SHRINK CHAT: No Man of God & Ted Bundy American Boogeyman Reviewed

Two Ted Bundy films came out in 2021. One is very good. One is not. Can you guess which?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussion of a school shooting and murder suicide, teen depression and suicide, child abuse and incest, and a teenage character sexualized on screen.

September 2021. Two new Bundy films reviewed back-to-back, then the start of a relisten of their own first Ted Bundy series, with three years of hindsight cut in on top.

NO MAN OF GOD (2021)

Amber Sealey's film about FBI analyst Bill Hagmaier's interviews with Bundy on death row. Luke Kirby as Bundy, Elijah Wood as Hagmaier. Two therapists on why it works: the close shots, a climax built on a mask coming off rather than a murder, and a performance that lets you feel what it was like to sit across from him.

Then the clinical part, which is the reason to listen. Hagmaier was a school counsellor before the FBI, and the film shows him using self-disclosure as a timed intervention. Shannon on what that is: you do not break a narcissist's reality, you become the perfect mirror, the echo of the self he believes he has, and you stroke the ego exactly enough that he never asks why he is teaching you. Cathy on how readable Bundy was when the mask dropped, and on Ann Rule, whose relationship with him the film downplays.

TED BUNDY: AMERICAN BOOGEYMAN (2021)

From the people who made The Haunting of Sharon Tate, which tells you most of it. Chad Michael Murray as Bundy, Lin Shaye as his mother. Shannon watched it so you do not have to: we do not need another film that walks us through the murders.

THE RELISTEN BEGINS

Their first Ted Bundy series, recorded in year one on two phones in two houses. Shannon explains what she did to rescue the audio rather than pretend. Then the first nine minutes play, with new commentary cut in on top.

In it: Eleanor Louise Cowell, twenty-two and unmarried, giving birth in a home for unwed mothers in Burlington, Vermont, 1946. The father nobody has ever identified. Samuel the grandfather, the pornography, the dogs, the daughters thrown down the stairs. A boy raised inside a lie about who his mother was.

And Cathy, listening back to herself, saying the thing that shapes everything after: Bundy as a serial killer is not that interesting. The childhood is.

ALSO, IN THIS EPISODE

American Tragedy (2019), the Sue Klebold documentary about Columbine. Cathy on why framing that killing as depression is both a good message and a dangerous one, and on who gets called mentally ill and who gets called a terrorist.

Horror watches: Carrie (1976) and Poltergeist as a double feature, and a long look at what Carrie's opening does to its own lead. Here Comes Hell (2019). Superhost (2021) with Gracie Gillam and Barbara Crampton. Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) with Peter Cushing. American Horror Story season ten.

Horror news: Carter Smith and Jena Malone reunite for Swallowed, and Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities gets its title.

Horror Facts with Cath: the first Dracula film, who laid the groundwork for the slasher, how long a body takes to decompose, the age of King Tut, and Bridget Bishop.

HAUNTED STORY?

We asked for these in 2020 and we still want them. Record yourself telling it and send us the voice memo or just write it out. terrortalkpodcast@gmail.com

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

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