SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

cabrerahot69 Bazaar Bizarre is an attack on the subject matter of serial killing unlike any other. Defying all logical genre definition it plays out like a aural, visual, and physical meditation on the mental capacity that is required to enact crimes such as serial rape and murder. Society is quick to judge such acts. We are fast to condemn. There are times in Bazaar Bizarre that do this as well, but just as often it seems to ask us to slip into the mind of the killer, to see something that we may not want to. Is it poking fun with these sensory assaults, or unsettling the viewer even more with this skewed view of the world? I cannot say. There are no answers in this film, just questions.The strange case of serial killer Bob Berdella began for authorities when a man was found running naked in the streets of Kansas City. Unable to talk, ass cheeks bloody, and wearing a dog collar and leash, this man spun a terrible tale. This was to begin unraveling a story that was as wondrously weird and hideous as they come. For days, the man had been being kept a prisoner in the home of a local man. Over these days he was repeatedly raped, tortured, and photographed. Drain cleaner had been injected into his vocal chords, and he was unable to speak clearly, but for slight as his voice may have become, his tale was as strong as any could be. He led officials to the house, and the peeling of the many layers of the life of Bob Berdella commenced.Bob Berdella was the owner of a local shop that carried curios and oddball nick-knacks from all over the world. In Kansas City, if you wanted to purchase a shrunken head, Bob Berdella was the man to see. His shop was "Bob's Bizarre Bazaar". Need bone jewelry? Or maybe ask him to try some of his home made chili that he shared with other shop owners. Well maybe not...Director Ben Meade also hails from in Kansas City, and there's something intimate about his look into the mind of this killer. Understandable, as Meade himself had come face to face with the killer at least once at his shop. Maybe it is this backyard proximity that allows Meade to pounce with such unflinching zeal on the topic. Aided with commentary and narration by James Ellroy, author of L.A. Confidential, both men constantly creep into and out of the mind of Berdella...Meade lulls the viewer into a feast for the eyes with stunningly awkward visuals, documentary montages with Berdella himself, and musical interludes that fixate upon the events and give the viewer a moment to collect his or her thoughts. Ellroy crashes in, here and there, with a gut punch of verbal realism. He is the sound voice of reason in the chaos. He speaks a true grit truth. He has no love, compassion, or empathy for Berdella. He lets this be known, unmistakably.Meade has concocted a strange brew of a film. He has interviews with the aforementioned surviving victim, one with Berdella, and with people who were involved with the case and its media coverage. Meade mixes all of this in a fashion that is not locked into any format. Unlike other forays into serial killer docudramas, there is not a chronological time line. Instead, Meade allows the mind of the viewer to connect the dots themselves. A higher form of reward is earned in this manner, as people are asked to involve themselves and potentially become immersed within the framework of the film.There are scenes in Bazaar Bizarre that are gruesome. Some of the exploits of Bob Berdella were not the type to be readily accepted by Mr. And Mrs. Middle America. The recreations tickle the edges of exploitation with a grainy realism. A well used attempt to blur the boundaries between the stock archival footage and staged magic of film. This forces the viewer to accept a more intimate arrangement with a very twisted mind. The exploits of Bob Berdella are not narrated over black and white stills. It is much more closer to us than that.Bazaar Bizarre will not suit the taste of every one. It is a hybrid of experience and knowledge. We are taken to places and then given pause. The pace is one that allows for introspection, but at the same time if the viewer does not have a lot to bring to the intellectual table, they may find that this dance is a bit one sided. Berdella's story is not shown as a parable of humanity. There is no attempt to make him anything other than what he was.

4cshore I was wondering why James Ellroy never got in contact with me? I went to college with Bob - worked next door to him in the River Quey - was over at his house many times.We bought and traded many esoteric collectibles - I was the one that the Police had come in and appraise the collection on the second floor gallery - warning them that if he could sell them his collection it would be worth well over $300,000 and he could afford to hire a good lawyer - that's when they claimed it as part of the crime.Bob even borrowed my chainsaw -Euh- glad I never got it back.The interesting fact the Judge Charlie that arranged him and the Detective Chester that was #2 in the investigation and Bob were at my wedding - I have a photo of them all in one photo together, this was less than a year before he was caught.I was even the one that Phil Whitt from channel 4 interviewed - they incorrectly stated that I was Berdellas BEST FRIEND - Son of a B*t*ch lied to me. Ever notice how big Phil's butt is - it's really really big looks deformed.Well I was never contacted so I wonder how much research James Ellroy really put into this. Guess I'll have to see it.I still have the worry beads that are made for human bone that Bob gave me for Christmas one year - said they were Tibetian?

moviegoer49 This is the movie I have been waiting for someone to make. And Ben Meade did it, and he didn't disappoint! This movie is a guilty pleasure for me because of the way Ben structured it. At first you think this movie is going to be like the rag tabloids at the checkout stands where the headlines scream about Batboy and women giving birth to 300 pound alien babies, so you think, "OK, this is just going to be a crazy ride. Basically headlines and gore set to rock music. Let's go!" But before you realize it, Ben takes you on a trip through this demon's psychotic mind. It's only then you realize that Ben, (like Hitchcock maybe?) understands that what we are going to see and hear is so horrible we can't really take this medicine ... straight. (Well, maybe like Hitch on crack~) We are guided through this maze of torture and body parts by none other than James Elroy! Perfect! Who better to stand up to Berdella's whining self pity and lame defenses. (Berdella argues that he was mistreated because his torture logs were described as 'detailed dairies' rather than, oh, I don't know ...torture logs?!) The rock band Demon Dogs as a Greek chorus was a touch of genius as well. Who knew? They are speaking for all of us. The archival footage and interviews were astonishingly revealing. I can't believe Ben found Chris Bryson after all these years. Isn't this the first time he has spoken out about what happened to him? The reenactments were believable and sickening. This film was amazing because not only did it give us new and revealing information about the Berdella case but like all good art, it raises more questions than it answers. Now where exactly did that reporter say she dumped her notes?

mcdonaldent Bob Berdella was a fat whack-job with a handlebar mustache.He had presumptions of decadent worldliness…a sort of self-styled, poor man's Baudelaire.Berdella owned a Kansas City head shop and a now razed house.In that house, and around it, he raped and tortured his victims.A few he buried around that house.Some victims were maybe set out with the weekly trash and now languish in some landfill.A few others maybe ended up as entrees. Or so is theorized in Ben Meade's harrowing documentary, "Bazaar Bizarre."Their killer died in prison of an apparent heart-attack. Berdella is credited with six kills. Berdella's victims were all men. Meade points out as many as 47 were reported missing in and around K.C. concurrent with Berdella's period of activity.Those familiar with Meade's "Vakvagany" are probably best prepared for the flavor of film experience they're in for.It's take-no-prisoners territory again. Dark portentous music…sibilant whispers. Even a full-frontal reenactment of a bloody and nude run for his life by a victim. The man managed to escape Berdella, clad only in a dog-collar.In the dark world of Ben Meade, the camera never shifts away.The camera never blinks and never judges.Meade has tracked down journalists, still-living victims and makes powerful use of an old jailhouse interview with Berdella, himself.And there is James Ellroy.The crime writer, clad in a yellow- and black-striped rugby shirt, looking for all the world like some avenging bee of logic and reason, chips in with his take on Berdella. Ellroy counsels no compassion for the rotting killer.Ellroy shares his own rarified takes on the minds of sexual psychopaths: "Homosexual men kill men. Heterosexual men kill women. It goes like that. That's it: You kill within your racial profile.You kill within your sexual profile."Ellroy's most effective moments come when he is crosscut against Berdella's own filmed statements.Bob Berdella "had a longstanding love affair with the male anatomy," Ellroy says. "If he wasn't incarcerated or dead," Ellroy asserts, Berdella would "still be killing people."The serial killer shopkeeper whose Kansas City store, "Bazaar Bizarre" supplies the title for Meade's film, was equal parts John Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.Like Gacy, he used his own home as a charnel house and dumping ground.Like Dahmer, Berdella experimented with his victims.Dahmer, another jailhouse dead man, attempted do-it-yourself brain surgery on his victims, hoping to create compliant sex zombies. Berdella injected Drano into the throats of his victims.Berdella also kept diaries, so we know the suffering of his victims sometimes extended across several nightmarish days.Meade, using grainy film stock and a held-hand camera, stages unflinching reenactments of Berdella's activities with his victims…rape, fisting…a disemboweling…disarticulation of bodies.With such scenes, Meade has to walk a delicate line - skirting exploitation or possible glorification of Berdella…the opening of old wounds in Kansas City (although this is probably inevitable, under any circumstances).The chorus of experts, and particularly James Ellroy, do much to contextualize Berdella. Several also decry the bewildering lack of local outrage regarding the killer's crimes.The "Demon Dogs" weigh-in with garage-band style tunes about Berdella - working well within the venerable and violent American tradition of vintage folk murder ballads.Rough?Dark?Sure, the film is all of that.Not for the squeamish?Probably.But if you're signing on to watch a documentary about a serial killer, you know what you're going to be confronted with.And Meade's graphic depictions of Berdella at work are well within the boundaries of films such as "The Silence of the Lambs," or even the various "CSI" series, where beheadings, vivisections and post-mortem manipulations of bodies and body parts are served up as entertainment.This is the real thing: Riveting, revolting and, ultimately, illuminating…a bravura triumph of guerilla film-making.