October True Crime: The Grim Sleeper (dir by Stanley M. Brooks)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s not known, for sure, how many people Lonnie David Franklin killed.

A residenct of Los Angeles and a former enlistee of the U.S. Army who was given a dishonorable discharge after doing time in prison for taking part in the gang-rape of a 17 year-old girl in Germany, Franklin was convicted of 10 murders but he was suspected of much more. His earliest known murder was committed in 1984 and he was apparently very active up until 1988. Then, much like the BTK Killer, Franklin appears to have taken a break for nearly two decades before returning to his murderous ways in 2002. (It could be just as likely that Franklin was still killing but his victims were either not discovered or he was never linked to the crimes.) Franklin’s murders didn’t get much attention, with the police not acknowledging that they were dealing with a serial killer until 2007. Some of that can be blamed on the fact that many of Franklin’s murders were committed before DNA testing became a commonplace thing. However, it has also been acknowledged that Franklin escaped detection because he targeted black women and tended to prey on sex workers, neither one of whom were a priority for the LAPD in the 80s.

2014’s The Grim Sleeper stars Dreama Walker as Christine Pelisek, the journalist who first reported on the existence of the Grim Sleeper and Ernie Hudson and Michael O’Neill as the detectives who investigated the murders and ultimately arrested Lonnie Franklin. Franklin (played by James R. Baylis) only appears briefly in the film. As The Grim Sleeper was made before Franklin had actually been convicted and sentenced to death for his crimes, the film does not actually state that the police arrested the right man. Indeed, the film discusses very little about the man who was arrested for the crimes.

Instead, the film focuses on Pelisek and her attempts to get someone to take her seriously when she argues that there’s a serial killer on the loose and that the public has a right to know. At first, everyone is skeptical of her claims. Her editor tells her that she doesn’t have enough for a story. The police tell her to mind her own business. Her fellow reporters order her to get coffee. The only people who really support Pelisek’s attempts to uncover the truth are the families of the victims, some of whom have spent over twenty years waiting for someone to tell them what happened to their loved ones.

The film is at its best when it focuses on the pain of the families, all of whom feel that they have been ignored and forgotten by the people who are supposed to be protecting them. It’s at its least interesting when it focuses on Pelisek and her efforts to be taken seriously. (Deama Walker has given good performances in films like Compliance and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood but she’s miscast here.) Though flawed, the film honors the memories of those victimized by the Grim Sleeper and it reminds viewers that no one should be forgotten.

As for the real Grim Sleeper, he died suddenly while on Death Row. The cause of death has never been released but he died in March of 2020, around the same time that COVID was spreading throughout the nation’s prisons and I’ve always assumed that he was an early fatality. Regardless of the cause, the Sleeper met the Reaper and will never awaken again.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #113: Gran Torino (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a grumpy man. And by that, I mean that he’s extremely grumpy. Remember how grumpy Bill Murray was in St. Vincent? He’s got nothing on Walt Kowalski.

Walt served in the Korean War and, five decades later, his experiences still haunt him. After the war, he lived in Detroit and he worked on an assembly line. He’s since retired but he still loves his old Ford Gran Torino, a car that he could very well have helped to build. His wife has recently passed away and his children are eager to move him into a nursing home. Walt is slowly smoking himself to death and the only person who visits him regularly is an earnest young priest (Christopher Carley, playing the ideal priest).

Just as Walt’s life has changed as he’s gotten older, so has his neighborhood. The neighborhood is now dominated by Hmong immigrants. When Walt catches Thao Vang Lor, a 16 year-old Hmong, attempting to steal his car, it leads to an unlikely friendship between Walt, Thao, and Thao’s sister, Sue. When the same local gang that put Thao up to stealing Walt’s car subsequently attacks Sue, Thao wants revenge but Walt says that if Thao kills a man, it’s something that he’ll never recover from. After locking Thao in his house, Walt goes off to confront the gang on his own…

And, since Walt is played by Clint Eastwood, you’d be justified in thinking that Walt’s confrontation would amount to a lot of quips and violence. But actually, it’s the exact opposite. Gran Torino does not find Eastwood in the mood to celebrate violence. Instead, the film is a meditation on both the cost of violence and the impossibility of escaping one’s own mortality.

Whenever people talk about the 2008 Oscar race, the focus always seems to be on the snubbing of The Dark Knight. However, I would say that Gran Torino (among other films) was snubbed even more than The Dark Knight. After all, The Dark Knight may have missed out on best picture but it still received 8 nominations and won an Oscar for Heath Ledger. Gran Torino, on the other hand, received not a single nomination.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that Gran Torino deserved a best picture nomination. It’s a fairly predictable film and some of the symbolism, particularly during Walt’s final confrontation with the gang, gets a bit too heavy-handed. (Any time a character spontaneously strikes a crucifixion pose in a movie, you know that things are starting to get out of hand.) But I would argue that Clint Eastwood definitely deserved a nomination for best actor. In many ways, Walt is a typical Eastwood character but, right at the moment when we’re expecting him to behave like every other Eastwood character that we’ve ever seen, Walt surprises us by doing something completely different. As a director, Eastwood subverts our expectations of Clint Eastwood as both an actor and a character. As a result, the audience is taken by surprise by Walt, if not by the film’s plot.

I remember, at the time the film was released, there was some speculation that Gran Torino would be the last time we ever saw Clint Eastwood onscreen. That proved to be false, as he subsequently starred in Trouble With The Curve. However, even if it wasn’t his final acting role, Gran Torino still serves as the perfect monument to Eastwood’s unique screen presence.

44 Days of Paranoia #26: Compliance (dir by Craig Zobel)

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Minor Spoilers Below)

For our latest entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, we take a look at one of the most disturbing films of 2012, Compliance.

Compliance opens with the dowdy and middle-aged Sandra (Ann Dowd) arriving at the fast food restaurant that she manages. Sandra, at first glance, seems to be a rather forgettable and conventional, the type of person who we see every day but don’t give much thought to. It’s only when Sandra gets a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer that we start to see the disturbing reality underneath Sandra’s perfect facade.

The man tells Sandra that one of her employees may have stolen money from a customer’s purse. He asks Sandra to detain the employee until the police arrive. Based on a vague description given by the man, Sandra decides that the employee in question must be Becky (Dreama Walker), a cashier who Sandra earlier had some conflict with.

Sandra calls Becky into her office and confronts her with the man’s accusations. When Becky denies them, the man tells Sandra to strip search Becky. Though she is initially hesitant, Sandra does perform the search and finds nothing.

However, the man isn’t finished humiliating Becky. As the man’s instructions grow more extreme and bizarre, Sandra soon starts to recruit others to help her keep Becky under watch.

Compliance is a portrait of both abusive authority and petty sadism. Dreama Walker is sympathetic as Becky while Ann Dowd turns Sandra into a frighteningly plausible monster. And, make no doubt about it, Sandra is a monster. The prank call simply gives Sandra an excuse to unleash all the resentment that she feels towards the younger and prettier Becky and it leads to a very interesting dynamic in which both the caller and Sandra become allies in a conspiracy to humiliate and, ultimately, dehumanize Becky. Throughout the film, the caller’s claims grow more and more flamboyant and we, as an audience, are forced to decide whether Sandra is genuinely fooled or if she’s just using the call as an excuse to justify acting on her own resentments.

What makes Compliance especially disturbing is that the film itself is based on a true story. Most film usually use the term “based on a true story” quite loosely but Compliance sticks very closely to the facts of something that happened in a McDonald’s in 2004. Just like in the film, a man pretending to be a police officer called the McDonald’s and told the manager that one of the cashiers was suspected of being a thief. Just as in the film, the caller ordered the cashier to be stripped naked and eventually ordered the manager’s fiancée to sexually assault the cashier.

When that incident made national news, I know that a lot of people (like me) reacted by wondering how the manager could have been so stupid and making a few jokes about the type of people who make a career out of fast food. As a society, we tend to assume that incidents like this are somehow not the norm.

However, as Compliance demonstrates, there was more to this incident than just stupidity. We are continually told that we have to automatically respect and obey anybody who presents himself as being an authority figure, whether it’s the uniformed cop who responds to any hint of dissent with either his taser or his gun or just some unseen guy on the phone who claims to be an officer of the law. We’re continually told not to question men in authority, instead we’re simply to assume that anything they say is both important and correct. As Compliance demonstrates, sadists like Sandra are not as unusual as we like to assume. They’re just doing what they’ve been bred to do.

They’re following orders and respecting authority.

They’re maintaining compliance.

Other Entries In The 44 Days of Paranoia

Trailer: The Sitter (Red Band)

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Arleigh

To say that I’m not a big Jonah Hill fan would be an understatement. The characters he has played on film have ranged from annoyingly nebbish to downright obnoxious. An almost irrational rage builds up in me whenever I see a trailer with him in it either as a supporting cast member or one of the leads. To my surprise when I saw the red band trailer of his upcoming R-rated comedy, The Sitter, the rage I was feeling petered out the more I watched the trailer.

The Sitter stars Jonah Hill and is directed by one David Gordon Green who also made the hilarious Pineapple Express and also one of the creators of the HBO comedy series, Eastbound & Down. Unfortunately, Green also directed the very unfunny comedy earlier in 2011 called Your Highness. Here’s to hoping that The Sitter is more of the very hilarious kind and not the unfunny that was his latest comedy film this year.

From what I could tell in the trailer this film looks almost like a remake of the 80’s comedy, Adventures in Babysitting starring Elisabeth Shue. That was a funny film and if Jonah Hill and Green can deliver the raunchiness and laughs then I have a feeling The Sitter may just be worth a look-see.

The Sitter is set for a December 9, 2011 release.