I was wondering if anyone remembers when this movie was broadcast ,as it was a mini series t.v. movie( albiet one of the best ones ever made),was the original runtime more like 3hrs ? I just bought the tape & it's only 95 min.,they must have cut quite a bit footage out. Does this sound right to anyone else ?
never mind just seen runtime of 360 min.,so it was substantially "tinkered with "-too bad.
Just rented a vhs copy from the local videostore and was suprised that it was only around 99 minutes. My guess is they just shortened it for retail purposes or perhaps the full length version isn't very good. I'm curious to find out what was deleted.
sharei have the d.v.d and its at least 3 hours so im really suprised that its only 90 min.
shareThe 189 minute version can be purchased on Amazon from $140-200. Whomever has the rights needs to get it re-released.
shareIt was a WGN original miniseries release back in the early 90's. I grew up just 7 miles from Gacy's house and my college dorm was mostly Chicagoans so a lot of us watched this movie when it came out. I think the longer version had a lot more of that "psychic" mumbo jumbo in it. My main beef was that they filmed this in Canada instead of the original Chicagoland locations. There is a certain architectural style of "postwar brick" pseudo Frank Llyod Wright knockoff look in the inner Chicago suburbs where this took place that can only be reproduced in the original location.
shareI saw it on True Movies, and it was shown in two parts, which were both 2 hours long.
shareWhat people need to consider is the *actual* run time of the miniseries. That 360 minute run time sounds wrong. If To Catch A Killer ran for two nights in a 2-hour timeslot, each part would have to be roughly 90 minutes once you've eliminated the commercials. So, 189 minutes sounds correct. I mean if people do their math, 360 minutes adds up to a six-hour miniseries. I'm pretty sure this only ran two nights originally.
share[deleted]
You're correct, the cut version does reeduce the length by nearly a full half, though.
shareIt's not just "psychic mumbo jumbo" that's gone; the whole sense of the scale of the investigation and the impact it had on LT.Kozenczak's home life is entirely lost, as is Gacey's role in the local community. Cheapo, exploitative tv-movies about serial killers were ten-a-penny during this period; the full length version raises To Catch a Killer well above this level, saddly the short one doesn't.
shareits 189, I have a dvd cut of the film. It moves along well for it's length.
shareI saw this movie 1993 on a rented VHS and remember this movie as a very long one. Later a few years back I came across the DVD, which is 182 minutes long, and I directly felt a number of scenes were missing. There seems to be different opinions about the lengt of the original version. I claim it is definitely longer than the DVD version (182 minutes). Someone below says it was broadcasted as a 2 part mini series and hence approximately 4 hours. But on Wikipedia it says this movie is 360 minutes long. Commercial breaks in the tv broadcast could explain the 4 hour version and probably the version broadcasted was the same as the DVD. I think roughly one hour could be deducted from 4 hours which makes it in the vicinity of the DVD version. But commercial breaks can never explain the length of 360 minutes. The original version must be substantially longer than the DVD version. However I cannot be sure either that the info on Wikipedia (360 minutes) is correct. But my memory is sure there are a number of scenes cut away from the DVD version, so the VHS version was longer than the DVD version.
Anyone else who has the same experience / opinion / memory?
/John
Yes, I think you're correct. I recently saw the full two-part version (which I think was a TV edit) and like you, I'm fairly certain there were still some missing scenes, though what I saw was substantially longer than the 90-minute edited VHS tape, which I own.
A specific scene I can think of is the final shot we get of Dennehy/Gacy--showing the look on his face when he is told by one of the detectives in the interrogation room that the first bodies have been located beneath his house. That scene is in neither my shortened VHS version nor was it in the three-hour cut I saw a few days ago. However I distinctly recall this moment being in the film the first time I saw it broadcast in two parts on our Lancaster, PA station, in 1992.