The Night Stalker (Netflix Mini-Series 2021)

[Peru]

Has anyone seen this? I thought it was definitely a notch down from The Ripper, which gave a much clearer sense of the context of sexism and poor police work that held up that investigation, as well as painting a picture of England in the late 70s.

This one is much more 'how we caught him' - there's basically nothing other than the investigation, little about LA in the 80s, after-effects of Manson etc. It's also much more unpleasant than the Ripper doc, unnecessarily so, I thought.

However I did find myself wondering one thing, which those more familiar with the case might know better:

Spoiler alert

Ramirez committed numerous murders in LA and all they had was this shoe print, which they seemingly did nothing with. Then he commits ONE murder in San Francisco and the SFPD get his name and information straight away. As the whole thing is filtered through the two cops I couldn't help thinking that if there were deficiencies in the LA investigation we weren't going to hear about them here...

[close]

[lipsink]

Thing I was wondering.

Spoiler alert

They got his name through one of the cops using force. Surely that means it's inadmissible as evidence?

[close]

[confettiinmyhair]

It's a real trashy effort, one of the worst true crime documentaries I've seen. I'm not really bothered about gore but it was gratuitous, squelchy sound effects and blood splattering. Lingering shots on the crime scene photographs were unnecessary.

[bgmnts]

There's something about the bloke that seems pure evil for some reason. Like, not mental, but just an absolute nasty cunt.

[Peru]

It's a real trashy effort, one of the worst true crime documentaries I've seen. I'm not really bothered about gore but it was gratuitous, squelchy sound effects and blood splattering. Lingering shots on the crime scene photographs were unnecessary.

I'm kind of amazed they did that. There was no need to show the photographs of the bodies-you could have shots of the scene itself but that stepped over the line. And yes-no need for re-enactments. The Ripper doc was so much better, more informative and more sensitively handled than this.

[imitationleather]

Is this the first documentary the director has done or something?

Really feels like they've packed in every production bell and whistle they learned at film school. It's extremely distracting.

[Bently Sheds]

I watched this purely because the Night Stalker investigation was something I was unaware of. I found it an unpleasantly exploitative watch, what with the crime scene photos ("It's OK, we taped over the deado's eyes so you're not too upset by corpse pics") and - as mentioned before - all the slo-mo blood spatter and gun porn. By contrast, the Yorkshire Ripper doc seemed a bit more sensitive towards the plight of Sutcliffe's victims and much more in-depth about how the main detectives went about completely failing to catch the serial killer in question.

I did wonder why the victims' relatives took part in this. I mean it's one thing to re-live the murder of your grandmother for people's titillation, but it's quite another to have your piece to camera repeatedly intercut with crime scene photos of her battered, bloody body.

[imitationleather]

They wouldn't have known how their interviews would be presented. It's pretty exploitative.

[Nobody Soup]

Has anyone seen this? I thought it was definitely a notch down from The Ripper, which gave a much clearer sense of the context of sexism and poor police work that held up that investigation, as well as painting a picture of England in the late 70s.

This one is much more 'how we caught him' - there's basically nothing other than the investigation, little about LA in the 80s, after-effects of Manson etc. It's also much more unpleasant than the Ripper doc, unnecessarily so, I thought.

However I did find myself wondering one thing, which those more familiar with the case might know better:

Spoiler alert

Ramirez committed numerous murders in LA and all they had was this shoe print, which they seemingly did nothing with. Then he commits ONE murder in San Francisco and the SFPD get his name and information straight away. As the whole thing is filtered through the two cops I couldn't help thinking that if there were deficiencies in the LA investigation we weren't going to hear about them here...

[close]

direct reply to your spoiler so yeah

Spoiler alert

Yes, plus there was the faulty alarm button in the dentists, they shrugged off a few things as "fate, huh?" when actually it seemed like police incompetence.

[close]

[Pink Gregory]

Netflix productions like this are perhaps a little over-eager to show actual dead bodies.  I've seen people defend it by saying that "It adds gravity to the seriousness of the crime" and all I can think is "yes, but I already thought it was serious?"

[Peru]

direct reply to your spoiler so yeah

Spoiler alert

Yes, plus there was the faulty alarm button in the dentists, they shrugged off a few things as "fate, huh?" when actually it seemed like police incompetence.

[close]

Yes-to be honest I didn't really get the impression that they knew what they were doing, especially the younger guy, who seemed very ambitious but without much actual evidence of success. The older guy seemed to have an existing rep from the Hillside Strangler, but that doesn't mean that he'd necessarily be good at a different case. There's a bit where they discover that only one set of the shoes in question were sold in LA and their reaction was to go 'so what'. Couldn't they have called every sneaker-seller in the city? It would have taken like two days with the huge crew they had on the case. But they just seemed to throw this massive clue away. Then they got fixated with the shoe print but did absolutely fuck all with it. There was all this stuff about how they were working 18 hour days and I was thinking - doing what?

[Dr Rock]

I'm familiar with the case, particularly nasty murders so I won't watch this. As I recall the break came from a teenager who got his number plate?

[fit bird]

The Netflix Ted Bundy documentary made a big deal of mentioning what a handsome guy he was at every possible opportunity - he was a plain average guy!
This Night Stalker guy was a seriously hot piece of ass and they're calling him a smelly toothed bum ten times an episode.


True Crime is messed up, man.

[Bazooka]

I'm familiar with the case, particularly nasty murders so I won't watch this. As I recall the break came from a teenager who got his number plate?

Yeah Ramirez was creeping around his home, and as he scuttled away and drove off, the lad got the details.Then after a description of him was released, a women spotted him and called the police, he tried to escape but a group of blokes roughed him up.Then he was identified in a lineup. Forensic evidence was easily traceable back to him.

[St_Eddie]

There's something about the bloke that seems pure evil for some reason.

Why, whatever do you mean?

[Sonny_Jim]

Been watching these, I'm more of a 'Columbo' guy rather than true crime but figured I might give it a shot.  Only 2 episodes in and have to agree with the stuff about it being overly gory, often for no particular reason other than they don't have any footage.  Whilst it was pretty cool to scene crime scenes 3D modelled and photo-realistically rendered, the moment where I went 'this is a bit much' was the shot of the blood stained hammer bouncing on the floor.

It almost crosses into parody.  The hammer is absolutely dripping in corn syrup blood, like completely painted in it.  It slowly bounces to the floor completely with reverby sound effects.  It's awful.  And they show that same shot about 3-4 times across the 2 episodes.

I am enjoying the 'war stories' between the two main coppers though.  Deliberately haven't looked up the wikipedia article yet as I don't want to spoil it for me.

[Dr Rock]

Have they mentioned how when he was young his cunt of a brother showed him loads of gory photos of women he had raped and killed in Vietnam? That can't have helped.

[QDRPHNC]

Yeah, you can tell there's something a bit off with this guy.

[Neomod]

Yeah, this was bobbins. The detectives and their case were not engaging enough for the focus to be mainly on them. I would have preferred more of a concentration on Ramirez's psychological makeup.

The Sutcliffe doc is indeed much better but I did laugh when I heard Heartache Avenue used on the soundtrack. I wonder why.

[Wet Blanket]

My favourite aspect of the Ripper doc was the subtitles on people speaking with northern accents - including Corrie's Les Battersby.