You can't fault it for sincerity and desensationalization of its lurid subject matter, but you find yourself asking why a filmmaker as stubbornly sober as Tim Metcalfe ever wanted to make a film about pioneering serial murderer Carl Panzram (James
Woods), who was executed in 1929. Panzram, a drifter, lifelong petty criminal and eventually an unregenerate killer, bought himself some small measure of enduring notoriety with his eloquently hostile declaration that he wished the whole world had one neck and that he had his hands around it.
Metcalfe based his film on Panzram's own journals, which were shepherded to publication by a sympathetic guard named Henry Lesser (...
Released:
1997
Rated:
R
Length:
92 mins