Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance (2011)

John Borowski's serial killer bio-trilogy hadn't really been turning me on to any real new info on it's psychopathic subjects until this latest one - detailing the life and crime-spree of Carl Panzram. I know my share of Panzram's historical timeline of gruesome, notoriously misanthropic antics from back in the early part of the 20th century but, surprisingly, Borowski dug up some interesting shit for this well-detailed rundown on the killer's life and times that I wasn't previously aware of - although I was no expert to begin with...

Carl Panzram was born in Northwest Minnesota to some typically abusive parents and was in and out of even more abusive correctional institutions most of his young (and older...) life. As a drifter and career criminal, he would go on to kill at LEAST 22 people around the world and rape roughly 1000 men and boys just out of pure anger. He was eventually hanged in Leavenworth, Kansas in 1930.

Like Borowski's previous biographical serial killer flicks, Panzram is done with interviews and dramatizations of certain shit. Unlike Borowski's last one, "Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation" - which I thought only really covered the overall 'basics' of Fish's shenanigans and didn't give me all that much that I didn't already know on the man - "Panzram" proved significantly more detailed, I thought. They threw in an old video-recorded conversation with the prison guard who befriended Panzram and some mention of his ties with the Birdman of Alcatraz, of which I was unaware of. The movie stays consistently interesting, I'd say, and the guy they got to play Panzram during the prison reenactments is a great likeness. Actually looks just like him from some of the later mugshots.

In all, "Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance" offered up quite a bit of info I wasn't yet privy to concerning one truly broken human being who was clearly shaped into the obsessively sadistic, unstoppable murderer he became by the archaic and torturous American prison system of the earlier part of the 1900's. Worth checking out if you're interested in info on this guy, although I'm not sure if Panzram die-hards will get any 'new' info out of it.