Image courtesy of Barney Broomfield
I used to offer a disclaimer when recommending Nick Broomfield documentaries, noting that I believe him to be a genius filmmaker but acknowledge that he’s also an acquired taste. This isn’t something I need to put out there for Tales of the Grim Sleeper. Not since his early days (not counting his brief stint with docu-drama last decade) has he been so reserved with his documentary work. It’s probably his most accessible in his four-decade career. It’s also one of his best.
While yet another investigatory feature, in which he’s again on screen a whole lot, his personality this time is not overbearing on the subject matter. He surely realized that this isn’t a tabloid story and therefore doesn’t welcome the faux-naive tabloid character that he plays in such docs as Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, Kurt & Courtney and his previous release, the hugely disappointing Sarah Palin: You Betcha.
Tales is about a serial killer you’ve probably never heard of, nicknamed the Grim Sleeper by the media because of a presumed hiatus he took from killing women between the late-1980s and the 2000s. In 2010, Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested and charged with the attributed murders of 10 women in South Central Los Angeles over a 25 year period, and it’s thought that he may have actually taken the lives of more than 100.
