Friday, October 8, 2010

A Thriller From A Really True Story


Anyone remember Andrei Chikatilo?  He was the very late Soviet era serial killer who terrorized the Rostov area of the then USSR (now just part of Russia), toward the end of the communist regime.  Citizen X (1995) is a made for cable (HBO) movie that follows the true crime expose' of Robert Cullen, The Killer Department.  Somewhere in a box long packed up, I still have a copy, and remembered two things about it:  1) the movie is very faithful to the book (which is well researched); and 2) it has the longest qualifying title that I can remember any book having, Viktor Brurakov's Eight Year Hunt for the Most Savage Serial Killer in Russian History.  That's a mouth-full.  

It is up to some debate about the most savage serial killer badge in Russian history, they have had some pretty nasty ones; it is just that the Soviet machine was very good at covering most of them up.  If memory serves, Moscow even had it's own "ripper" killings.  One thing, though,  is absolutely for sure, Chikatilo was one the most confirmed prolific serial killers anywhere in the world.  It happened that so many of his victims were actually found, unlike victims of similarly vicious killers like Ted Bundy.  Chikatilo seems to have had a strange mixture of superstition mixed with indifferent laziness that led to so many of the discoveries.  On the one hand he left many of his older victims where they lay in the forest, and apparently just wandered home via the train; others he took time to "deal with," to make sure he wasn't bothered in any way real or supernaturally by their deaths.  The one superstition highlighted in the movie, is his belief that the authorities will be able to see he face reflected in his victims eyes, hence he put them out.  However he had several others, especially in relation to smaller children that he killed.  One thing implied in the film, that he actually engaged in, was to bury some of his younger victims in shallow graves near farms or houses, presumably so they would haunt there, instead of haunt him--one seriously twisted screw!!!

The film also benefits from inspired casting.  Featuring Stephen Rea as Burakov (complete with the leather jacket right out of real life), Donald Sutherland, Max von Sydow, Imelda Stauton, John Wood, Joss Auckland (who has made a minor career of playing Russians) and the very aptly cast Jeffery DeMunn as Chikatilo.  Backed up with a whole host of Romanian actors and shot in Hungary and Romania, the film has all the right elements the actual killing grounds.  

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend  it.

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