In the 1970s, Ted Bundy was one of the most infamous names in the newspapers and on television. He committed a series of burglaries, murders, and rapes throughout the decade. He denied his guilt for over ten years; until, after spending over a decade in jail, he finally admitted to thirty homicides soon before his execution in Florida State Prison by electric chair. People stood outside the jailhouse chanting, waving signs, and many at home actually turned off their electricity at the time of Bundy’s execution as a kind of collective, communal effort to help put the notorious serial killer to death. Over the years there have been several movies about Bundy, including The Deliberate Stranger and The Stranger Beside Me, which have portrayed Ted as a charismatic killer but it’s the 2002 movie Ted Bundy – warts and all – which offers a compelling, if not disturbing, perspective on not only the man’s crimes but also the terrifying psychology behind them.
Even if it’s not an especially great movie, Ted Bundy manages to touch on the more gruesome aspects of Bundy himself. Too often, Bundy – though presented as the horrific serial killer he was – is shown as a handsome-faced Republican who just so happened to be a cold blooded murderer. Obviously the shock of knowing him personally then discovering the extent of his crimes must have been intense. When looking at the depravity of the murders and the activities Bundy engaged in after the fact, there’s a better illustration of him as a true monster in human form.
Most adaptations of Bundy’s story on film or in television movies usually don’t touch on his necrophile habits. Bundy committed his fifth murder in June of 1974 when he killed a twenty-two-year-old named Brenda Ball. For several days after the murder he kept Brenda’s body in his apartment. Dr. Elliott Leyton notes in his book Hunting Humans, that while Bundy kept the woman’s corpse there was “evidence that he re-applied her makeup and shampooed her hair.” In one of the movie’s scenes, Ted (played by Michael Reilly Burke) sits at the kitchen table of his apartment applying fresh lipstick to a decapitated head; he’s interrupted by his girlfriend, who later complains about the strange smell, which he blames on an old sandwich he left out.
While incarcerated, Bundy aided law enforcement with personal insight into the psychology of a serial killer in order to catch the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway. Bundy engaged in interviews with homicide detective Robert D. Keppel – a relationship which inspired Thomas Harris while writing the back and forth between FBI Agent Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs – during which he admitted to having gone back to the dump sites where he’d left the corpses of his victims to masturbate over the bodies. Most film adaptations of Bundy’s story leave out these bits in some half-hearted attempt not to disturb the audience too much. Ted Bundy doesn’t need to be graphic to get these kind of elements across. These are alluded to perfectly in a scene between Ted and his girlfriend where he coaxes her into a bit of BDSM play and he asks her to play dead.
It isn’t only the way the movie handles the facts of Bundy’s killings that makes it effective but also the way the screenplay tackles some of the psychological issues Ted faced. First of all, he was an illegitimately conceived child who was raised by his grandparents. Growing up, the person he thought was his sister was actually his mother. When Ted discovered this he felt rejected and angry: rejected as a so-called bastard child and angry at his family for hiding the truth. This exacerbated his issues with women and he focused the majority of this anger on his mother. It led to murder but it was likewise the reason Ted wanted to be well-liked. He was desperate to be accepted by others socially due to the fact he’d been, in his mind, rejected and shunned by his own flesh and blood.
The screenplay is quite factual although there are a bunch of places in which the scenes have been significantly embellished, twisted, or even entirely fabricated. Some of these altered moments don’t have much impact but then there are others, that work against the story and its themes, like a scene where Ted uses a gun to threaten one of his victims. This is just a minor, seemingly innocuous action, yet it’s entirely out of place: Bundy never used guns, specifically because of the fact they were loud and his entire tactic was a quiet, stealthy approach. What’s most concerning are the scenes where the writing all but falls over itself to try and take cheap shots at Bundy. For instance, the screenplay makes it seem as if Ted flunked out of school, and while he didn’t do well in law, he actually graduated with honours from the University of Washington with a major in psychology. In fact, it’s surely Bundy’s psychology training that allowed him to manipulate women to his aims.
The most bothersome scene in this sense comes when Ted’s being prepared for execution. Years before he was actually executed, prisons stopped packing the colon of inmates slated for execution by electric chair; this practise was done to prevent nasty messes after the inmate’s death. Yet this particular scene shows a relatively graphic, uncomfortable scene of several guards holding Bundy, as one of them rams lubricated cotton into his rectum. There’s no telling why exactly this scene was written into the movie. Nevertheless, I’d speculate it was an attempt at embarrassing Ted. Writer/director Matthew Bright seems to have put this scene in as a manner of showing Ted as weak in his last moments. Strange, because in reality Bundy finally admitted his guilt after years of placing the blame on everything from his family to women to his addiction to pornography. Instead of resting on the scene where Bundy finally gives up and confesses, Bright shows the audience a strange, redemptive rape in which law enforcement subverts Ted’s usual power dynamic. Scenes like these characterise major problems in adapting the stories of serial killers because they present an opportunity for writers to retroactively take a form of vengeance on these men. These men don’t deserve to be championed but there’s enough in the life of a man like Bundy to condemn him without adding fabricated fuel to the fire.
In opposition to the negative differences from real life to screenplay, Ted Bundy does offer a couple moments that are altered from the true historical events, or are pure artistic liberty and conjecture, done so in a way that adds to the story rather than take anything away. The first scene includes a number of shots where Michael Reilly Burke is in front of a mirror getting ready for the day. We see the many faces of Bundy, as well as the practised nature of his entire persona. This works as an establishing shot for his character, a thesis statement telling the viewer nearly everything about the man before the story’s even told. Even for those who don’t already know Bundy or his crimes, there’s an immediate understanding about his personality; or, personalities. While not necessarily grounded in reality, this moment is an compelling study in writing character introductions. However, the most ingenious use of artistic liberty is a scene when Ted has sneaked into a woman’s home, knocked her out, then wrapped her up and brought her to his car. While he does this, people walk past on the sidewalk, oblivious to the clearly human-shaped object over his shoulder. On the surface it’s silly but underneath is an important commentary on how so many people walked past Ted in daily life – good friends and acquaintances alike – yet were blind to the monster hiding just under the surface of his personality.
These instances are perfect examples of how a writer can take liberties with a true story while staying true to its thematic concerns.
There are a host of changes and outright inaccuracies in Ted Bundy. Some can be chalked up to the regular decisions a writer, director, or studio might make when adapting a story like this one to film. Others are inexplicable in that they’re not really doing anything positive for the movie. Whenever a movie gets made about a serial killer, there’s a general concern that the story could end up glorifying the killer and even the crimes. It feels like this movie was, mostly, trying to make Ted look as bad as possible. That’s not a tough thing to do, so it’s questionable as to why the filmmakers needed to add in things to further achieve that purpose. All in all, there’s nothing major that takes away from telling Bundy’s story. The screenplay for Ted Bundy does well by weaving most of the real details into a compelling look at the psychology behind the man. Even some of the made up scenes actually help build up the portrait of the true psychopath that was Bundy. There are always dangers when adapting real stories into movies, such as those Ted Bundy has with fabricating ways to cut down Ted’s persona. All the same, it shows just enough willingness to examine Bundy’s deeper psychological issues to make the inaccuracies and fabrications only minor distractions. Bundy was a horrible man. Above all else, Ted Bundy works because it never tries to sensationalize. It doesn’t gloss over events or try to profit off a serial killer by glorifying his murders, either. It mostly sticks to painting a well-rounded, frightening portrait of one of America’s most infamous maniacs.
 makes changes to the real life story in a way that seems vengeanceful and unecessary.){kind=link}