100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (2012)

Touches You

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

In 2010, paranormal investigators tried to film Richard Speck's ghost at the site of his heinous killing spree. The victims' families have finally released the footage that documents their last days.This is yet another found footage and pseudo-documentary film, which nobody demanded. The only person of note in it is Jackie Moore, who has appeared in the Maxim Top 100 and in another Asylum film, "Atlantic Rim". Most people probably have no idea who she is.This is apparently the fourth installment in the "Paranormal Activity" copycat series, "Paranormal Entity". The title does not make this evident, and near as can be found, there is no need to watch any of the previous entries.Scott Foy of Dread Central rated it 3/5 stars and called it the best found footage film made by The Asylum. Now, that may be so, but even if it is, "the best" of anything from The Asylum is still not great. Foy was being much too generous. But at least it was not made by Ulli Lommel, who would have made it terrible.

**Spoilers below** 'Found footage' films...isn't anyone getting sick and tired of seeing them yet? Yes. Yes, we are. Take note film makers. It's old. It's tired. It's been done to DEATH, if you'll pardon the pun.I can sum up the entire movie thusly: Stupid, irritating crew shows up on site and is locked in. "What was that, did you hear that?" someone yells. Someone gets killed. Everybody runs amok screaming the "F" word. "What was that??" someone else yells. Someone else gets killed. Cameraman switches to infrared vision. Everybody runs amok screaming the "F" word. Someone else gets killed. Ghost rape. Everybody runs amok screaming the "F" word. They turn on each other. Someone else gets killed. "Oh my God...there's NO WAY OUT OF HERE!" someone screams, conveniently forgetting that they ASKED to be locked in. Someone else gets killed, and everybody runs amok yet again, screaming the "F" word. No one makes it out alive, and we never get to see but about a one second shot of the 'bad guy'. The end. SNORE!

Next to no redeeming qualities at all 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck apart from a decent setting and that it's short. The movie looks amateurish, the editing is so slipshod to the point of inducing nausea or a headache and it takes the ghost-story-in-a-haunted-setting to extremities with very dark lighting to the point of some of the goings-on verging on incomprehensible. The special effects at best are risible. The sound is muddied with the music over-bearing and the dialogue and its delivery not always easy to hear, while the writing is so awkwardly delivered with a sense of bad improvisation. With the story, don't expect a documentary-like movie profiling the life and crimes of one of the worst and most sickening mass murder cases there's ever been and the perpetrator Richard Speck, if you want that sort of programme/movie you're better off watching an episode of Deranged Killers. 100 Ghost Street made it clear that it wasn't going to be that kind of movie, even so though that gave the writers no excuse to foul up basic details and facts(like where the crimes happened), another one of countless examples of The Asylum not doing their research, which will confuse anybody who watches and decides to look the Richard Speck case up further. The storytelling is just lazy and predictable, starting off slow and staying slow with a lot of scenes falling into interminably dull category. 100 Ghost Street is short, but with the pace as tedious as it is and that the creepiness, thrill and tension levels are at numbers below zero it sure doesn't feel like it. As for the direction, what direction(?), the characters are completely personality-less and annoying(the antagonist nowhere near sinister enough) and constant shouting and static posing seems to be pretty much all that passes for acting here. All in all, just unwatchably bad and that is scarier than Richard Speck, one of those where human being is insulting to all other humans. 1/10 Bethany Cox

There's a good thing/bad thing dynamic to Instant Netflix, good in that all the dubious Asylum 'films' go on it before too long which means aside from the monthly fee, one doesn't have to spend a dime on this crap. The bad news is what you save in money, you lose in sanity. So a toss-up if you will.This particular pile of excrement is one of the endless "found footage" movies that are as numerous as they are atrocious. A few friends go to the boarding house that Richard Speck murdered in half a century ago only to be stalked by a poltergeist. Yawn. Bad all the way around. The fact that its unwatchable is redundant as its an Asylum film.