"Snowtown" Screens at Chicago Film Festival, Depicting Australia's Worst Serial Killer

One of the most gruesome films shown at Chicago's 47^th International Film Festival is "Snowtown," an Australian film directed by Justin Kurzel and based on the book "Killing for Pleasure" by Tasmanian author Debra Marshall. The movie was as difficult to watch as the "Saw" series, only more so because it is based on true events involving Australia's worst serial killer, John Bunting, rather than being fiction.

Bunting was responsible for the deaths of at least 11 victims: Clinton Trezise, Ray Davies, Michael Gardiner, Barry Lane, Thomas Trevilyan, Gavin Porter, Troy Youde, Frederick Brooks, Gary O'Dwyer, Elizabeth Haydon and David Johnson. Johnson was the half-brother of fellow defendant James "Jamie" Vlassakis, who, at age 23, confessed in 2001 to 4 murders, including participation in killing his half-brother David Johnson.

The gruesome nature of the crimes is not to be glossed over, either now, in print, or onscreen. In fact, the film actually left out some of the more bizarre true details of the case regarding the killings, such as the fact that cannibalism entered in during at least one killing; that John Bunting made his helpers call him "Master" and "My Lord;" that he often liked to murder to the tune "Selling the Drama" from Live's CD "Throwing Copper;" and that his then-wife Veronika Tripp, who was mentally retarded, testified while clutching a teddy bear. (None of those details are in the film.)

In the film, rather than music, there is a pulsing sound that pervades the movie from the minute it opens, with Jamie Vlassakis---who first met Bunting when he was only 14 and grew to regard him as a father figure---saying, "I keep having this dream." The dream he relates is of a man in a chair with his neck slit and a chihuahua sitting inside the corpse's neck, yapping at him. Indeed, the emotionally battered Vlassakis turned state's evidence and received a sentence that could grant him freedom in 2025, when he will be 45.

Vlassakis is portrayed somewhat sympathetically, as a young boy who was molested by both a neighbor and his own brother, Troy (one of the murder victims). The entire Adelaide area of men who would brutalize their friends, neighbors and relatives makes you think of movies like "Deliverance," since the setting of Adelaide is a depressed area filled with crime and violence.

Shaun Grant and Justin Kurzel wrote the screenplay for the film, and we see that most of the 11 victims that Bunting was found guilty of killing were chosen primarily because he hated gays and pedophiles and, as a bona fide psychopath and sadist, had a God complex. Dr. Helen Cameron of the University of Southern Australia noted that in Adelaide where the murders primarily occurred, "You don't have any life chances, so crime becomes almost an entertainment."

The film's title ("Snowtown") comes from the town where 8 of the 11 victims' bodies were found on May 20, 1999, within drums inside an abandoned bank vault that Bunting and Wagner rented. The first victim Bunting killed was murdered in August of 1992 (Clinton Trezise, 22). Bunting did not kill again until 3 years later. Part of the motive for murdering those he knew, in addition to punishing those he decided deserved to die and for the entertainment value alone of murdering and torturing others, was to profit financially. $95,000 was taken from 8 of the victims, some by claiming government moneys after the recipients were dead. The concept of taping messages from those that Bunting and Wagner and Vlassakis were about to murder, tape recordings telling their friends or relatives that they were going away, did, in fact, happen. Robert Wagner assisted in 10 of the murders.

When Jamie Vlassakis testified for the prosecution, a total of 228 suppression orders were put into effect by the courts, some of them forbidding newspapers from publishing even so much as a picture of the defendants. Australian papers ran a picture of Vlassakis and were fined. Vlassakis' location within the Australian penal system is kept secret today, for fear of reprisals, and he has contact only with his jailers. All-in-all, the "Snowtown" murders became the longest and most expensive trial ever prosecuted in Australia; the bill is said to total $15 million dollars in order to impose on John Bunting 11 consecutive life sentences without parole. (Bunting is 44 years old today).

Shaun Grant and Jed Kurzel wrote the screenplay sympathetically towards Jamie Vlassakis, who is said to have vomited when confessing to police and is portrayed as a sensitive boy who was unduly influenced by a cold-blooded psychopathic killer who could be charming and manipulative.

In that respect, the relationship immediately made this U.S. citizen think of the Beltway Sniper attacks that took place over 3 weeks in October of 2002. John Allen Muhammad, a 41-year-old ex-Army sniper, befriended John Lee Malvo, an impressionable 17-year-old, and the two went on a crime spree, shooting from a blue Caprice (that had been modified) and killing at least 10 people. Malvo, testifying against Muhammad just as Vlassakis did against Bolting, later revealed that Muhammad's plan was "to kill at least 6 white people a day for 30 days." Muhammad also had a grandiose Plan B of assembling a veritable Army of lost boys as the two traveled north to Canada. That Army would assist in wreaking further havoc. Muhammad wanted to shoot a pregnant woman in the belly to begin Phase 2 and, furthermore, to set off a bomb at the funeral of slain officers, which would kill more policemen. So, the plan to continue playing God and killing, en masse, was similar to John Bunting's Australian rampage, and the father figure influence on a younger boy was also similar.

The biggest difference was that John Bunting killed people he knew and planned to profit from their deaths. Says Bunting to Vlassakis after showing him the first victim, "When you calm the f*** down, you do what you need to do." Bunting continues, to Jamie, "Don't be a f***ing pussy." Vlassakis became a heroin addict during this time, but, in the film, he is depicted as a loving son and seems shell-shocked, numb and completely traumatized by all he is forced to do to assist Bunting, his father figure.

During the trial (which is not depicted), 3 of the original 15 jurors dropped out because of the gruesome nature of the testimony, and some of the jurors continue to receive counseling. It was pretty rough as a movie-goer, also, especially the torture scenes involving Troy Youde, Vlassakis' stepbrother.

This is a brutally graphic, bloody and disturbing film. Anyone who thinks it is not should seriously consider getting some mental health help.