At the beginning of his career, Friedkin filmed a documentary called The People vs. Paul Crump, which followed a death row inmate whom at the time Friedkin thought was innocent and made the film in hopes that it would lead the courts not to kill Crump. It ended up working and the documentary ended up leading the way to the future filmography of its director. The subject of the death penalty and whether or not its use is justified is something that Friedkin has mixed opinions on in his life, being very much against it during the early stages of his life but currently sees that in some situations that it is the only option, which plays into the movie that I'll be talking about today, Rampage. Originally filmed in 1987 and only screened in Europe due to distribution issues until about five years after the fact, the film follows different groups of people who are involved in a case focused on the serial killer Charles Reese. One side is the prosecutor Anthony Fraser, who wants Reese to get the death penalty for his crimes despite being against it at first. The people trying to defend Reese seek to figure out if he was in a right state of mind during the killings or not.
The internal struggle of Fraser going against his own beliefs in terms of capital punishment does start off wavering as early on in the film, he visits the crime scenes, the one that convinces him to push for the death penalty being at the house of a family of four, the Tippetts. The father and one of the sons, Gene and Andrew, come home after a visit from the dentist to find the mutilated body of Gene's wife Eileen and the other son missing. I have to give credit to that scene where Andrew walks into the room where his mother's body is and starts screaming since that was really unnerving and even though we never see the body, it just feels a little more unsettling than expected. This was not the first group of killings though as Reese attacked the neighbors the day before yet Fraser seeing the surviving members of the Tippetts dealing with the circumstances and relating to the situation somewhat due to having lost his daughter a couple of months prior which also adds up to more of what convinces Fraser to want to get the punishment he believes the killer deserves.
Now lets get to the killer himself, Charles Reese played here by Alex McArthur, someone who I never really seen in anything before or since and from the looks of his filmography, it's kind of easy to see why. I could say that with pretty much the entire cast of the movie aside from Michael Biehn. who I'm sure a lot of people know who he is and for good reason. But there is something about McArthur that really does something with his character that I don't know how many people could have made it work as well and that is he is no matter what he does, he appears as quite a normal person in spite of the situations he is in at the time. He gets into small talk with a bunch of guards as he;s being transported like water cooler discussions between co workers. Another thing that makes this work so well is just how he plays it so we never get a real gauge of whether or not Reese is mentally unstable or he is aware of the situation and knows what he is doing. In other movies that do this, it is often where the killer does play it where he is pretending to be mentally unwell and it plays off as a twist ending of sorts and this movie doesn't really do that.
I mentioned before that the movie was filmed in '87 but did not get a US release until '92 due to distribution issues and when the time came for that US release, Friedkin did some re editing and changed the ending. I watched the '92 version so the ending I got was one that I am unsure what to think since I know what the original ending was but its one of those things where it could go either way maybe. I might have to give a lean towards the original due to how it did follow up on a piece of dialogue where Reese admits to some guards that he hopes that the courts find him guilty so that he won't have to sit in prison for the rest of his life. The revised ending does something else which is kind of interesting yet kind of anti cathartic as well.
There is also something that I want to bring up as well and that is the aspect ratio of the movie. I have no idea if that was the way it was intended to be or it was a fuck up on someone and I don't know who but the version I saw was in a 4:3 TV like format which did make me wonder if this was originally filmed as a made for TV movie, which really wouldn't be too far against Friedkin's alley since he did start off working on TV and even had two films after this that were made for TV (those being Jailbreakers and his remake of 12 Angry Men) but it did make things feel a little off since this did get a theatrical release and I'm curious what was done with the aspect ratio. But either way, I wouldn't put this as being a great film. I'd consider it good with a lot of parts that work really well and is worth watching just for Alex McArthur's performance and wondering why he never went anywhere afterwards. Out of the films I've seen of Friedkin's, its probably in the bottom but I've only seen six of them so far and I really love most of the others. So what will the next one be? I kind of wish it could be Cruising since I really want to see that so badly but maybe I'll do something more current, maybe the one that I was writing before this one but didn't finish, The Hunted. Or if you guys want me to talk about The Exorcist yet again, I'll do that.
No, the next one of this series will be The Hunted for sure.
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