“Clowning has gotten a bad name,” Gacy admits in the interviews. “Because of this thing with me.”
Ya think?
John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise Review
Peacock Originals enters the true crime genre with an exhaustive exclusive in John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise.
By Tony Sokol|March 25, 2021
* Clowns can get away with murder,” John Wayne Gacy told retired Des Plaines police officer David Hachmeister during a 10-day surveillance operation. The statement made the hair on the investigator’s head stand up. Over the course of Peacock’s original’s six-part docuseries John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, Hachmeister’s follicles come to perform routine calisthenics.
* Trump is exhibit A.
Gacy is best known as the “Killer Clown,” but what sent Hachmeister’s neurological system into overdrive was how normal this clown appeared to be. That is the biggest reveal and the most common thread across the narrative. Gacy wasn’t Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, and even less like Joaquim Phoenix’s neurotic take.
Gacy wasn’t socially inept, he wasn’t freakish, and he certainly wasn’t a loner. He was politically connected, threw a popular annual neighborhood picnic, ran the Polish Constitution Day Parade, and had his picture taken with First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Gacy invited cops up for dinner when they were tailing him.
Even in death, the Killer Clown could bring people together. When Gacy was put to death by lethal injection in 1994, a mob gathered to sing “Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye,” outside Will County’s Stateville Correctional Center.
Producer Rod Blackhurst (Amanda Knox) and the NBC News Studios documentary team show Gacy could ingratiate himself into any social group. He wrote about how to manipulate people in inspirational pamphlets for the Iowa Jaycees.
He himself recounts how he got into his local chapter by showing stag films. That was the same way he lured his victims to their deaths, by offering them unskilled construction jobs, free beer, and porn movies.
NBCUniversal’s streaming platform’s first true crime offering is comprehensive. They expertly lay out the Gacy’s investigation, arrest, conviction and execution. They skip very few of the extremely grisly details of Gacy’s crimes and how he committed them.
They supply a generous but not overbearing amount of archival news footage from the late 1970s. The victims get well-researched profiles. Chicago journalists Jay Levine, Alison True and Larry Potash recount how, in a town where news was king, Gacy was an unwanted headline. He was an urban nightmare.
https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/john-wayne-gacy-...se-review/
“It takes time for history to happen,” remarks William Dorsch, who maintained a correspondence with Gacy, and believes there are undiscovered victims. When Gacy was caught, 33 bodies were discovered, 26 were discovered rotting under the floorboards in the crawlspace of his Norwood Park Township ranch home in 1978.
In a recording, Gacy’s second wife remembers bugging him to do something about the smell. Other bodies were found nearby. The documentary posits more could be found at a property where Gacy worked as a maintenance man, and in the yard of an apartment building in Northwest Chicago.
In a crowded field of long-form serial killer-investigative journalism, like Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer, and Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, the Peacock debut distinguishes itself with a deliberate and thorough examination. John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise is a definitive history.
“Clowning has gotten a bad name,” Gacy admits in the interviews. “Because of this thing with me.” John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise puts an effective end to the association. After he was sentenced to death he did paint self-portraits in costume, but “Pogo the Clown” had nothing to do with killings. He was far too flamboyant. Gacy was just a regular guy.
John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise premieres all six episodes on March 25 on Peacock.
Ya think?
John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise Review
Peacock Originals enters the true crime genre with an exhaustive exclusive in John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise.
By Tony Sokol|March 25, 2021
* Clowns can get away with murder,” John Wayne Gacy told retired Des Plaines police officer David Hachmeister during a 10-day surveillance operation. The statement made the hair on the investigator’s head stand up. Over the course of Peacock’s original’s six-part docuseries John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, Hachmeister’s follicles come to perform routine calisthenics.
* Trump is exhibit A.
Gacy is best known as the “Killer Clown,” but what sent Hachmeister’s neurological system into overdrive was how normal this clown appeared to be. That is the biggest reveal and the most common thread across the narrative. Gacy wasn’t Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, and even less like Joaquim Phoenix’s neurotic take.
Gacy wasn’t socially inept, he wasn’t freakish, and he certainly wasn’t a loner. He was politically connected, threw a popular annual neighborhood picnic, ran the Polish Constitution Day Parade, and had his picture taken with First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Gacy invited cops up for dinner when they were tailing him.
Even in death, the Killer Clown could bring people together. When Gacy was put to death by lethal injection in 1994, a mob gathered to sing “Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye,” outside Will County’s Stateville Correctional Center.
Producer Rod Blackhurst (Amanda Knox) and the NBC News Studios documentary team show Gacy could ingratiate himself into any social group. He wrote about how to manipulate people in inspirational pamphlets for the Iowa Jaycees.
He himself recounts how he got into his local chapter by showing stag films. That was the same way he lured his victims to their deaths, by offering them unskilled construction jobs, free beer, and porn movies.
NBCUniversal’s streaming platform’s first true crime offering is comprehensive. They expertly lay out the Gacy’s investigation, arrest, conviction and execution. They skip very few of the extremely grisly details of Gacy’s crimes and how he committed them.
They supply a generous but not overbearing amount of archival news footage from the late 1970s. The victims get well-researched profiles. Chicago journalists Jay Levine, Alison True and Larry Potash recount how, in a town where news was king, Gacy was an unwanted headline. He was an urban nightmare.
https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/john-wayne-gacy-...se-review/
“It takes time for history to happen,” remarks William Dorsch, who maintained a correspondence with Gacy, and believes there are undiscovered victims. When Gacy was caught, 33 bodies were discovered, 26 were discovered rotting under the floorboards in the crawlspace of his Norwood Park Township ranch home in 1978.
In a recording, Gacy’s second wife remembers bugging him to do something about the smell. Other bodies were found nearby. The documentary posits more could be found at a property where Gacy worked as a maintenance man, and in the yard of an apartment building in Northwest Chicago.
In a crowded field of long-form serial killer-investigative journalism, like Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer, and Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, the Peacock debut distinguishes itself with a deliberate and thorough examination. John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise is a definitive history.
“Clowning has gotten a bad name,” Gacy admits in the interviews. “Because of this thing with me.” John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise puts an effective end to the association. After he was sentenced to death he did paint self-portraits in costume, but “Pogo the Clown” had nothing to do with killings. He was far too flamboyant. Gacy was just a regular guy.
John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise premieres all six episodes on March 25 on Peacock.
