H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer
Written & Directed By: John Borowski
Grade: B

There have been countless serial killers in society, both horrifying and intriguing. They have been extensively studied as well as used as inspiration for majority of the horror genre of film. Serial killers are so beyond our understanding at first look that many yearn to learn more, to see how their mind’s work and how anyone could possibly to do such horrid things; even more so how they can enjoy them so deeply. H.H. Holmes takes us back to where this concept began, only preceded by Jack the Ripper. H.H. Holmes was America’s first serial killer, living for the conning; murder was simply his favorite method of deceit.

H.H. Holmes had the perfect mask; he looked like a perfectly upstanding citizen. He was a respected doctor, caring husband, and business man. Holmes grew up in a strict, religious home. He did well in school and was therefore ridiculed. One time he was forced to face his fear by children forcing him in to a doctor’s office with a daunting skeleton that horrified him. This later sparked Holmes’ interest in medicine. He studied at the University of Michigan where he was able to fulfill his blood lust by the dead bodies he experimented and practiced on. Jack the Ripper became a media sensation, everyone completely horrified by the acts he was committing in Europe. Little did they know that America would see an even more destructive killer who lived among them.

H.H. Holmes was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s work and constructed his own torture chamber in a castle he constructed across the street from the drugstore that he owned. The torture chamber had long, wandering halls that led to nowhere, giving the victims no hope of finding any way out of the place where they would die. The chamber featured a greased shoot and concealed trap door that led the victims down in to the basement, where the bodies and central torturing took place. Among Holmes many forms of torture, one was Holmes’ stretching out of bodies, attempting to transform humans in to giants. Not only did he get his personal cravings satisfied by torturing and killing his victims, but he profited financially by selling their skeletons for medical purposes.

H.H. Holmes was finally arrested after the death of his assistant, Pitezul, by way of an insurance scam. Holmes neglected to pay off a former cellmate of his that knew too much information. Holmes essentially abducted Pitezul’s children and killed them. The bodies were found in an oven and in the cellar of places where Holmes had stayed with the children. Holmes conned Pitezul’s wife in to giving him majority of the insurance money, after which murder was suspected rather than suicide. She would never see her children again. 50 missing people were traced to Holmes’ castle and after a number of fabrications he finally gave his true confessions by the request of William Randolph Hurst.

One thing I found really interesting in the documentary was that H.H. Holmes loved conning people so much that even when he was in jail, serving time for his crimes, he continued to do this with those interviewing him. He made up stories about where bodies were and his motivations, constantly contradicting himself. He wasn’t getting any financial benefit from this as some of his other conning jobs had. Holmes simply did it, because he got far more joy out of deceiving those who were so urgent to get the truth. It gave him a last few moments of happiness. There is great irony in Holmes finding his murderous nature in medicine, a field most people get in to save lives rather than take them away. There are journal entries read off that Holmes wrote, helping us understand his reflection over his vicious and cunning life. The traces we are given of how his mind worked are among the most interesting elements of the film. Every detail of his elaborate plans were thought out far in advance. He was one of the few serial killers to finish college, showing more discipline than most and that his mind was a well orchestrated machine. How he used that machine tragically made him the monster on 63rd street.

Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation
Written & Directed By: John Borowski
Grade: A

John Borowski’s second serial killer docudrama, Albert Fish, is perhaps the most disturbing movie I have encountered. It is completely relentless, never giving us a break from the horrid, unconceivable, and completely unsettling life, mentality, and actions of Albert Fish. It would be a hard film to watch even if it was a fictional piece of work. Of course, it is all the more unsettling and hard to handle that what we are hearing really happened. Albert Fish was a very real man and many of his victims had to endure truly horrible fates because of what he believed in. Still, the degree of everything Fish did is so hard to swallow that it is really beyond my understanding to conceive what he did throughout his life. With fictional narrative there is at least introduction, character development, and plot points, letting the truly horrid moments be built up to. Albert Fish is intense from beginning to end, only becoming more severe and shocking as the film goes on.

Albert Fish was a cannibal, sadomasochist, and child murderer based in Manhattan. One of the first reenactments we see is of the abduction of Grace Budd, a young girl in the neighborhood. Fish was able to convince her parents that he was simply a caring, elderly man and got the parents permission to take her. Grace would never return though. On November 12, Fish wrote what would become known as one of the most vile confession letters ever written on how he ate Grace. He claimed, “How sweet and tender her little ass was”. Fish ate his victim’s entire body over the next 9 days. This is compared to Abraham killing his son Isaac for God even though he loved him. Fish believed he was offering Grace as a sacrifice to God, thus left her virginity in tact. He left her pure and believed if what he was doing really was wrong than an angel would have came and stopped him.

Albert Fish was an orphan for most of his childhood. The orphanage he was in was really what spawned his sick sense of sexual pleasure that only escalated later in life. The children were relentlessly whipped, which sexually aroused Fish whether it was happening to him or other young boys in the orphanage; giving Fish his first sexual feelings. When he turned 15, Fish became a prostitute and formed several perversions. He got married and had a family, but continued to have an abnormal relationship with wife, cheating with young men. He kidnapped them, whipped them, had them do the same to him, and forced them to urinate on him. Sometimes he waited until he could get his victim to get an erection only to cut it off.

One of the most disturbing things about Albert Fish is that he believed what he was doing was in the name of God. He had a very warped and literal translation of the bible. He focused on the pain and sacrifice, taking it upon himself to take his own victims to offer to God as sacrifices. He viewed them as martyrs who would go straight to heaven thanks to him. By consuming their remains who felt that this Godly sacrifices were a part of him, allowing him to hold God within himself as well. Still, he didn’t believe that he was above others. He was the punisher and the punished. He enjoyed having his victims punish him back and did the same to himself when alone. Fish stated that the only downside of pain was having to find a different and more painful way to outdo the previous inflicted pain. 29 needles were found inside his abdomen, self inflicted because he was listening to the voices he was hearing and purging himself of sin. He knew he had immoral longings that he acted on and punished himself in the name of God, but at the same time he played God. It’s a strange and frightening combination, being contradicted between feeling like a sinner and a saint. The ending of the film is truly chilling as Albert Fish couldn’t be punished for his sins. The electric chair was only a new and exciting way of feeling pain. How do you punish someone who is delighted by the feel of pain, the more severe the better? You can’t, showing that in the end Albert Fish won.

The reenactments add a sense of terrifying realism to the story of Albert Fish. Many of them set the scene of these tragic acts he committed over his life. Particularly the scenes depicting Fish’s sadistic sexual encounters and the whipping and punishment were the most unsettling, dragging on for a bit longer than I would have liked. While the same point could have been shown, I really can’t complain. It made it all the more disturbing and the excessive and longevity of it puts us in the same place as Fish’s victims; wanting it to end and be out so desperately but unable to leave. Some of his sexual encounters lasted 5 to 6 days, the victim stuck there until that point, or possibly just waiting to die. Albert Fish doesn’t hold back at all from the beginning, not bothering with slowly getting us comfortable. That would just be a waste of time since we’re going to be completely uncomfortable through the whole film.

Fish’s true nature is clear from the beginning; still the film never seizes to shock you. As soon as you think you have heard the most bizarre and grotesque things you can, Fish’s unconceivable actions and mentality shock you further. Albert Fish is not for the faint of heart or those who can’t take seriously unsettling material. Those who are interested in the way serial killer’s minds work, particularly those who askew the lines of morality or right and wrong, Albert Fish is a compelling docudrama that will stay for you for a long time. It is a very powerful film that makes a real impact, more so than most films on serial killers are able to do. Even compared to his previous film, the growth and maturing John Borowski has gone through as a filmmaker is evident. He brings out Fish’s story in a way that makes him seem hauntingly real, terrifying the viewers while still shedding light on the religious reasons and good intentions for his horrid actions. Albert Fish is without a doubt one of the most disturbing serial killers in history.