I came to watch Gacy with a lot of notions at to what the gentleman was like in 'real life' (in so far as it's possible to really know what anyone is like in real life, their motives and reasons for doing things) and I must say compared to 'To Catch A Killer' the OTHER Gacy True Crime film, with the excellent Brian Dehney in the title role, the Mark Holton version captured the true personality of the Killer Clown, and just like in the 'To Catch A Killer' version without any really overstated violence. Just one up front drowning scene and another where in the darkness of the early hours, Mrs Gacy sees or thinks she sees the bulk of her husband pushing a young man across the yard, plus a single hammer blow to a screaming young man's head. The real Mr Gacy created and maintained many links with the community, throwing parties and organising parades, all slanted around the patriotic theme USA, even dressing up as a clown at weekends to entertain the poorly kids in the local hospital. At one time, his charitable work got him photographed shaking hands with the then First Lady, President Carter's wife Roslyn, an unconscious gaffe that had some terrible repercussions for the Democrat Party in general and the Presidency of Mr Carter in particular. Married twice, and owning a successful business, Mr Gacy was a front man in the community. And yet this film, I believed, captured the dull detached personality of the true serial killer. He was so alone, and although he had friends, and many acquaintances, when it came down to it the only one who ever really loved him was his mother! The way his young male workforce treated him, with sniggers and sneers and behind-his-back asides referring to his homosexual proclivities, my personal favourite being 'if you drop your keys you'd better kick 'em', advice given to a young house mate of Mr Gacy by another of his workforce! The contrast between the inner real Mr Gacy, the chloroform using, torturing, boy sodomising murderous evil killer and his benign, bumbling, lovable front shown to the world was expertly handled, even though towards the end there was the seemingly obligatory scene where Mr Gacy started to auditory hallucinate hearing voices of boys in the wall, ie he is a mass killer and therefore must be mentally ill, where most truly mentally ill people, voice hearers, are generally sad and not violent at all. Some of it was, yes, funny, especially the way people kept hammering on his door with violent requests 'god damn you Gacy, get your stinking house cleared up, your muck is stinking my yard up' or 'damn you Gacy you owe me money for that job I done for you', and his gentle responses, 'all right yeah, I'll see to it, I'm having dinner with my family right now, come back tomorrow, I'll see to it'. And yet, the references to the smelly house (due to young male bodies discarded under his crawl space) was a bit overdone, as was the part when he walloped his young assistant on the head to the tune of hearing his (dead) dad's taunting voice 'hit me, come on, you can't can you?' but all in all, a perfectly crafted study as to what can go wrong when a person follows their fantasies as far as they can go.
