The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Movie title: The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2009) ***
Grade: F (0 stars)
Rated: R
Summation: Experts examine a serial killer’s recorded footage of torture, murder, and mutilation.
Spoilers ahead: No

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Ask yourself why you’ve never heard of The Poughkeepsie Tapes (TPTs) or the Poughkeepsie murders before. Now you can go hunting around for the answer or I can just come right out and tell you. Alright, I’ll just tell you. The reason is that it’s bogus.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes is a “mockumentary,” like a documentary and done in the same style, but phony. It’s an altogether terrible film, but you have to acknowledge that making a mock documentary and selling it as a true story does stir up a lot of discussion and makes people ask questions.

What the makers and promoters (Tribeca Films, MGM, and writers Drew and John Dowdle) of TPTs want you to think is that an unknown and still uncaught serial killer from the late 1980s thru at least 2001 orchestrated a string of murders and left behind some 800 meticulously kept and organized VHS tapes of over 240 hours. These tapes contained horrific footage of a man’s abduction, torture, mutilation, disfigurement, and murder of his victims.

We are led to believe that a New York cop by the name of James Foley who picked up prostitutes was fingered for the murder of eight individuals, their bodies found buried in a yard on Waters Street. He became known as the Waters Street Butcher, so we are told. But the serial killer wanted the authorities to find the house and the videotapes that the police recovered. In that house was found the only survivor of this madman ever, a young woman named Cheryl Dempsey. The cop was executed for the murder of the women when it was discovered only days after his execution that the real killer was alive and still out there.

Believe that if you love murder mysteries and urban legends, but it’s not factual. The plot of TPTs seems to be based on the killings of Walter Francois, a man who kidnapped and murdered eight prostitutes, burying them in his backyard, for which he received eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole back in 1998. But Francois never videotaped his murders. And the supposed murderer/prostitute-loving cop James Foley was apparently pulled out of thin air. He doesn't exist.

And there was nothing particularly historical about Poughkeepsie, New York. There have been murders there, but none exceptional enough to make a documentary about. So while having been possibly inspired by tidbits of true events, this is all a bunch of hooey. Don’t let it fool you for a second, and don’t let the anonymous posting marketers who down-talk naysayers of the film on every movie blog and forum on the net convince you that they grew up there and witnessed these things firsthand. It’s more baloney.

Despite trying hard to be horrifying, only a few scenes are. It wasn’t as horrifying as Saw and other super-bloodbath flicks that know how to appease the gorehounds in an audience. The extreme unbelievability of the work sees to it that no one takes it seriously. Everything is laughably done. This would make good SNL material, much of it. The contrived acting was vomitous. I didn’t believe anybody for a second. The “interviews” and “experts” interviewed were more scripted than WWE. I will never get these two hours of my life back!

Towards the beginning of the film, with the abduction of Cheryl, we have a well-acted segment of a terrified girl hogtied like a Thanksgiving turkey. Later, we find the same girl being made to slit another captive girl’s throat, which she does in a way that wouldn't work. Any farm boy knows that it takes some doing to slit the throat of a pig or to de-horn a bull. It’s the same with slitting a wrist, but not so in this excuse for a documentary where throats are slit as easily as the plastic packaging being cut off a CD bought at Walmart.

The only reason anyone would dare to keep watching TPTs after the first five minutes would be to determine why the interviewers keep exalting this killer’s amazing abilities to throw off the experts. Real police, FBI, and legal/forensics experts don’t talk like this, of course. You’ll notice this when you hear one investigator say: “My wife wouldn’t let me touch her for a year.” (Allegedly because he brought the tapes home and watched them to get a jump on his workload.) Yeah, right!

And then there’s this little bit from an “expert” at the end...

“I’ll tell you one place we’ll be watching. If this documentary thing you’re making ever gets to the theatres, he won’t be able to help himself. He’ll see this movie as many times as he can. We’ll keep an eye on as many screenings as we can because [long pause]...he'll be there!”

Sorry. No sale, my friend!

The biggest fault among the many glaring ones that make this an awful abomination of a flick is that it is unrelenting in its childlike praise for the infamous killer. Have you ever heard a child invent a superhero or a villain and then go into overkill describing how unbeatable he is? That’s what you have here done by grown-ups. It’s bad—really bad!

(JH)

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Director: John Erick Dowdle
Starring: Stacy Chbosky “Cheryl Dempsey,” Ben Messmer “Ed,” Samantha Robson “Samantha,” Ivar Brogger “Leonard Schway,” Lou George “Felton Lewis,” Amy Lyndon “Alice Endrisart,” Michael Lawson “Simon Alray,” Ron Harper “Mike Moakes,” Kim Kenny “Pam Frears”
Genre: Horror/Thriller