Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes TV Review

Last Updated on April 18, 2022

Plot: The second installment in an ongoing series from filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes), this three-part documentary also features new interviews with key participants – some of whom have never talked before, including gut-wrenching testimony from one of Gacy’s survivors – all in search of answers to a crucial question: How was a public figure like Gacy able to get away with murder for so long?

Review: Serial killers remain one of the most endlessly fascinating subjects in any medium. From film to television, books to comics, music, and beyond, the idea of heinous evil taking the form of a human being never ceases to draw our attention. Even when we strive for hope and positivity, the draw of the darkness keeps us coming back for more. While some documentaries take a more sensational approach to chronicling the lives and crimes of these predators, the work of director Joe Berlinger consists of some of the best and most in-depth looks put on film. Berlinger’s latest entry in his series Conversations with a Killer looks at sixty hours of never before heard taped interviews with John Wayne Gacy. The result is an intriguing mix of the familiar and the new, assembled by a talented director who knows just how to draw us in.

The John Wayne Gacy Tapes is a mixture of new interviews and archival footage that has not been seen in previous exposes which is coupled with excerpts from the interviews conducted with Gacy during his incarceration. Starting with his initial crimes in Iowa in the 1960s through his arrest in 1978, this series recaps all of the crimes that have been sensationalized for the last four decades. At first, the series doesn’t seem to tread new ground nor does it really offer much we didn’t already know about Gacy and his crimes, but the twist here is listening to the serial killer himself talk, nonchalantly, about the acts he committed and what they actually meant. Berlinger’s previous Conversations with a Killer assembled 100 hours of audio interviews with Ted Bundy, also the subject of Berlinger’s 2019 film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, and provided a similar retread of material that we see here with Gacy.

What works well in this docu-series is that it does not present itself with voice-over narration but rather focuses on the words of the law enforcement officers involved with the investigation of Gacy and those who knew Gacy directly which lends additional relevancy to what we learn about the man. This serves as a double-edged sword since most of those interviewed in these episodes are elderly and have spoken ad nauseum about John Wayne Gacy. The tone overall seems fairly somber and without new ground to tread making these hour-long episodes drag. Berlinger does try to keep the momentum moving with archival stock footage but after the first episode even these filmmaking tricks begin to slow things down.

Because of the sheer volume of Gacy’s crimes, Conversations with a Killer is able to fill multiple episodes with insight into individual crimes, the trial, and more with accompanying audio from Gacy himself and the law enforcement officers who tracked him down. In the first episode alone, the story jumps from Gacy being a suspect in the abduction of his final victim, Robert Piest, the discovery of the bodies in his crawlspace, his initial crimes a decade prior, and the first three days of the investigation into his crimes. The episode moves in that order with on-screen titles the only way to keep track of when and where the episode is heading. I found this approach at times to be jarring, but it did manage to evoke the uncomfortable nature of what the police discovered as they looked into why John Wayne Gacy was.

What struck me watching this series, having also seen the six-part 2021 Peacock documentary John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, is just how much you can cover the same material from similar angles and still manage to make it interesting. The audio of Gacy and the never before seen archival footage that Berlinger incorporates here are what make this series worth watching, but it is also the artistry of Berlinger’s filmmaking style that elevates this from a generic basic cable offering. While Berlinger’s feature work including the Paradise Lost trilogy, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, and Whitey: United States of America vs James J. Bulger, rank among some of the best documentaries of their kind, his Netflix series Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was one of my favorites of 2021. His work borders elements of music videos and crime thrillers and evokes the tension of a horror film without becoming sensational.

Conversations with a Killer is a very intriguing series and one that aims to shed light on the psyche of each serial killer subject. If you go in expecting this to be like the interview sequences on Netflix’s Mindhunter, you may be disappointed, but it is the closest many of us will ever get to interacting directly with the most infamous criminals in history. Thankfully, most of us will never meet a real serial killer, but you will definitely leave this series feeling more uncomfortable than when you started. If you are fascinated by true crime and already have seen other documentaries about Gacy, you may not find much value in this series, but it is still a well-put-together chronicle of the infamous events with first-hand accounts you cannot find anywhere else.

Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes premieres on April 20th on Netflix.

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