortality as they are punished for their sins.

October True Crime: House on The Hill (dir by Jeffrey Frentzen)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2012’s House on the Hill is loosely based on the true story of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, two of the worst serial killers to ever haunt California.

Two former Marines who met after Ng placed an advertisement in a survivalist magazine, Lake and Ng lived together on an isolated tract of land. Underneath their cabin, they constructed a dungeon. Over the next year, they murdered a countless number of people in their dungeon and buried their remains. Lake and Ng killed anyone they came across, including several people who had previously been friends of Lake’s. (Ng apparently didn’t have any friends to kill.) Though they were officially accused of committing eleven murders, it’s felt that the number was probably much higher. The two of them videotaped their crimes. Ng kept a detailed and graphic journal in which he gloated about all of the people who he had killed. Lake made videos in which he explained his philosophy and expounded on why he felt that he deserved a slave. Eventually, Lake committed suicide after he was arrested on a shop lifting charge. Ng fled to Canada but was eventually sent back to the United States. He currently sits on California’s inactive death row.

In the film, Sonia (Naidra Dawn Thompson) is visited at her home by Paul (Kevin McCloskey), a detective. Paul explains that he knows that Sonia was the only survivor of Ng and Lake’s rampage. She survived by being the slave that Leonard Lake desired, filming Ng and Lake’s crimes. Paul wants to know if Sonia remembers one of Lake and Ng’s victims, a woman named Karianna (Shannon Leade). Paul says that his clients want to know the circumstances that led to Karianna’s death. After some hesitation, Sonia tells Paul about her experiences as Lake and Ng’s prisoner. The film is a mix of black-and-white scenes involving Paul and Sonia and color flashbacks to the crimes of Lake (Stephen A.F. Day) and Ng (Sam Leung). While Sonia and Karianna are both fictional, the audience is shown footage of the real Leonard Lake, talking about his “philosophy” of life.

At first, it feels a bit tasteless to include the actual footage of the real Leonard Lake but, by the end of the film, I was glad that it had been included because, physically, the real-life Leonard Lake and Charles Ng were both considerably less attractive than the actors who played them in the film. This is especially true of Charles Ng. The real life Ng was pudgy and nerdy. Sam Leung, on the other hand, is undeniably handsome and muscular. Meanwhile, Stephen A.F. Day has the looks and manner of a friendly social worker so it was good to have actual footage of Lake so that the audience could see that, in real life, Leonard Lake was an overweight, loser incel whose spoke like someone who was desperately trying to convince the listener that he was smarter than he actually was. (Leonard Lake was the type to stumble over any word that had more than one syllable.) Probably the best thing that a serial killer film can do is remind the audience that most killers are not erudite and clever. They’re not Hannibal Lecter. Instead, they’re losers who are striking out at a world in which they have no hope of succeeding.

As for the film itself, it does capture the horror of being trapped but it’s hard not to feel that it made a mistake by focusing on the fictional Sonia and her conversation with Paul. Indeed, by having the film narrated by a fictional character who managed to escape, the film does a disservice to to the real victims who weren’t so lucky. With all of the flashbacks and flashforwards, the narrative itself feels too jumbled to really tell us anything about how or why Lake and Ng not only committed their crimes but how they managed to get away with it for over a year. In the end, the scariest thing about Lake and Ng is that, if not for that one shoplifting incident, their reign of terror could have continued uninterrupted for even longer than it did.

Horror Film Review: Hounded (dir by Tommy Boulding)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this British film from 2022, Leon (Nobuse Junior) is the head of a crew of thieves. Yes, he spends his time breaking into people’s houses and stealing their stuff but the film insists that he’s not that bad. He’s just trying to raise the money to send his younger brother, Chaz (Malachi Pullar-Latchman) to a university. Working with the two brothers are the perpetually angry Vix (Hannah Traylen) and the perpetually religious Todd (Ross Coles). To be honest, none of the really seem like they should be hanging out together but I guess crime makes for unexpected partnerships. Still, you really do have to wonder in what world would Vix and Todd even say “hi” to one another, let alone work together as a part of a burglary crew?

An antique dealer (Larry Lamb) hires the crew to beak into the estate of the Katherine Redwick (Samantha Bond, best-known for playing Ms. Moneypenny in the Timothy Dalton Bond films) and steal a valuable ceremonial knife. Unfortunately, it turns out that it’s all a set up and soon, the four thieves are being chased across the estate by Katherine and her family. If the thieves can make it back to civilization, they’ll be safe. If they can’t, then they’ll have to face the ceremonial knife. Yes, they’re playing a most dangerous game, with Count Zaroff’s isolated island being replaced by a posh British country estate. The film is called Hounded because, just as in a fox hunt, the Redwicks use dogs to chase down their prey. The dogs are cute and fear not, no harm comes to them. This is a 2022 film and everyone knows better than to harm a dog. The humans on the other hand….

There’s a lot of class struggle commentary to be found in Hounded. The thieves are all working class and angry about not being given the same opportunities as the rich. The Redwicks are so posh and refined that they basically come across as Monty Python-style caricatures. They may be hunting people for sport but they’re very polite and proper about it and Katharine spends a lot of time talking about how the Redwicks always hunt with honor. Unfortunately, while Samantha Bond is entertaining as the main villain, the rest of the characters are not particularly memorable and some of the actors playing the thieves give performances are downright embarrassing. As such, you never really care much about whether the thieves are going to escape or if the Renwicks are going to face justice. All you care about is whether or not the dogs are going to be okay. If your film is going to feature a lot of scare scenes featuring dogs, try not to cast cute Dalmatians. Seriously, I found myself rooting for the dogs because I knew that, no matter what they did, they would be adorable while doing it.

For the most part, Hounded is a predictable film. It’s short but it seems much longer. The version of The Most Dangerous Game just isn’t dangerous enough.

Horror on the Lens: Mesa of Lost Women (dir by Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s Horror on the Lens is the infamous 1953 film, Mesa of Lost Women. Off in the middle of the desert, Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan) is conducting dangerous experiments that are resulting not only in giant spiders but also a master race of superwomen who Aranya is planning to use to conquer the world or something.

Mesa of Lost Women is a bit of a disjointed film. It was originally filmed by a German director named Herbert Tevos, who claimed to be an associate of Erich Von Stroheim’s and a former collaborator of Marlene Dietrich’s. However, despite his claims of being well-connected, no one was particularly impressed with Tevos’s first cut of the film so Ron Ormond was brought in to film additional scenes, the majority of them featuring Jackie Coogan as the insane Dr. Aranya. Jackie Coogan was, at the time, still best-known for playing The Kid in the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name. After Mesa, he would go on to play Uncle Fester on the original Addams Family.

Anyway, Mesa of Lost Women is one of those B-movies that simply has to be seen and heard to be believed. (Lyle Talbot provides the narration, which is judgmental even by the standards of the 1950s.) Enjoy Mesa of Lost Women!

October Positivity: Prayer Never Fails (dir by Wes Miller)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2016 film, Prayer Never Fails, tells the story of Aiden Paul (Nick Lashaway). Having survived a traumatic childhood that was full of abuse, Aiden is now the beloved basketball coach at the local high school. (The fact that he never shaves or gets his hair out of his face does not seem to be a problem as far as this school district is concenred.) When one of his players approaches Aiden and tell him that he’s being abused by his father (Lorenzo Lamas), Aiden suggests that the player pray on it. When the player says that he doesn’t know how to pray (because his father is not just abusive but also a hardcore atheist, of course), Aiden takes him into a classroom and teaches him how.

Unfortunately, another teacher sees Aiden and the player praying and reports Aiden to the principal. Aiden is fired from his position. Though Aiden says that he’s just going to give up and find another job, his players demand that Aiden fight to be reinstated. Aiden decides to take the school to court!

Unfortunately, there aren’t any lawyers that Aiden can afford. (And most lawyers would hopefully be ethical enough tell Aiden that, regardless of his good intentions, he doesn’t have a case.) Finally, a chance meeting at a diner leads to Aiden hiring Michael Brown (Clifton Davis), an agnostic lawyer with a gambling problem. Michael takes the case but he soon finds himself going up against master litigator Joseph T. Harrington (Corbin Bernsen). Can Michael somehow win the case?

This is another one of those Christian courtroom films where no one does anything that makes sense. For instance, it seems like, instead of ducking into an open classroom for a quick prayer, Aiden could have reported that one of his students was being abused by a parent, which is something that, as a teacher, he would have been required to do in the first place. (Instead, that subplot is abandoned after Aiden is fired.) As well, to win the case, all Joseph T. Herrington had to do was 1) point out that Aiden had admitted to leading a prayer in school and 2) call to the stand a Constitutional law expert to explain the establishment clause. Instead, Herrington puts the entire concept of prayer on trial and tries to argue that praying doesn’t work. It’s an argument based purely on emotion and bias, which allows Michael to make a counter-argument that’s based purely on emotion and bias. At one point, Michael interrogates the school’s principal as to why he was willing to defend a transgender teacher but not Aiden’s right to pray. The correct answer, of course, is that whether or not another teacher is transgender has nothing to do with Aiden’s case and that the Supreme Court has ruled that prayer is not allowed in public schools. That’s really all anyone needed to say to any of Michael’s arguments but no one does because, if they did, it would be a very short film.

(Along with the dubious legal arguments, this film annoyed me because Aiden didn’t ever bother to shave or comb his hair before the trail began. I mean, seriously, did someone tell him that it was a good strategy to go to court looking like you spend the previous week sleeping in the back of a pickup truck? I would not want him coaching my school’s basketball team.)

On the plus side, Eric Roberts is in this movie. He plays the judge and goes through the film with a bemused smile on his face, as if even he can’t believe the legal arguments that he’s hearing. It’s always nice to see Eric Roberts picking up a paycheck.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

October Hacks: Blood Theatre (dir by Rick Sloane)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have watched my share of not-good films but, as I sit here typing this, it’s hard for me to think of anything quite as mind-numbingly bad as 1984’s Blood Theatre.

Blood Theatre is a horror film without scares and a comedy without laughs. It starts at some point in the past, when a lovelorn movie theater owner (played, as a young man, by David Milbern) has a nervous breakdown upon discovering that the ticket girl doesn’t love him. So, he stabs her to death and then sets the theater on fire, killing the majority of the patrons inside. Years later, Mr. Murdock (Rob-Roy Fletcher) decides to increase his chain of Starlite Theaters by purchasing the old theater. He sends three of his employees over to get the place in shape. What he doesn’t stop to consider is that the theater owner (now played, as an old man, by Jonathan Blakely) is still haunting the old theater and killing anyone who shows up. Is the owner a ghost or a human killer? The film never quite makes up its mind, as sometimes he appears to have control of electricity and time and space and other times, he’s just an old geezer with a knife.

But the motives of the killer really aren’t that important because, oddly enough, he’s not really in the much of the film. Instead, the majority of the film is a broad comedy about the people working at the theater, none of whom are particularly funny or even likable. Selena (Joanna Foxx) gets mad when someone fails to pay for their popcorn so, for some reason, she follows them into theater and rips of her bra in front of them. I’m not really sure how that is supposed to get back at them for not paying for their popcorn but it does lead to a riot in the theater as everyone demands that she sit down so that they can enjoy the movie. Amazingly, this somehow does not lead to Selena getting fired but instead, she and her friend Darcy (Stephanie Dillard) are transferred to the new theater, much to the irritation of their co-worker, cheerleader Jennifer (Jenny Cunningham). Jennifer, Selena, and Darcy are all supposed to be in high school but they also all appear to be in their 30s.

Mary Woronov is also in this film. She’s totally wasted in the role of Murdock’s administrative assistant. She spends the entire movie answering the phone in the office and rolling her eyes and then making sarcastic comments about the fact that Murdock has gone to a theater owner’s convention but he hasn’t returned yet because he’s been mugged. For reasons that aren’t really clear, she hates Murdock and she hates everyone that she works with but then again, no one in this movie seems to like anyone else. Everyone in this movie dislikes everyone else and, as a result, it’s not as if any of the people are particularly pleasant to hang out with.

This is one of those comedies where every joke is repeated ad nauseum, to the point where it becomes impossible to watch the film without wanting to throw something at the screen. It would help, of course, if the jokes were funny but none of them are. It would also help if there was a shred of charisma to be found in the cast but, with the exception of Mary Woronov, everyone delivers their lines stiffly and without personality. Clocking in at 75 minutes but feeling much, much longer, Blood Theatre is one of the most incredibly dull films that I’ve ever seen. This is the slasher film that answers the question, “Just how bad can these films get?”

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Sweet Kill (dir by Curtis Hanson)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As the saying goes, everyone has to start somewhere and, for Curtis Hanson, that somewhere was with 1973’s Sweet Kill.

Curtis Hanson, of course, would go on to become one of Hollywood’s top genre directors, directing films like The River Wild, Bad Influence, Wonder Boys, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, 8 Mile, and the Oscar-nominated L.A. Confidential. But, in the early 70s, he was just one of the many recent film school grads who approached Roger Corman for a job.

Having previously worked on the script for the Corman-produced Dunwich Horror, Hanson approached Roger and told him that he had an idea for a Psycho-inspired movie about a female serial killer. Corman replied that he would help finance the film if Hanson made the killer into a man. Hanson did so but Corman still ended up only putting up a third of the film’s budget as opposed to the two/thirds that he had originally offered. Hanson ended up convincing his parents to take out a mortgage on their home to help finance the movie.

Hanson shot the film in 1971. Corman said that the film showed promise but that it needed more nudity and a better title if it was going to be successful. Corman re-edited the film and additional nude scenes were shot and inserted into the film. Despite this, Sweet Kill was a box office disappointment when it was originally released. Corman re-titled the film Kisses For Eddie but it didn’t help at the box office. Finally, the film was released under a third title, The Arousers. Despite a lurid ad campaign built around “the arousers,” the film once again failed at the box office. It wouldn’t be until years later, when Hanson started to achieve some mainstream success, that Sweet Kill would be rediscovered.

After all of the drama that went into post-production, it would be nice to be able to report that Sweet Kill was some sort of overlooked masterpiece but, to be honest, it’s pretty bad. The film stars Tab Hunter as Eddie Collins. When Eddie was a kid, he used to hide in the closet and watch as his mother lounged around her bedroom in lingerie. Now that Eddie is a grown-up and working as a high school gym coach, he is still so haunted by his mother that he’s impotent. As a result, Eddie spends his time breaking into apartments, stealing underwear, and having a prostitute dress up like his mother so that he can undress her while sobbing. After a chance meeting with a hippie girl leads to Eddie once again failing to get it up, he shoves the girl hard enough to kill her. The film implies that this act of violence leads to Eddie getting aroused for the first time and soon, Eddie is killing people and …. well, that’s pretty much the whole movie. There’s not really a plot, beyond Eddie looking confused and trying to keep his sympathetic neighbor from finding out that he’s a serial killer.

Sweet Kill has gotten some attention because of the casting of former teen idol Tab Hunter in the role of psycho Eddie. Tab Hunter has the right blonde look for Eddie, who is basically a homicidal beach bum, but otherwise, Hunter’s performance is fairly dull. Watching the film, it’s obvious that he wasn’t particularly comfortable with the role of Eddie and, as such, he sleepwalks through the performance. (Ironically, Eddie was based on Norman Bates, who was played by Hunter’s former partner, Anthony Perkins.) There are a few creepy moments where Hunter stares off into the distance with a blank look on his face but otherwise, this isn’t a particularly memorable performance nor is Sweet Kill a particularly interesting film.

That said, Curtis Hanson went on to have quite a career so, on that level, Sweet Kill‘s bland badness is inspiring. If the director of Sweet Kill could still go on to direct and produce some of the best films of the past 50 years, there’s hope for everyone looking to achieve their dreams. Don’t let one failure get you down.

Death Metal (2023, directed by Michael Kuciak)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Abyssinister is a death metal band that has seen better days. Lead singer Ivan (Nico Zahniser) is a perfectionist who has alienated most of the members of the group with his abrasive personality. Their records aren’t selling. Their European tour was a disaster. Hardly anyone can pronounce the band’s name and those who can think that Abyssinister broke up. And the band is on the verge of breaking up for real until Ivan announces that he’s hired the famed Norwegian producer, Fleming (Ray Goodwin), to produce their next album.

Agreeing to give stardom one last shot, Abyssinister travels out to Fleming’s isolated farm and recording studio. After they arrive, Ivan announces that he has a copy of a supposedly cursed concerto that he wants the band to record. The band records the piece and it sounds great but what neither the band nor their manager, Shadia (Shadia Martin), knows is that Ivan had made a deal with the Devil and now, there is a price to pay.

Full of inside jokes about the death metal scene and featuring some surprisingly realistic gore, Death Metal turned out to be much better than I was expecting it to be. The first half is a humorous satire of every cliché about the Death Metal scene while the second half is full of effective jump scares and frightening scenes. Every member of the band and their groupies get a chance to make an impression before the concerto is recorded and you actually do worry about them once everything starts to fall apart. I especially liked the performance of Chris Richards, as the otherwise mild-mannered drummer who legally changed his name to Baphomet.

Death Metal is both an effective satire of the hysteria surrounding death metal music and an effective horror movie.

October True Crime: Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck (dir by Michael Feifer)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Richard Speck was the worst of the worst.

A petty criminal-turned-drifter, Richard Speck fled Texas to avoid being sentenced to prison for his part in a grocery store robbery. He eventually ended up in Chicago, where he lived with his sister and her husband and found occasional work as a seaman. When he couldn’t get work on a boat, the alcoholic Speck supported himself by mugging and burglarizing. It’s not known when he committed his first murder, though it is suspected that it occurred back in Texas. It is known that, in July of 1966, Speck’s sister and brother-in-law finally got sick of dealing with him as a houseguest and Speck ended staying in a series of rooming houses and homeless shelters. On July 13th, the 24 year-old Speck mugged and raped at 53 year-old woman before then breaking into a townhouse that was occupied by nine student nurses. Over the course of the night, he raped and murdered eight of nurses. The only survivor hid underneath a bed until Speck left. She later told police that Speck spoke with a soft Southern accent, had an acne-scarred face, and a tattoo that read Born to Raise Hell.

It was the tattoo that led to his capture. Two days after the murders, with the city of Chicago in an uproar and the police launching a city-wide manhunt to catch the killer, Richard Speck attempted to kill himself by slitting his wrists. He was taken to Cook County Hospital, where Dr. LeRoy Smith saw Speck’s tattoo and called the police.

Though protesting his innocence, Speck was convicted of the murders and sentenced to die. He was spared the death sentence when the Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment. From prison, Speck eventually admitted that he had killed the nurses but he claimed that he was so drunk and high that he had no idea what he was doing. After Speck died of heart failure in 1991, a videotape would emerge of a cocky Speck telling his fellow prisoners that he knew exactly what he was doing and he never felt a bit of guilt. “Just wasn’t their night,” was Speck’s explanation for why the murders happened. Speck also said that if the public knew how much fun he was having in prison, they would have released him for sure. Richard Speck is the type of evil specter who seems to exist to specifically challenge those of us who are opposed to the death penalty. If anyone has ever deserved to be executed in the most painful way possible, it was Richard Speck.

The 2007 film Chicago Massacre stars Corin Nemec as Richard Speck and the film’s makeup department deserves a lot of credit for transforming the handsome and normally quite personable Corin Nemec into the horribly poc-marked Richard Speck. Sometimes, monsters truly do look like monsters and that was definitely the case of Speck. Nemec plays Speck as being a natural-born deviant, a soulless sociopath who has no control over his impulses and who never seems to understand why the world is so disgusted by his crimes. It’s a truly frightening performance.

The rest of the film is a flawed and heavily fictionalized account of Speck’s crimes, imagining that Speck was actually a casual acquaintance of one of the nurses that he killed and suggesting that she was the main reason why he broke into the townhouse to begin with. The history nerd of me cringed when a police chief (Tony Todd) announced that his lead detective (Andrew Divoff) only had two days to solve the murders because the Democratic Convention was coming up. (Speck committed the murders in 1966, two years before the Democrats came to Chicago for their ill-fated convention.) Todd’s police chief says that he’ll be forced to sweep the murders under the rug if they’re not solved quickly but I’m not really sure how that would happen, given the enormity of the crime and the panic that reportedly swept through Chicago as a result. As much as I hate to single out any one performer for criticism (because I usually assume that a bad performance has more to do with the director and the editor than the actor), Joanne Chew, cast in the role of the sole survivor of Speck’s rampage, delivers her dialogue so awkwardly that it sabotages what should have been some of the strongest moments of the film. (Then again, even the best actress would perhaps be challenged by a line like, “I will look the devil in the eye.”)

Filled with flashbacks to both the murder of the nurses and Speck’s life as Texas criminal, Chicago Massacre is an undeniably icky film but given that it’s about Richard Speck, it really should be. When it comes to a criminal like Richard Speck, it’s always tempting to try to look at his life for clues as how to prevent a future Richard Speck from committing a similar crime. But, with Speck, there’s little to be learned beyond the fact that he did what he did because he had no conscience or sense of guilt to mitigate his impulses. Speck had a terrible childhood but many people have had terrible childhoods without turning into mass murderers. Speck was mentally unwell but many people deal with their mental health without turning into mass murderers. In the end, he was a monster. Thankfully, he was also enough of a dumbass to get a tattoo that made it impossible for him to hide from his crimes.