H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer (2004)

Oooo! the Ghost of the haaat maaan!

Genre: Crime Documentary

Starring: Tony Jay (narrator), Thomas Cronin

Directed By: John Borowski

Overview: This doc presents the tale of the con-man, doctor and architect of "The Castle", a house of traps where he captured his victims and disposed of them.

Acting: This was atrocious. The FBI profiler went on and on about stuff that seemed pure conjecture, and he was a dweeb on top of it all, big stupid showman. The narrator though oft 'Olde Victorian' in his dialogue, was usually a big hammy with his words. Finally, the Holmes expert, though the best of all, was nothing impressive in the least. Ugh.
Rating: 3

Cinematography: The images were done in that typical documentary style: old photos slowly moving, sometimes overlays, newspaper headlines. You know, it was bland. Uh, such low budget! Very apparent.
Rating: 5

Script: This was such a good story, but somehow, the moron experts did too much showboating to make what they said enjoyable. Just because the subject matter itself was good do I give it a passing grade, which is just too bad, cause what a story.
Rating: 6

Plot: "The best story told the worst way," I said half way through. Everyone agreed. Why not just let a story tell itself, rather than going all stupid cheese? Either way, this twisted guy designed and built a place full of traps and greased hatches, gas pipes and air-tight safes, all with the sole intention of killing and disposing, but get this: this doctor sold the skeletons at 200 bucks a pop. Only serial killer I know who got rich off his killings... Cool twisted tale, if only a touch sadistic.
Rating: 8

Mood: The hyper-common style of old photos with narration, though boring was to be expected, but sometimes the music would get all sinister, and we would zoom in on a map with the haunting beat: BOM BOM...BOM! We laughed way too often to realize this was anything but stupidly presented. Well at least we laughed.
Rating: 5

There's nothing more enterprising than a guy who boils you in acid to sell your skeleton to medical schools.

Overall Rating: 54% (The Telling Will Kill Any Interest You May Have)

Aftertaste: This guy was sick. It's a great story, he's worse (and more successful) than Jack The Ripper. How he's not more famous I don't know. Either way, no don't see this, but if you want to know about this guy, look him up, it's really neat, in that twisted demented way.