H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer

-- Video Business, 10/5/2004

Color/B&W, NR (mature themes), 64 min., DVD only $24.95

DVD: director's commentary, featurette, outtakes

Street: Oct. 26, Prebook: Oct. 12

First Run: DVD premiere

Director: John Borowski

FACETS

H. H. Holmes was a medical-school graduate who, by indulging his darker impulses, achieved the dubious distinction of becoming America's first serial killer. Borowski's documentary, engrossing and extremely well done, tells the story briskly. Ostensibly constructing a hotel designed to accommodate visitors to the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Holmes actually built a veritable house of horrors, complete with secret passages, acid vats and torture chambers. This pharmacist trapped unsuspecting guests, killed them in grisly ways, stripped off their flesh, sold their skeletons to medical schools and even managed to collect on the life-insurance policies some of them held--all this while juggling multiple wives--and mistresses--and achieving local prominence as a respectable member of the community. Producer/writer/director Borowski creates a vivid picture of his subject through old newspaper clippings, legal documents, photographs and memoir readings. He blends re-creation footage with the archival material, creating a seamless whole that maintains (if not bests) the standard of most cable channel documentaries. It's plain that Borowski researched Holmes extensively, and his labor of love is bound to find favor with viewers who can't get enough of bizarre true crime stories. --Ed Hulse