“Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes (2021)
“I am a man. Not a monster. Awkward isn’t it?”
“I am a man. Not a monster. Awkward isn’t it?”
I was too young to fully take any notice or absorb the sheer magnitude of the horrors that were finally unveiled in a cold, snowy February of 1983, and the heinous crimes of serial killer Dennis “Des” Nilsen. But as I detail in the blog article and review of the ITV drama series at the bottom of this introductory paragraph, my lifelong macabre interest in the lives and grisly crimes of serial killers was originally inspired by my much missed and much cherished mother who, without fail, treated me to every edition of a mid 1980’s publication entitled “Murder Casebook” and Dennis Nilsen was the subject of their second all time issue. Then came Brian Masters book “Killing for Company” which soon joined my earliest books on Ted Bundy and the assassination of John F Kennedy, and my interest in the black magik (sic) madness of serial killers continues to this very day.
“Des” (2020)
Still portrait of an “unremarkable” serial killer.medium.com
Dismissed as “unremarkable” by Steve McCusker in the ITV dramatisation three years ago, here is the real life ex Detective Inspector reliving the moment when he arrested Nilsen, and in a mock-up of the flat in Muswell Hill, London where the Aberdeen born serial killer was finally caught. Together with journalists, television news reporters, case lawyers and even survivors of Nilsen’s five year murder spree that saw him convicted of six murders from an estimated total nearing fifteen, the documentary brilliantly weaves the then and now of England’s capital city at the turn of the 1980’s in the midst of strikes, riots and a growing epidemic of vulnerable and homeless people sleeping on the streets.
Here in Nilsen’s own audio recorded words, the years both past and very present are weaved throughout with stock footage of the day, interviews from the present as well as a glimpse into the actual evidence that led to Nilsen’s whole life sentence that sent him to a maximum security prison for the rest of his life. Although the unremarkable quote is attributed to a television drama series, it struck an immediate chord with me as David Tennant’s performance is so thoroughly still, dissociative and distant from his repugnant crimes and here the audio recordings reinforce that in spades.
Nilsen weaves an audio tale of being a childhood “bastard” without a father and an incestuous relationship with a grandfather that would lead to a fixation with him, and in both life and death. An inferior lonely child initially ashamed of his sexuality, there is nothing unremarkable about the solider turned policeman turned civil servant working in a Job Centre. Despite the audio evidence, the opposite is true and a paradox created, with the unremarkable outer façade masking the monster beneath, the plain speaking monotoned detachment captured on the audio tapes detailing the inner most desires he sated for so long. Nilsen’s straight forward honesty is horribly disquieting, delivered in a matter of fact way that is as highly disturbing as it is revealing. He killed for company and if the next guest he swept up from the streets or bars of London tried to resist and eventually leave him, he killed them too.
“Loneliness is a long unbearable pain” he laments before posing a remarkable question for a supposedly unremarkable man who sounded and acted like an emotionless, remorseless psychopathic killer: “I am a man. Not a monster. Awkward isn’t it?”.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 250 blog articles (with 500+ individual film reviews) within my film library from which to choose:
“Grindhouse” (2007)
Tarantino and Rodriguez at their most outrageous.medium.com
“John Wick” — Chapter 4 (2023)
The hitman legend continues.medium.com
“The Unforgivable” (2021)
Everything in its right place.medium.com