What I’m watching: A chilling documentary on Netflix

Date: 1/25/2021

On Netflix: Nightstalker

In 1985, Los Angeles county was held in the grips of a serial killer whose crimes were incredibly brutal and seemingly random.

In the new Netflix, four-part documentary, the story of the manhunt for the killer is told in detail by the county sheriff detectives and other members of law enforcement, as well as reporters who covered the case.

Director Tiller Russell uses extensive vintage footage from the time, as well as police documents and photographs and new interviews with the police involved in the what was called “The Nightstalker” case.

True crime is a very popular genre for both documentaries and books, as it allows us to look at horrendous crimes beneath the surface of a headline and the procedures that enabled the criminals to be caught.

The format of this series is to follow the crimes sequentially and the theme is everything discovered at a crime scene could be a piece of the puzzle, especially in the pre-DNA era.

As detectives Frank Salerno and Gil Carrillo explained in the documentary it was the discovery of a footprint that proved to be among first breaks in the case. The footprint of a very specific sneaker is found at crime scene after crime scene, which bolstered the theory the murders were the work of one person.

The other break was the use of the same kind of gun, and again, a very specific bullet were being used.

Botched attempts by the killer leave witnesses who then provided a face to the murderer.

The series points out the obstacles the detectives had to face, one of which seemed particularly frustrating. Los Angeles County has several police jurisdictions and twice in this case the actions of the Los Angeles Police Department slowed the capture of the suspect, Richard Ramirez.

Another stumbling block was when the mayor of San Francisco, where Ramirez also traveled to commit murders, released information about the cases that should have remained confidential.

The impact the case had on the two lead investigators is also discussed as Carrillo’s family had to leave him and go into hiding, nearly ruining his marriage. This investigation took a toll on both men.

There have been some criticism the production focuses more on Ramirez’s deranged rants about Satan and less on how this killer was created. I thought the production was balanced in its portrayal of the killer and added extra depth with the revelation of how he attracted women during his trial and then time on death row.

At times this is not an easy film to watch. The police photos of victims and crimes scenes are vicious and unsettling, but then that’s the point.

On DVD: Direct to Video: Straight to Video Horror of the 90s

This new documentary is supposed to cover one of the most interesting but short periods in American filmmaking: the direct-to-video movement of the 1980s and ‘90s. This new documentary has some very good and knowledgeable people interviewed, the director Dustin Ferguson  failed to set up exactly what were these movies and how the economic behind them worked.

Simply put, if you’re not a movie fan who came up during that era, all of this might be confusing.

In the 1930s into the early 1950s, many studios made low budget films, usually designed to be the bottom of double-bills. They were made available to theaters on a flat rental basis, rather than a percentage of the box office receipts, which was the economic formula for A films.

The major studios went into decline with the popularity of TV, but low budget films from independent producers flourished in the 1950s it was because there was still a demand for those movies by drive-ins and neighborhood theaters.

By the 1980s, many of those theaters had been killed off by the rise of home video. Enterprising producers soon realized they could apply the B formula here: create a low-budget movie with the understanding of the potential number of VHS cassettes that could be sold to video stores in mind, therefore building in profits. In 1985 a slasher movie “Blood Cult” was the first direct-to-video production.

Video stores wanted a stream of new product, especially movies with easily exploited elements such as action, horror, science fiction and sex. The major studios quickly learned to either make their own such productions or to release films to video that had a questionable potential for theatrical release.

Producers/ directors such as Fred Olen Ray, who is interviewed in this film, turned out a staggering number of these films. One producer, Charles Band, formed a distribution alliance with Paramount Pictures that helped ensure his Full Moon movies were a staple of video stores.

Some were quite memorable. Some were not.

What I had hope to see from this documentary was a complete story of how these films first came about and how they declined with the end of the video store era. That was not the case.

This film relies on the idea its audiences already knows the story of this time in movie-making. No documentary can rely on that.