Rampage is a 1987 American crime drama film written, produced and directed by William Friedkin. The film stars Michael Biehn, Alex McArthur, and Nicholas Campbell. Friedkin wrote the script based on the novel of the same name by William P. Wood, which was inspired by the life of serial killer Richard Chase.
The film premiered at the Boston Film Festival on September 24, 1987, but its theatrical release was stalled for five years due to production company and distributor De Laurentiis Entertainment Group going bankrupt. In 1992, Miramax obtained distribution rights and gave the film a limited release in North America. For the Miramax release, Friedkin reedited the film and changed the ending. Critical reviews were mixed, though sharply polarized.
Plot
Charles Reece is a serial killer who commits a number of brutal mutilation-slayings in order to drink blood as a result of paranoid delusions. Reece is soon captured. Most of the film revolves around the trial and the prosecutor's attempts to have Reece found sane and given the death penalty. Defense lawyers, meanwhile, argue that the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecutor, Anthony Fraser, was previously against capital punishment, but he seeks such a penalty in the face of Reece's brutal crimes after meeting one victim's grieving family.
In the end, Reece is found sane and given the death penalty, but Fraser's internal debate about capital punishment is rendered academic when Reece is found to be insane by a scanning of his brain for mental illness. In the ending of the original version of the film, Reece is found dead in his cell, having overdosed himself on antipsychotics he had been stockpiling.
Alternate ending In the ending of the revised version, Reece is sent to a state mental hospital, and in a chilling coda, he sends a letter to a person whose wife and child he has killed, asking the man to come and visit him. A final title card reveals that Reece is scheduled for a parole hearing in six months.
Cast
Influences Charles Reece is a composite of several serial killers, and primarily based on Richard Chase. Chase committed his crimes in Sacramento, California during late 1977 and early 1978, rather than in Stockton, California during late 1986 like in Rampage.
Reece's victims are slightly different from Chase's. Reece kills three women, a man and a young boy, whereas Chase killed two men, two women (one of whom was pregnant), a young boy and a 22-month-old baby. Additionally, Reece escapes at one point—which Chase did not do—murdering two guards and later a priest. However, Reece and Chase had a similar history of being institutionalized for mental illness prior to their murders, along with sharing a fascination with drinking blood. Their murders are both motivated by the belief that they need blood since their heart and internal organs are failing. The two had friends and girlfriends during their childhood/teen years, before descending into mental illness during early adulthood. The mental institution that Reece served at was called "Sunnyslope", whereas Chase's real life mental institution was called Beverly Manor. Reece disposes of one of his child victims in a box inside a garbage bin, and it takes a long time for the police to find the decomposed corpse. This is directly inspired by Chase's murder of 22-month-old David Ferreira in January 1978. Ferreira was murdered along with his cousin, aunt and a male friend of his aunt, when Chase randomly entered their house. Chase took the baby's body to his apartment to decapitate it and consume the brains, later placing his corpse in a box in a garbage bin, which was not discovered by police until two months after Chase's arrest. When police search Reece's home, they discover brains there, but it isn't ever explicitly mentioned that Reece consumed the brains of the boy he murdered. During the mass murder at Ferreira's aunt's house, Chase cut open her organs, having also done this to a previous pregnant victim whose house he entered when she was alone. All of Chase's other victims were boys and men that he shot and didn't cut open like the women. In Rampage, it is said that Reece only cuts open the organs of his female victims, and that he just shoots the others.
Additional elements directly inspired by Chase include Reece's killing of neighborhood dogs, Reece wearing a bright colored ski parka during his murders and walking into the houses of his victims, and Reece's paranoia about being poisoned. When Reece is incarcerated, he refuses to eat the prison food since he believes it has been poisoned, which mirrors the behavior of Chase in prison, who tried to get the food he was being served tested since he thought it was poisoned. When Chase had his trial, the prosecution built their case around the notion that he knew what he was doing was wrong, and that the crimes were premeditated. Something which helped support this argument was the fact that Chase wore rubber gloves during the murders. Reece only wears gloves in the second of his two home invasion murders, and the usage of gloves is never brought up during his trial. In the 1992 cut, Reece was potentially going to be paroled from a Californian mental health facility. He was sent to this facility when brain scans help prove his madness, after having originally been sentenced to death. Chase, on the other hand, was sentenced to death without the possibility of being freed, but before the sentence could be carried out overdosed on prescribed pills in his cell. Chase's suicide occurred in San Quentin Prison in 1980, a few months after he had a brief stay in a facility for the criminally insane, which he was temporarily sent to after behaving psychotically during his first few months at San Quentin. The original 1987 cut had Reece overdosing on pills, just before the brain scan results came in, which would have helped get his death sentence overturned. In the early 1990s, Friedkin said he didn't have Reece commit suicide in the second cut since having him be released from prison fitted better with the traditions of the United States. In both versions of the film, Reece lives with his mother and has a job at a gas station. When Chase's crimes were being committed, he lived alone in an apartment and was unemployed. Reece's father is also said to have died when he was a child, whereas Chase's father was still alive when his crimes were being committed.
While Chase was noted for having an unkempt appearance and exhibiting traits of paranoid schizophrenia in public, the film's makers intended to portray Reece as "quietly insane, not visually crazed." Alex McArthur said in 1992 that "Friedkin didn't want me to play the guy as a raging maniac. We tried to illustrate the fact that many serial killers are clean-cut, ordinary appearing men who don't look the part. They aren't hideous monsters." To prepare for the role, Friedkin introduced McArthur to a psychiatrist who deals with schizophrenics. He showed McArthur video tapes of interviews with different serial killers and other schizoids.
The incident where Reece goes on a rampage after escaping custody was inspired by a real-life event in Illinois, that occurred while the film was in production. In this event, the killer painted his face silver, something which Reece also does.
The film had a negative portrayal of courtroom experts, and this was personally motivated by Friedkin's ongoing custody battle for his son, which he was having with his ex-wife.
Production and release Background The 1985 novel the film was based on was written by William P. Wood, a Californian prosecutor involved with the 1979 trial of Richard Chase. Wood sent the novel to Friedkin, who then decided to make a film about it, with the project first being announced in December 1985. In December 1985, Friedkin sought the advice of a defence lawyer, Colleen Grace, about the accuracy of the source novel and about arguments used against the death penalty. In January 1986, she sent Friedkin copies from various cases, and observed that lawyers often try to appeal to the jury's humanity in death penalty cases. Friedkin also read up on Chase extensively, and in February 1986, he corresponded with the District Attorney's Office in Sacramento who had prosecuted the case. They supplied him with a detailed list of Chase's acts, many of which Friedkin used for his murderer's habits and activities. In January 1986, Friedkin faced backlash when he mentioned to a Chicago hospital's newspaper that he was consulting doctors and that the film was going to "show the world through the eyes of a killer who is also schizophrenic". This article generated several angry letters from readers, who believed that Friedkin was trying to create a link between schizophrenia and murder. The writers were a combination of health professionals and members of the public, particularly parents of schizophrenic children, and some of the letters were part of a concerted campaign by the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, whose membership numbered 30,000 at that time. When this controversy arose, the first draft of the screenplay still hadn't been written yet.
In an October 1992 interview on Charlie Rose, Friedkin discussed the film, and said he wanted to create films "which concern themselves with the way we live now. [And] those issues that have a real edge to them, and are of vital concern to people." He added that, "I won't just want to make a film about four teenagers having sex in the back of a car, which is your average summer picture these days. I mostly want to make films that are dealing with ideas."1992 William Friedkin interview. Charlie Rose The issue of the death penalty was a recurring theme in Friedkin's work, as his first film, 1962's The People vs. Paul Crump, was a documentary in support of a man on death row. In another October 1992 interview with The Harvard Crimson, Friedkin claimed that he didn't have strong feelings either for or against the death penalty, but "wouldn't lose sleep" if someone like Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to death. He added in this interview that Rampage was an accurate depiction of the Richard Chase case, saying "it outlines the facts of the original case closely, almost too closely", and also said that the film's usage of violence wasn't sensationist, due to the briefness of it.
In the Charlie Rose interview, Friedkin said actor Michael Biehn was the biggest name in Rampage, and that it didn't use a particularly well-known cast. In a December 1985 Hollywood Reporter article, it was said that actor William Petersen was attached to Rampage, although he did not end up appearing in the film. Petersen had worked on Friedkin's previous film To Live and Die in L.A..
Filming and premiere of the original cut Rampage was filmed between October 28, 1986, and December 1986 in Stockton and Lodi, California, with the film itself taking place during early 1987 during the trial parts. The prison scenes were shot at the Lodi Prison, and the elderly woman Reece shoots at the beginning of the film was portrayed by Stockton resident Gayle Beeman. Some of the local extras were unaware of what the film was about when they signed up to be in it. In an interview with Ain't It Cool News in 2011, Biehn described Rampage as a "pretty good movie", contrasting it with his later Friedkin collaboration, Jade (1995), which he considered a "complete and total disaster." Biehn also recounted a confrontation during the filming of Rampage in Stockton, where Friedkin reprimanded him for not staying at the hotel he was designated to stay at with his family. This led to a heated exchange where Biehn stood up to Friedkin, after which Friedkin did not trouble him further on the project. Biehn had spent weeks working with Friedkin on the script and character development, having meetings at Friedkin's home and restaurants, with Friedkin's outburst about the hotel coming as a surprise to Biehn.