"Clowns can get away with anything. Clowns can get away with murder." These chilling words, spoken by the infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy have echoed through history. The killer clown, as he is known, has inspired no shortage of nightmares and horror stories. And Netflix is adding to the canon of material regarding Gacy's horrific crimes as it today released a trailer for Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes.
The new trailer gives us a glimpse into the upcoming three-part series, which will follow the downfall of one of America's most infamous serial killers. Gacy, who often dressed up as the now-iconic (in all the worst ways) Pogo the clown, is one of many serial killers who operated in the United States during the 1970s. A closeted gay man, Gacy targeted vulnerable teenage boys, often from poorer households, who often slipped past police's notice when they went missing. Gacy accumulated over thirty victims over his several-year spree, often hiding the bodies in his own home, creating a macabre point of discovery that would become tabloid fodder after the full breadth of his crimes were exposed.
The new series comes from Joe Berlinger, who previously directed Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. That series explored another of the most infamous serial killers, Ted Bundy, whose arrests, escapes, and cross-country killing spree that targeted young women scandalized the country. Berlinger's series explores the breadth of these infamous figures in American history from both the perspective of investigators, witnesses, and the killers themselves, using tapes of the murderers discussing their various crimes.
Berlinger's series comes at a time when interest in true-crime stories is at an all-time high. And the crimes of both Gacy and Bundy are central to America's culture of true crime and the cult of the serial killer, which is a figure of near mythological status in contemporary pop culture. The rise of slasher films in the late 1970s and early 1980s was certainly inspired both by these serial killers and the rise in crime seen throughout the second half of the twentieth century.
But as crime rates have diminished and the slasher has cycled through varying phases of critique and revival, from the often rehashed and reconstructed Scream franchise to the delightfully nostalgic X, our view of these serial killers has itself become a meta-commentary of our own relationship to violence and the influence of social factors within these incomprehensibly violent acts. Berlinger's project takes this renewed and intersectional approach to examining a killer whose crimes have seemingly transcended the true scope of his cruelty, much like Michael Myers has transcended into a force of nature, death personified.
Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes brings Gacy's crimes back to the facts, as the new trailer shows, exploring the blind spots in the police department investigating his crimes and the actual impact of his many murders. Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes will be released on Netflix on April 20, 2022. You can watch the trailer below: