The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer

The murder and dismemberment of 17 young men in Wisconsin between 1978 and 1991 capped a century stained in blood by the heinous exploits of the blue-eyed cannibal killer known to a horrified nation as The Milwaukee Monster. Made in the three years between his highly-publicized arrest and his 1994 murder while serving 15 consecutive life sentences in prison, The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer follows the schizophrenic butcher from his first impulse slaying in his grandmother’s back yard to his infamous “rampage period,” in which he claimed up to one victim a week in his makeshift slaughterhouse on Milwaukee’s troubled west side. Inspired by Dahmer’s own highly-publicized confessions, David R. Bowen’s brutally intense indie has the half-starved aesthetic of a snuff film and a no-holds-barred lead performance by writer-actor Carl Crew as one the 20th Century’s most notorious serial killers.