The documentary Killer Legends looks at urban legends and their possible basis or continued perpetuation. The film delves into the meat of the story behind the legends and the folklore and what it finds in an array of true crime that either enhances the urban legends or uses the legends as a basis for their own crimes.
Joshua Zeman who previously covered this kind of topic in Cropsey, has done some pretty good work along with the other researcher Rachel Mills, digging around in some old cases for crimes that even slightly resemble the urban legends. The urban legends are the four classics The Hook, The Candyman, The Stalked Babysitter and Killer Clowns.
Their investigations take them to Texarkana for The Hook, Pasadena for The Candyman, Missouri for The Stalked Babysitter and Chicago for Killer Clowns. Each of these areas have a case that could be or has added to the mystery of these urban legends. Cut together with old news footage, crime scene photos, interviews with either retired cops from these cases or historians in the area and inter spliced with film grabs, Killer Legends is wholly fascinating, with a few very large assumptions made but the documentary does draw you in despite this.
Zeman and Mills certainly seem passionate about this subject, and it does show through, remembering that these two aren’t out to solve cold case crime files but to see how these cases affected the areas, the myth and the people involved. Some areas of the film get far more detail with other parts only having the surface skimmed which is the downside of this documentary. Perhaps they covered one too many urban legends and really should have consolidated their time and efforts into less legends and being more in depth, it is not a big issue but just something that I had noticed.
Killer Legends is not perfect, but it is very watchable, whether your interests are in the urban legend area or in the true crime aspect – it is very much worth a viewing.
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Ryan Morrissey-Smith
Images: IMDB & Grimmreviewz
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