The Green River Killer  (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Scoop's notes in white

In theory, it should be possible to create an interesting movie about the Green River Killer. This isn't it.

The killer, Gary Ridgway, killed about four dozen women, mostly prostitutes and teenage runaways, in and around the Seattle-Tacoma area in the 1982-1984 period. The trail went cold, and Ridgway wasn't brought to justice until the police developed the advanced forensic applications of DNA, which led to his 2001 arrest and 2003 conviction.

Two elements make the case particularly interesting and unique:

1. It is extremely unlikely that a man would go on a violent killing streak in which he kills a woman every two weeks for two years, and would then just basically lay off and return to a quiet life for twenty years. That's actually an exaggeration on my part, because Ridgway did kill a few more victims after the initial outburst, but he had killed something like 48 women in 1982-84 and cut back to just a handful in the next two decades. Did his bloodlust diminish, did he fear being caught, or did he find a way to keep his madness in check?

2. The police stayed on the case doggedly, waiting for science to catch up with them, and finally cracked it twenty years later. Which cops kept after it for twenty years, and why did they think it was productive to do so?

The movie doesn't really get into those interesting aspects of the case. It basically just pictures a couple of the 1982-84 murders in docudrama fashion and intercuts that with actual police footage of the real Gary Ridgway confessing his crimes twenty years later. Using the real Ridgway tapes does give the film a chilling aspect, because Ridgway is completely without remorse or even regret, and describes the murders as casually as you or I might describe a PTA meeting to an absent partner. Unfortunately, those police tapes also introduce an element of confusion since the actor playing Ridgway in the flashbacks looks nothing like the real Ridgway in the cutaways.

Apart from the genuine Ridgway footage, the film is just sensationalist drive-in fare which probably bears no resemblance to real people or events other than that it uses real names. The connections to reality are tenuous. It pictures Ridgway having sex with and murdering two hot babes. He did have rough or forced sex with women and then kill them, so there's your connection, I suppose.

Some critics harped on the film's amateur performers and cheap digital video appearance. I'll vouch for the bad acting and total lack of nuance in the characterizations, but I have to disagree on the film's visual aesthetics. Some scenes, it is true, look like home movies filmed in your dad's basement, but the two murder scenes look pretty damned good. They are sharply focused, the lighting is interesting, and the colors are vivid. I thought the photography in these two scenes was the film's only redeeming factor, except for the real Ridgway footage, but look below and decide for yourself.

Here's the director's rated filmography.

1. (4.62) - Blank Generation (1980)
2. (4.55) - The Boogeyman (1980)
3. (4.46) - Strangers in Paradise (1984)
4. (4.20) - BrainWaves (1983)
5. (4.06) - Olivia (1983)
6. (3.88) - The Devonsville Terror (1983)
7. (3.50) - Cold Heat (1989)
8. (3.35) - Cocaine Cowboys (1979)
9. (3.00) - Green River Killer (2005) (V)
10. (2.76) - The Big Sweat (1991)
11. (2.69) - Zodiac Killer (2005)
12. (2.55) - The Zodiac Killer (2005)
13. (2.32) - Boogeyman II (1983)
14. (2.21) - Daniel - Der Zauberer (2004) (26th worst of all time)

Should you give it a look? Well, let me put it this way. Overall, this film ranks below the career mean of Ulli Lommel, a director who could present a reasonable case as the worst of all time. So you make the call.