Released this year, Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door tells the story of two neighbors in the 70s.
Bobby (Mason McNulty) is a typical 7os teenager, with long hair and a laid back attitude. He’s what my grandparents used to call a “good kid.” He helps out his neighbors and he only charges 50 cents an hour. When he sees someone new moving in, he immediately offers to help the man unload all of his furniture. He gets along with his parents. He’s popular with his friends. Bobby seems destined to grow up to become the type of guy who you would want living next door to you.
His new neighbor is named John (Mike Korich). John is a small businessman with local political ambitions. He entertains at parties under the name Pogo the Clown. He has a loud and, if we’re going to be honest, somewhat grating laugh. He’s a dorky guy but he seems to be super-friendly. In fact, he’s a bit too friendly. He’s very quick to invite young men like Bobby to come home with him. Bobby can’t help but notice that John’s new friends enter the house but they don’t ever seem to leave.
“I’ve never met anyone named John Wayne before,” Bobby says, when he first meets John.
“My mother named me after a cowboy,” John Wayne Gacy replies.
Soon, Bobby’s curiosity gets the better of him and he starts investigating Gacy on his own. He comes to believe that Gacy is murdering the men that he brings home and then keeping their bodies in the house. Unfortunately, no one wants to believe Bobby. John, a murderer? Friendly, clownish, buffoonish John? “He works for the Democrats!” Bobby’s mother says at one point, a line that genuinely made me laugh.
There’s a lot of laughter to be found in Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door. John Wayne Gacy loves to put on his clown makeup, kill people, and laugh. The laughing gets old pretty quickly, to be honest. The real-life John Wayne Gacy was executed after less than 20 years on Death Row. If his real-life laugh was anything like his laugh in the movie, I’m surprised that they weren’t any quicker about doing away with him.
The real-life John Wayne Gacy was one of the worst serial killers in American history. He killed dozens, so much so that he’s still considered to be a suspect in several unsolved murders. He tortured his victims in the worst ways imaginable. And he never even bothered to fake any sort of remorse for his crimes. Instead, after he was jailed, he sold Gacy merchandise to morbid collectors. His last words, before being put to death, were reportedly, “Kiss my ass.” John Wayne Gacy is the type of murderer who makes people like me, who are against the death penalty in general, seriously reconsider their feelings.
Considering how terrible Gacy and his crimes were, it’s a bit odd that Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door almost plays out like a comedy at time. The film portrays Gacy as being so openly evil that it’s hard not to smile whenever an adult refuses to believe Bobby’s claim that there might be something wrong with the man who enjoys wearing clown makeup and carrying around a set of handcuffs. A scene where Gacy comes over to Bobby’s house and asks if he can use the phone is pure cringe comedy. The problem is that I don’t think that the scene was meant to be comedic.
Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door is a bit of a misfire as a true crime film, as it gets the majority of the facts wrong. (That said, it was correct about John Wayne Gacy being a Democrat.) It works as a comedy but one could argue that a film about John Wayne Gacy should not be a comedy, even if it is largely unintentional on the part of the filmmakers. Mason McNulty gave a good and sympathetic performance as Bobby and Mike Korich was properly creepy as Gacy.
In the end, we should probably just be happy that John Wayne Gacy is dead.
Through the Shattered Lens 