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Unknown Number: The High School Catfish. Directed by Skye Borgman. Campfire Studios. 2025. Netflix. www.netflix.com

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Beyond the Headlines: The Tanya Kach Story with Elizabeth Smart. Created by Elizabeth Smart, Joseph Freed, Allison Berkley, and Patty Ivans Specht, Marwar Junction Productions/ Lifetime, 2024

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OurBlackGirls

Stories of missing, murdered, and mistreated Black women and girls in America. Est. 2018.

By Erika Marie

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Root, Neil (2011). Frenzy!: Heath, Haigh and Christie. London: Arrow Books. ISBN 978-0-099-55776-0.

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https://fortuneherald.com/breaking/melanie-mcguire-the-story-behind-the-suitcase-murder/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicamercuri/2026/01/19/the-insane-true-story-behind-suitcase-killer-what-did-melanie-mcguire-do-and-where-is-she-now/

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https://www.wfmd.com/2026/02/01/who-is-melanie-mcguire-what-to-know-about-the-suitcase-killer-convicted-of-killing-her-husband/

https://people.com/the-suitcase-killer-fact-vs-fiction-11892622

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https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/texarkana-moonlight-murders-4478/

https://kkyr.com/moonlight-murders-texarkana/

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https://experiencetexarkana.com/texarkana-state-line/

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https://moviedelic.com/ed-gein-father/

https://thetab.com/2025/10/06/the-ed-gein-story-changed-frank-worden-in-the-worst-way-so-hers-what-actually-happened

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https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/03/30/abused-michigan-wife-who-inspired- burning-bed-dies-69/99850510/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-ep

https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/resources/womens-right-mmovement/detailed-timeline

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/us/francine-hughes-wilson-dead-burning-bed-defendant.html

Resources:

https://www.thehotline.org/

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/stop-family-violence/services.html

https://www.domesticshelters.org/en-ca/domestic-abuse-help-in-canada

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https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/national-global-organizations/international-organizations

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Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitley_Strieber

Strieber, Whitley. Communion. Avon, 1988

“These two victims were peacefully going about their daily lives when the defendant violated the sanctity of their home. Rather than restraining them or tying them up as he had contemplated, he entered their home and beat them to death with a crowbar. After his arrest, he described these events to law enforcement and later journalists without any remorse and without any indication that he was psychologically impacted by having beaten two human beings to death.”

Hello and welcome back to Wicked Cinema. This week we’re talking about a movie and a case that I had never seen or heard of before. And honestly, this was shocking. And if that opening quote from a judge directly involved in the case was also shocking to you, I have got a story for you. This week, I’m talking about Vampire Clan from 2002.

I had never heard of this movie before, and I never would have guessed that this was based on a true story. Because I have to say, this movie about a teen vampire cult sounds like a storyline and not reality.

This movie honestly kind of feels like Lords of Chaos in a different font, an early 2000s font to be exact. Wow, does this remind me of so many movies I watched when I was in middle school and high school.

Just the way it was shot, the way it was told, the acting, everything about it. So, let’s get into it. This was directed by John Webb, who only has one other movie credit, The Half Life of Genius Physicist, Raymer Schreiber.

This movie stars Drew Fuller from Charmed as Rod, Alexandra Breckenridge as Charity, Timothy Lee DePriest as Howard Scott, Marina Black as Dana, and Kelly Krueger as Heather.

It opens with what looks like a montage of home footage of the teens as the opening credits begin rolling. Then we go to Eustis, Florida, 1996. Jen is sneaking around with a boy. Her parents think that she is working, so she does need to get home. It’s late. She tells the boy this, and he’s clearly upset that, you know, they can’t fool around in a car all night. Girl, you do not have to please some dumb boy. Fuck this guy, because Jen is going to have far bigger things to worry about. They part ways. She drives away. She quietly enters her house, careful to gently close the front door. She sees the back of her father’s head as the living room is the first room she sees.

She assumes her father is asleep in the armchair because the TV has gone too static and not playing anything. Let’s not forget that TVs used to do that. They used to have antennas. This was the 90s. Flat screen TVs were a thing of the future. She doesn’t bother him, goes to her bedroom only to discover that her phone line has been cut.

I would instantly be very suspicious of that, but she pulls out her cell phone, calls her boyfriend and thankfully it’s late. So those minutes are free. She’s making plans with him. Then she gets off the phone, goes to get something to eat and discovers a pool of blood with her dead mother and then her dead father. She calls 911, obviously freaking out.

She says that her parents are dead and the operator asks if she is alone, which she hadn’t thought of. And now she’s even more scared and she breaks glass for a weapon when her doorknob starts turning. Thankfully, it’s the police. I don’t know how they got there so quickly. It’s as if they teleported, but they ask the whereabouts of her sister, who hasn’t been seen. They suspect kidnapping. A friend comes over to say that Heather, the sister, ran away. The friend gets questioned and she tells police that the group of friends Heather ran away with are vampires.

The medical examiner gets to the house, and after her investigation comes to the conclusion that the father sustained 22 wounds to his skull and brain, and the mother’s brain stem was almost completely severed, and that she had put up a fight. There’s a press conference stating that five suspects, including Heather, are being looked at, while the press asks if vampires did it. We cut to the Baton Rouge police arresting the kids.

Rod thinks it’s absolutely hilarious and very arrogantly saying happy Thanksgiving, literally no care in the world, and making himself a spectacle. Not taking this seriously. And while he’s in the back of a police car, he tells them that if they let him see his pregnant girlfriend, he will give them a confession.

The sheriff from Florida comes to question Rod about the murders, and Rod explains how his vampire coven came together. He’s clearly proud of what he’s done, and has no issue talking about anything. So this is all rather accurate so far.

This group of teens led by Rod Ferrell, old people, they were vampires, lived like vampires, and they were going to run away and form their own coven. This coven consisted of Rod, Howard Scott Anderson, Dana Cooper, Charity Keesee.

Heather Wendorf was a friend of Rod’s, who they were coming to help run away from her family. Heather’s friend was actually planning on running away with them as well but didn’t make it in time. As far as I know, according to all the research I have done, Heather’s sister was in fact working late that night. I don’t have any knowledge of her faking working, skipping work, meeting up with anybody. But she was working late and did come home to find her parents exactly like that, or almost exactly like that, and her sister missing.

So in the movie, Rod is getting interrogated, and he begins by explaining how terrible his mother was and how this plan started. This movie goes back and forth between the present time and the events leading up to the murders. And we see Charity, who is Rod’s girlfriend, worried about Rod wanting to go get Heather. Heather has cut class and she meets Rod in a cemetery. He cuts his wrist with his nail so Heather can drink it and then cross over to be an immortal vampire.

She says she doesn’t believe in any of that and then says, quote, my parents will never let me leave. We’d have to kill them first, end quote. Rod asks if she wants that, but Heather tells him no.

They part ways and Rod is with the rest of his friends when Charity needs to speak with him. She tells him that she’s pregnant and he is initially not happy at all because that messes with all of their plans. After she licks his blood off his finger, it’s all magically fixed because they are one. So, to really tell the beginnings of this wild story, we have to start with Rod himself. He was born in March of 1980 in Murray, Kentucky.

From all accounts, he had a very troubled upbringing. He was the child of teen parents. He did not grow up with his father. His mother, Sondra Gibson, was a single parent, and they either lived with her parents or public housing. Sandra worked as a sex worker sometimes, which was highly frowned upon, especially in this time period.

Rod stated that his grandfather had raped him when he was only five years old. He also claims that his grandfather’s friends, who were supposedly in a separate cult, also raped him. There were no charges ever filed, but Gibson’s sister says that her and Sandra were both sexually abused by their father. It seems clear that there were issues in the home. There was trauma.

It’s highly unlikely that three people all have the same false claims against a patriarch. People don’t typically make up such heinous stories about a loving father and grandfather without some hint of truth or abuse of some kind.

Rod was described as a weird kid, and as a teenager became increasingly erratic. He had an obsession with role-playing games, particularly Vampire: The Masquerade. Ferrell was seemingly enamored with Vampirism, consuming fantasy media, and finding other teenagers that did the same. They claimed they were actual vampires, dressing the part, and even drinking blood.

Sondra has stated that she also believed in Vampirism, in the Vampirism lifestyle. A boy older than Rod named Stephen Jaden Murphy says that he sired Rod. He said, they played these role-playing games together, and he seemingly turned Rod to Vampirism. He said “I had met Rod at a tombstone, the birthplace, and we began the ritual.”

This consisted of them cutting themselves with razor blades, and drinking each other’s blood, quote, to his heart’s content, or until the bleeding stopped, end quote. He also said that giving blood as a gift is one of the most precious gifts you can give to someone. It is a total commitment. There is no turning back once this is done.

Now, Sondra had sent inappropriate letters to the younger brother of her son’s sire and reportedly solicited this child for sex during a vampire ritual and said that she would be his immortal bride. So, I think it’s very clear that Rod had a very tough childhood. His mother had some issues, and she let him do whatever he wanted. Sandra was by all accounts not a great parent. She let Rod do basically anything he wanted to, and let him partake in illegal activities. She was arrested for trying to solicit that 14-year-old boy.

Now, when Ferrell was 10, they moved part-time to Eustis, Florida, and this is where he met Heather Wendorf. They struck up a friendship, and when Rod moved back to Kentucky, they would talk on the phone long distance. That was a big deal in the 90s. It costs a lot of money to make long distance phone calls.

Heather said that she had a difficult relationship with her parents, which only got worse when they were mad about the $850 phone bill because these long distance calls were expensive, and they told her she couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t call Rod anymore. Ferrell claimed that he was a 500 year old vampire named Vesago, and he wanted to form a group of other vampires, including Howard Scott, who was another teen with a really tough childhood, living in an abusive household.

Rod gathered people in his life that were looking for friendship and a sense of belonging. Those who also had difficult lives. Around this time, Ferrell was charged with burglary, trespassing and animal cruelty after breaking into a local animal shelter, brutally killing two puppies. This part is not even mentioned in the movie.

A lot of Rod’s childhood is only eluded to and not really elaborated upon. This movie wants to get to the event, the days just prior and the direct aftermath. So, Heather had told Rod that her parents were abusing her, making her want to run away from home. Ferrell, along with his girlfriend, 16-year-old Charity, 17-year-old Anderson, and 19-year-old Dana Cooper drove to Eustis to save her.

They all planned to become their own vampire family in New Orleans. Heather supposedly became a vampire by doing this crossing over ceremony and drinking Rod’s blood. This was on November 25th, 1996.

Now we get to the point in the movie where Heather is getting questioned by the police, and we have flashbacks to her a few days prior being an angsty teen. Rod calls her to let her know that they need to leave that night, and while Rod is the only one who understands her, she has to say her goodbyes.

She goes to her father first, although she really doesn’t say anything of substance, then goes upstairs and apologizes to her mom for skipping school that day. She packs up, does write a goodbye note, sneaks out.

Rod and Howard Scott, he’s just called Scott in the movie, wait for her to leave so they can steal her parents’ car. Rod and Scott drink each other’s soul by drinking blood from each other’s wrists. They do go straight for the car, realize that they need keys, because obviously, so they have to go inside. They decide that Rod will take the dad and Howard will take the mom.

I guess in case they get caught by Heather’s parents, but this seems a lot like premeditation. They find a crowbar in the garage. At the same time, Heather finds Charity and Dana. She asks where everybody else is, and they tell Heather that the boys were picking up her friend. This is taking a long time, so she’s uneasy and trying to back out, saying she forgot things at home.

Meanwhile, her dad is asleep in the living room armchair. Rod and Scott decide to go upstairs. They’re cutting phone lines. This is when they hear her mom in the shower. This next scene is just the boys driving by in the Stolen Explorer, and Heather is really confused.

The girls follow behind them, but Heather is pleading with them to stop because she doesn’t know anything that’s going on. They do end up pulling over. They switch plates on the cars. That is going to be extremely necessary, since not only did they steal a car, but they also murdered two people. Drive off again, only to pull over a second time. This is when they all move to the Explorer.

Heather does not get out of the car to ask any questions, but she is getting no answers to the few questions she is able to ask. Rod is genuinely an asshole. I truly hate this man, and I really don’t think he was that much different in real life from any of the research that I have done. I mean, Rod is just truly obnoxious and so cliché in this movie.

He literally says, “Time waits for no transient souls.” And that just made me want to throw up. They very casually tell Heather that she doesn’t have to worry about the stolen car or running away because basically her parents are dead.

They run out of gas, and while Rod and Dana go to get gas, Heather tries to pull a knife on Scott to force him to take her home. But he very quickly overpowers her as if she had no chance. And they tell her she needs to drink blood for strength. She does because I guess what else is she going to do? And a cop pulls up behind them, which obviously is going to make them nervous. But good old Rod shows up in the nick of time and sweet talks the cop, and they go off on their way.

After this, Heather has to know what actually happened and if her parents are truly dead. Heather finally finds out her parents are dead, and she is completely distraught. We get to the scene of the murders, showing Rod repeatedly hitting the dad in the head. Then they find the mom in the kitchen, and she throws hot coffee right in Rod’s face, which pisses him off. He then attacks her, hitting her repeatedly.

He is vividly describing this for Heather, really just showing that he has zero empathy or compassion. She breaks down and she is sobbing. He also says that he liked killing them. Yeah, dude, that’s plain as day. That fact is staring us straight in the face, crystal clear. They steal the meager amount that they can find in a rush.

Rod sends Scott to find something of value to take, money, jewelry, whatever. You can tell that Scott is starting to break and is clearly just stressed. And back downstairs, Rod decides he needs to leave a mark on their bodies and does so with cigarette burns. Rod confesses everything to Heather. Dana calls her mom from a payphone. They need money, tells her their exact location. They’re drinking each other’s blood because they are now a family, a coven. They’re waiting in the lobby of a Howard Johnson for this wire transfer.

And that call is exactly how the cops find them. So this full montage, we’re getting more from the opening, how they were caught, what happened to Heather’s parents, how it happened and just more information to get them arrested, the cops let Heather go. She walks past these vampires in their cells, and we get the accurate sentences that these four received. Her sister is waiting for her.

It’s said that a grand jury did not find her culpable and the movie ends with her visiting her parents’ graves. Now let’s discuss what really did happen on November 25th, 1996.

After performing Heather’s vampire crossing over, the coven planned to steal her parents’ car. Howard, Scott, whatever you want to call him, will go with Scott since that’s apparently what his friends called him. And the movie refers to him as Scott and Rod broke into their house, the house of 49-year-old Richard Wendorf and 54-year-old Naomi Ruth Leen.

Upon entering the house, they hit Heather’s sleeping father 22 times in the head with a crowbar, giving him nine burn marks. And then her mother, once in the face and 20 times in her head, he did almost sever her brain stem, which likely killed her instantly. She was also branded with these ritualistic burns. She did in fact throw hot coffee in Rod’s face.

And just like in the movie, Rod clearly just wanted to kill people. They would have been able to just get the car and run away. You don’t kill somebody in their sleep without just wanting to do it.

Rod already had a history hurting animals, and he wanted to live this lifestyle. He was only 16 at the time. Heather had asked Rod to leave her parents alone, and she said she was not aware her parents were dead before running away.

Heather’s sister, Jennifer, returned home after work, finding their parents bludgeoned to death, and she said they were unrecognizable. She called 911 immediately, saying that there was blood everywhere and that they had to come fast. She was worried about her 15-year-old sister after coming home late and finding her parents that way. Police were also worried for Heather’s safety. They began searching the property for her, thinking that they might find that she had fled or even worse, her body. They assumed the worst.

There was an arrest warrant issued for the runaways, and they were caught on Thanksgiving Day, November 28th in Baton Rouge. Ron leaned into the vampire bit, yet also claimed to have multiple personalities.

He showed little remorse, saying the murders were a rush and he felt like a god. He seemed to repeatedly lie during interrogations. He claimed that he drank half a bottle of liquor, smoked a lot of weed, took eight to ten strips of LSD, and about fifteen Prozac pills. Then later said he wasn’t under the influence at all.

He also admitted to faking mental illness but also said that her parents were either already dead or almost dead when they had arrived. He claimed both that Scott had participated and that he didn’t take part. So much of what he confessed to is contradictory or just complete bullshit. Most likely what suited his needs or benefited him the most at the time.

And honestly, he didn’t seem to care at all about what he had done or how he affected Heather and her family. It seemed like a joke to him. Scott did admit to freezing in the moment, which is why his sentence ended up being much lighter than that of Rod’s. Rod did eventually plead guilty when the trial began on February 5th, 1998.

He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. That was later changed to life when sentencing for minors was adjusted in Florida to no longer include the death penalty.

Jennifer Wendorf, Heather’s sister, spoke out in court against Ferrell during resentencing when he tried to get the sentence reduced. The family, however, didn’t have an issue with Scott’s resentencing.

Scott was originally sentenced to two life sentences, which was later reduced to 40 years, ending in 2032, while Ferrell’s sentence was changed to life in prison. Dana Cooper received 17 years and Charity Kesey to 10 years. They are both now out of prison. Ferrell had never apologized until his resentencing.

He said in the original trial that Heather said many times that she wanted her parents dead, then during resentencing that she only alluded to abuse, not confirming it. At the time, he was the youngest person on death row in the US.

The way Ferrell confessed to the murders was so callous and honestly not worth repeating. Ferrell truly believed that he would get out of jail with time served during his resentencing. He had met a woman in prison, a Texas teacher who was visiting her husband at the same prison. They became engaged and she planned to give him a home upon release and make sure he had a job.

Sondra says that both she and her son have changed for the better. I think the one thing that we do truly know for sure is that Rod Ferrell was an awful person, and he seems to truly believe that he had been a vampire. Who knows if the rest of his friends actually did believe that they were vampires, but either way, Ferrell has proven that he is delusional in one way or the other. Sondra claims to have changed her entire life. She moved, she has new friends, she goes to church, and she takes care of her sick mother. I don’t have respect for someone who never apologized until it would benefit him. You want to believe that people can get rehabilitated, but I’m not sure I necessarily believe that this man has been or could. But that is the true story of the vampire cult killings and the movie Vampire Clan.

Now, please tell me if you watch this movie, commiserate with me about how insufferable Rod is. Several times during this movie, I had to remember that this was a true story, and this was an actual person, because I often got lost in my hatred of that character. I would not be surprised if Drew Fuller’s depiction was totally accurate with the smugness and cringe-worthiness. Say what you will about the acting in this, but he did a great job of making me despise him. I fucking hated him.

I maybe should have covered this last week, since this cult was caught on Thanksgiving Day, and it was Thanksgiving in the States, but I don’t care about the holiday, and this movie wasn’t going anywhere.

Let me know your thoughts on this case or the movie. As always, thank you for listening. Thank you for taking your time on this little podcast.

Please subscribe, review, follow at Wicked Cinema Podcast. I’ll catch you next time, and let’s get wicked.

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Sources:

https://dcmontreal.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/anniversary-of-horrific-montreal-murder-different-approaches-to-newspaper-coverage/

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc.findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.HEIRENS

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-7/a-case-of-split-personality-in-puzzling-chicago-murders

https://thoughtcatalog.com/christine-stockton/2021/07/the-call-is-coming-from-inside-the-house-horror-trope-is-based-on-a-sadly-true-story/

https://collider.com/black-christmas-true-story/

“Could I pass a week in the Insane Ward at Blackwell’s Island? I said I could, and I would, and I did.”

Hello, and welcome back to Wicked Cinema. I’m Chelsea, and this week, we’re going to go back in time and talk about a pretty incredible woman. But we’re also going to reveal one of my guilty pleasures, which is lifetime movies. Yep, I’m a sucker for them, and I can’t get enough.

And I don’t even care how bad they are. The lifetime movie we’re discussing this week is actually done fairly well. There are a lot of things I didn’t love about this, and we’ll discuss that throughout the episode.

But today, we’re going to be talking about Escaping the Madhouse, the Nellie Bly story. Now, Nellie Bly was an incredible woman. She was a journalist in a time when women weren’t taken too seriously, especially in the field of journalism.

She was a pioneer. She went undercover for this story. And the quote from the opening is from her article about her time in this asylum.

This came out in 2019. It was directed by Karen Moncrief, who also directed The Trials of Kate McCall, The Girl in the Bathtub, and Pedals on the Wind. It stars the amazing Christina Ricci. I had almost covered her movie about Lizzie Borden in my first episode, but decided to go with a movie that I hadn’t seen before. So when I was researching true crime movies that I hadn’t seen to cover on the show, I knew I had to do this one.

So Christina Ricci plays Nellie Bly, and Judith Light plays Matron Grady.

The movie opens with a quote. “The insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island is a human rat trap. It is easy to get in, but once there, it is impossible to get out.” This takes place in New York City in 1887, and it opens with Bly under her pseudonym Nellie Brown. She’s found wandering the streets disoriented with complete amnesia. She is already at this asylum.

They’re trying to find her family, and people with lost loved ones come to see if she is their lost family member. One man looking for his wife instantly insults her. They belittle her. And while I know this is how women and anyone with a mental illness or poor were all treated like this, it’s still incredibly infuriating. The patients are treated so poorly. Their shoes are shackled to them.

And Matron Grady is in charge of the patients. And she is the one who decides how they are treated and what happens to them. We have Dr. Josiah, who seems to be a little bit more considerate and compassionate, particularly towards Nellie. And Matron Grady takes this chance to put Dr. Josiah in his place and tell him how things go at the asylum. How they operate, but he still advocates for Nellie. And while at this point, we don’t know too much about Nellie as a person or what brought her there, you instantly have a lot of empathy towards her and what she is going through here.

You’re happy that someone is advocating for her, showing her even an ounce of kindness. There are new patients that arrive and they are immediately manhandled and mistreated. Nellie is told to go help, admitting them.

One of the new patients is a new mother whose child was ripped from her so that she could get admitted. And we learn that ritual and routine are the cornerstones of Matron Grady’s so-called cure.

The patients are forced to eat slop while the nurses eat a feast right in front of them. The patients know that the staff can do whatever they want and that no one will know about it or do anything about it. The staff open windows after baths so the patients are freezing, beat a woman simply for asking for water. And this happened to actual people at this hospital that is supposed to help these women.

But, you know, don’t worry because Matron Grady is going to throw a ball for all of the patients because this island is in New York City where, you know, there’s a lot of socialites living a lavish lifestyle. They have balls, so why not throw a ball for these patients? Now because of the way the movie is told, I think it’s best to just go through the whole movie and then give you all the information about Nellie herself afterwards.

I think it just makes a little bit more sense with the story they’re telling. We get to a point where Nellie is having these flashbacks of her life because she doesn’t know why she’s there or even who she is. One of the new patients is named Lottie Hollister.

She is the new mother and Nellie comforts her because she genuinely feels for her. Nellie explains some of the abuse to Dr. Josiah because she feels comfortable with him and he’s already proven that he wants to help her.

He seems rather genuine about it. He is a specialist in amnesia and explains how trauma can block the mind. Josiah and Nellie have clearly bonded and he seems to want to make conditions better and to actually help the patients.

Nellie asks Josiah to help Lottie by allowing her to sit in the rocking chair that Matron Grady won’t let anyone use. She will sit in it in front of everybody else. Nobody else is allowed to touch it.

He loosens Nellie’s shoe restraints once again and he decides that he will help Lottie. She sits in the chair and this causes a complete ruckus. Everybody wants to take a turn. It definitely causes some issues. Matron Grady is called and Nellie takes this opportunity to search Grady’s office. Once Grady gets to the rocking chair and explains to Dr.

Josiah that she used to allow patients to use the chair, but they would fight and hurt one another. She instead leaves it as a sign of hope because while they cannot use the chair, they can still be reminded of better times, a source of comfort, even just a memory of something good. She then sends the patients to something that is ominously called the farm. Now, while this is all happening, Nellie finds a journal that was hers in Grady’s desk.

She’s caught by Nurse Fenton who seems to want to help and agrees to hide the journal for Nellie. They do almost get caught by Grady, but luckily, they find a way out of the situation. The women are forced to haul buckets of rocks across the yard in the snow, back and forth for no reason. Nellie also finds Lottie’s baby’s blanket that she had taken with her to the asylum but had been confiscated. While they have these buckets of rocks, Fenton hides Lottie’s baby’s blanket in Nellie’s bucket, and Lottie is beyond thrilled.

Nellie tells Lottie that she must keep this baby blanket hidden if she wants to keep it, that she shouldn’t have it on her. Nobody can see it or know that she has it. Nellie then shows Josiah her journal that describes the abuse the patients have experienced. Josiah suggests that Grady’s bedside manner is off-putting, but still gives her the benefit of the doubt. Because you know what?

In their eyes, all these women are crazy, and Matron Grady is just the one trying to help them. Lottie did in fact not hide the baby blanket, and it is found by Grady. When she won’t admit how she got it, Grady wants to send her to the Retreat, another ominous sounding place, but Nellie admits blame. Grady accuses Nellie of having a lustful attraction to Dr. Josiah, which they all can apparently see this relationship that has formed between the two of them. Because of this lustful attraction, she is forcefully taken for a bloodletting, and they believe that the leech will drain the lust from her.

I mean, we don’t see anything other than Nellie’s face in this scene. It’s not graphically shown, but the fact that these things were actually done to women, it’s beyond belief, and it’s really heartbreaking.

Nellie is understandably shaken, and after all of this, Grady then forbids rocking of any kind. Not even just in this chair. After the incident, and during mealtime, Lottie is so upset that the blanket was taken from her. She begins rocking. They try to get her to stop, but then the patients all start rocking in unison as a sign of solidarity. Grady is angered by all of this.

She decides there is a lice outbreak, so they need their head shaved. Nellie is the first one up to the chair to get her head shaved, and Dr. Josiah walks in before they start cutting her hair.

He suggests dousing their hair in kerosene instead, as if that’s any better. Grady is smoking a pipe as all these women are lined up to get doused in kerosene. I’ll just say that again, kerosene. Lottie takes this opportunity to steal her pipe and sets herself ablaze. This was such a sad scene. They bury her in the cold, dark night.

And this is really a turning point for Nellie. Not only did she just witness someone’s brutal death, not only are these women basically getting tortured as a cure for their mental illnesses, but she is also starting to get memories back.

She’s getting these flashes in her mind. There was an earlier scene of her and Dr. Josiah outside in the snow playing baseball with snowballs. And the baseball bat brings back these flashes of her and a man, a man that she does not know, but the word bat is reminiscent of something for her.

Nellie takes an opportunity to try and get Nurse Fenton’s help in escaping because she can’t do it by herself. And Nurse Fenton is one of the only people who has shown her any kind of affection or compassion.

But here is where we’re going to start to turn on Dr. Josiah, believe me. He meets with a man named Bartholomew Driscoll, who is looking for Nellie Bly, the love of his life. Josiah has obviously made the connection by Driscoll’s description of her, that it is very obviously Nellie. He tells Driscoll that Nellie was claimed by family and left already.

Driscoll says Nellie is a writer and she has gone missing and does not know where she is. Driscoll is leaving because he was told that the love of his life is not there. But Nellie sees him leaving and runs out to call for him. She’s too late. She is remembering who he is and that his nickname is Bat, short for Bartholomew. When she confronts Josiah, he lies to her.

Josiah is straight gaslighting her, diminishing any good he had done. Now the ball begins. There’s a string quartet and there’s dancing, and the patients do seem to be having some fun.

Josiah pretty much makes Nellie dance with him after he’s told Nellie that he has no feelings for her several times. Nellie is clearly uncomfortable by this, but she has no other choice than to dance with him.

This is when Fenton interrupts telling him Grady wants to speak. When he walks away, she tells Nellie that her brother is waiting to take Nellie back to the city on his boat. Unfortunately, this was all just a ruse.

And once they have started walking to the river, Grady appears. Fenton says that she had to do this. And at this time, Bat receives a letter Nellie had sent him about her going on assignment. And he goes to her boss to find where she is.

We have a flashback to Grady finding Nellie’s journals, finding out who she really is, and giving her so-called treatments, which was practically drowning her, which would in turn cause oxygen deprivation triggering memory loss.

She also tells Nellie that she looked into Josiah, and she does confront him about his past with female patients. He did in fact get let go from a previous job. Nellie says, You didn’t give me my treatment because I was insane.

You gave it to me because I wasn’t. We get some more flashbacks to Nellie approaching Joseph Pulitzer with her idea for a story about the conditions on Blackwell’s Island.

All those memories come back to Nellie, and Grady wants to perform the treatment again so that she will forget who she is and why she’s really there. Before she can almost drown Nellie, Bat storms into Blackwell’s and Fenton takes him to Nellie.

He saves her, then Nellie is discharged. Her articles come out, eventually her book and the police come to Blackwell’s. And this is where the movie ends.

So, let’s get into Nellie Bly and her time on Blackwell’s Island. She was born Elizabeth Cochran on May 5th, 1864, in Pennsylvania. She was born to Michael and Mary Jane. Her father had founded the town. He was a judge and a landowner. He died when she was six without a will, which left the family basically destitute. She did go to college to become a teacher but had to unenroll due to finances. She did begin working for the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1885, though.

She was offered a job after sending the editor a scathing letter regarding an article titled What Girls Are Good For. And yes, you can imagine exactly what that article is. She is clearly a tenacious young woman, and she accepts the job offer.

At the time, women wrote under pen names, since it was considered inappropriate to use their given name. Nellie Bly was chosen after a Stephen Foster song, although it was misspelled. She wrote about social causes and injustices. She even traveled to Mexico, writing about the corruption and conditions of the poor, which was met with her expulsion from the country.

She started working at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, which is where she wrote the expose about the conditions for mental health patients. The collection was titled Ten Days in a Madhouse and published in 1887.

The articles caused a grand jury investigation and later improvements in patient care. She then went on to write many other exposes, becoming a trailblazer for women in journalism.

The pinnacle of her work was her journey to beat the fictional character of Phileas Fogg from Around the World in 80 Days. Bly left New York on November 14th, 1889, traveling the world by several modes of transportation.

By the time she reached San Francisco, the New York world transported her via special train. She was met with critical and public acclaim. The paper even ran a contest to guess Bly’s final time with almost a million entries.

She made it in 72 days, six hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds and wrote her own book about it. Her published books include Six Months in Mexico, 10 Days in a Madhouse, and Around the World in 72 Days.

She married Robert Seaman, who was a millionaire and 40 years older than her. She retired as a journalist after that. They were happily married until his death in 1904. She then ran his company, Ironclad Manufacturing Company, in his stead. During her leadership, they produced the 55-gallon steel oil drums that are still used today.

She provided many progressive employee perks, which eventually cost her so much that she had to join the New York Evening Journal and began writing again. She passed from pneumonia in 1922 at the age of 57, but she did leave a lasting legacy.

Now, let’s get more into her time on Blackwell’s Island. Now, this was at the time a New York City lunatic asylum located on the East River. At only 23, Bly took on this dangerous assignment.

She didn’t hesitate when given this opportunity to investigate the rumors of poor conditions in this sane asylum on the island. Since this was 1887, that is what they called it.

Medical knowledge and treatment has grown exponentially in the almost 150 years or so since, but it’s just baffling and shocking what these women experienced. It wasn’t even that long ago that “insane asylums” were in operation, which is a scary thought. Blackwell’s Island was eventually renamed to Roosevelt Island.

The island also has an athentery whorehouse and hospital for infectious diseases. So basically all the unwanted of society, the undesirables, lie immediately set to work. Getting a room in a boarding house under a fake name.

I’ve seen both Bly Brown and Nellie Brown. She worked on getting herself committed. She would practice and then wander the boarding house and local streets, yelling nonsense and even refusing to sleep so that the police would eventually come for her.

When they did come, she told them she was a Cuban immigrant with amnesia. And this is when she was sent to Bellevue Hospital, where conditions were also horrendous. There she was diagnosed with dementia and earned her trip to Blackwell’s.

The asylum was said to be, quote, an insane place where you’ll never get out, end quote. The asylum was housing more than 1,600 patients, hundreds more than its capacity, with only 16 doctors due to severe and detrimental budget cuts.

Let’s break that down and do the math, because that is a hundred patients, at least, for every one doctor. They were subjected to merciless and relentless abuse, uncompassionate treatments, confinement, language barriers, because many of these women were immigrants who did not speak English and did not have access to translators.

Sexual violence and psychological torment and just simply viewed as an oddity. Patients would frequently become ill due to spoiled food, contaminated water, freezing baths, unclean conditions, and physical punishments.

Bly found that most patients were poor, immigrants, or both. They were all people that just didn’t have help or any mental illness, but they developed lots of trauma and damage from the harsh, unnecessary treatments.

The character of Lottie is not a real person that I could actually find, but I have no doubt in my mind that there were several women just like her that Nellie encountered in her only 10 days spent on this island.

Once at Blackwell’s, Lly stalked the facade and began acting as herself again. Still, most didn’t believe her. She did say that there were one or two staff that did believe her, but most of these people did not care about the patients.

Clearly, the movie does take a huge liberty with making it seem that Nellie had actually lost her memory, because that is not true at all. Nellie was only there for 10 days. Yes, she did endure the absolute horrible and disgusting treatment and conditions of the asylum, because these people were not cared for or shown decency. There was no concern for them as human beings, but she always knew who she was.

She always knew the reason why she was there. So I did really hate that aspect of the movie. It really diminishes her bravery and dedication to social issues, the welfare of those less fortunate than her.

Let’s not forget the times when she found herself in a situation beyond her control as a child living in poverty. This was also such a pivotal moment in her career that is not given the credit it deserves in this movie.

I think Christina Ricci did a really great job with what she was given, and I will hopefully never have to say anything bad about her, but that was not who Nellie Bly was. That was not her experience personally, at least in that aspect.

That part is literally just made up, and I guess that’s where the truth in entertainment intersect. I just really hated that, and it honestly took away from the beauty of the kind of person that Nellie was.

Her whole career was fighting for the underprivileged, the minorities, and those who couldn’t fight for themselves. And this depiction of her here really takes away from the powerful person that she was. We need more Nellie Bly’s in this world.

Let’s just give a round of applause for Judith Light as well, because wow, she really made me hate her. Nellie was also not saved by this romantic partner. That sure does make my eyes roll so far back in my head. Her editor arranged for her release. She did not waste any time. Once she was out, she quickly released her articles.

Starting on October 9th, 1887, a grand jury investigated only a month later. Blackwell’s tried to cover up everything. They immediately cleaned and improved the conditions of the facility, including fresh food and clean water. That is literally the least you can give people under your care. However, all of that did not fool the grand jury.

These articles and the following investigation caused serious reform, including staff being fired and a $1 million budget increase, which this was the late 1800s. That is a big deal.

Not only was Nellie responsible for these incredible reforms, it launched her career. She became permanent staff at the New York World after this. She not only changed the course of mental health care, but journalism as well.

So, while I love a lifetime movie, I can’t resist them. I did genuinely despise how they changed Nellie’s character for this, because that’s what it was. She was a character in this movie.

Her story is such an impressive, powerful, inspiring story. And I think she deserves to be depicted that way. She was incredibly brave. She did not think twice about getting herself committed and investigating the conditions of this hospital that was meant to protect people and help them.

So, I just wish that this maybe hadn’t gotten the lifetime treatment, because even in 2025, the network still somehow showcases women as weak or needing a man. You know, the network for women. Don’t worry though, I will certainly be covering more lifetime movies here in the future. Anyways, that is the incredible story of Nellie Bly and her impeccable legacy.

And I really do think more people need to know about this woman doing so much good work at a time when you wouldn’t expect it. Please let me know. Have you heard about Nellie Bly?

Have you seen this movie? Let me know what you think. And if you watched it, I will be putting some mental health resources in the show notes, because we all know the stigma is real, it’s still there and we need to talk about these things.

Thank you for listening. I’m so happy you’re here. I will be taking a break next week to spend time with my family, as it is Thanksgiving here in the States.

But rest assured, I have some wild movies coming up next month, some I’m kind of questioning why I even watched, some unthinkable crimes, and I’ve got a special holiday episode that you won’t be able to guess.

As always, please like, subscribe, follow @wickedcinemapodcast on Instagram, rate, review, all the things. I’ll catch you on the next episode, and let’s get wicked.

Subscribe now

Resources:

https://www.thehotline.org/

https://womenshealth.gov/relationships-and-safety/get-help/state-resources

https://justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/fv-vf/help-aide.html

https://www.domesticshelters.org/en-ca/domestic-abuse-help-in-canada

https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/national-global-organizations/international-organizations

https://www.nomore.org/the-no-more-global-directory/

https://survivors.org/national-resources/

https://takebackthenight.org/international-resources/

Sources:

Ken and Barbie Killers: The Lost Murder Tapes. Directed by Jim Nally. Blink Films, 2021

https://crimelibrary.org/serial_killers/notorious/bernardo/index_1.html

https://nationalpost.com/news/karla-homolka-calls-police-after-reporters-show-up-at-her-house-hoping-to-speak-to-her

https://www.narcity.com/where-karla-homolka-is-now-whats-happened-since-her-release

https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/mandel-30-years-since-paul-bernardos-murder-of-leslie-mahaffy

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-hamilton-spectator/20240419/281586655647225

https://www.upi.com/amp/Archives/1995/12/05/Canadas-Bernardo-murder-home-torn-down/6068818139600/

“I am mortal, but am I human? How beautiful life is now when my time has come. A human destiny, but nothing human inside.”

Hello, and welcome back to Wicked Cinema. That quote is actually lyrics from a band called Mayhem, a Norwegian black metal band from the 80s. And this week, I’ll be discussing their story.

This movie is disturbing and gruesome. While it’s not horror, the reality of this being based on a true story is certainly horrifying. I watched Lords of Chaos, and I want to tell you all about it.

I did question whether I wanted to include this one, given a lot of mixed feelings amongst black metal fans. But the whole point of this podcast is to discuss the depictions of true stories in the media. And I think the reception this received is important to discuss. Now, the biggest critic of this movie is bigoted, homophobic, sexist, nationalist, and I’m not really too concerned what he has to say or his opinion on anything.

This movie is filled with a lot of really horrible people, and I don’t really care what they have to say about anything. This was a first time watch for me, though, and it’s definitely a really wild story.

Now, Lords of Chaos came out in 2018, the director is Jonas Akerlund. He directed many music videos, as well as Horsemen and Spun. I think there was a great cast in this one, as our main character, Rory Culkin, is playing Øystein, Euronymous Aarseth, Valter Skarsgård, as Bård Guldvik Eithun, nicknamed Faust, Emory Cohen plays Christian Varg Vikerness, Jack Kilmer as Pelle Ohlin, real name Per, his stage name was Dead, and Skye Ferreira as Ann-Marit. This movie opens with a tagline of, based on truth, lies, and what actually happened.

So, a pretty good descriptor to begin a movie with, but we open on Norway in 1987. It’s described as a wealthy and religious country, and we get a little story about our main character, Øystein.

He is a guitarist in a basement metal band called Mayhem. They’re your typical delinquent anarchist teens, and they have some big hopes for their black metal band. Øystein wants to look the part, and he dyes his long, straight hair completely black. He has this really nice family. He wants to make music, and they go looking for a singer for their band. They found a singer from Sweden to join, which is dead. We see the band opening up this package from a perspective singer.

It was a demo with a crucified mouse, and they were a little shocked, but also pleasantly surprised because that fit the whole aesthetic of this metal band and what they were going for. They listened to the demo, and they were blown away.

This was their lead singer. The package was from Per, and again, his name is Pelle in the movie, but we can just call him by his stage name, Dead. So, Dead does join the band, and they move in together in this isolated town to make their music. Dead is portrayed as depressed, bullied, obsessed with death, and he hates cats and also kills them, which is really awful and makes me not like this person. And I don’t love that part of the movie or real life, because it seems as though Dead was portrayed rather accurately, but this band is all about image and playing the part.

Now, Dead is the presence that they wanted in this band, that they wanted for a front man. There’s scenes of them partying, they’re over the top, and they have this wild party outdoors. This is where they meet Emory. Øystein and Dead paint their faces black and white, and that is their persona. Emory wasn’t actually a real person. Now, when they’re on stage performing, Dead cuts himself and then just duct tapes the wounds.

The true story is that Euronymous gave the band its distinct sound, and Dead was the stage presence. He would wear black and white face paint and would self-harm during performances. Per did send his demo with a crucified mouse.

He buried his clothes in dirt so that they reeked. He huffed dead animals from a paper bag, which all appeared in the movie. And this certainly was a case of, fact is stranger than fiction because they could not make up anything that Per did. It is stated by people that knew him that that depiction is completely accurate. We come to this very graphic scene.

This is a trigger warning, particularly for anybody that does end up watching this movie and has sensitivity surrounding self-harm and suicide. This is a really tough scene to watch.

I don’t get affected by much, but even I was a little uneasy watching this. It is a scene of Dead alone in the house. He cuts both arms, then his neck, and then shoots himself in the head. He leaves a note that says, excuse all the blood, let the party begin. Øystein arrives home but is locked out. He breaks into the house and he discovers Dead’s body.

Instead of getting help immediately, he goes to buy a disposable camera and essentially uses the body as an opportunity for a photo shoot, which he plans to use as promo. He finally calls for help, and he also calls the other band members. He tells them of Dead’s passing and gives them necklaces made out of Dead’s skull. One of his bandmates does not take this well.

He’s upset about their friend killing himself, and he is horrified about this necklace supposedly made out of his friend’s bones. Øystein basically kicks him out of the band, tells him he doesn’t need him anymore.

Now, Mayhem was founded by Øystein and Jorg Stuberud. It was founded when they were only 16. Stubberud was known as Necrobutcher. This band was heavily inspired by a band called Venom out of England. And while they were a huge inspiration, black metal as a genre was perfected in Scandinavia. The director of Lords of Chaos was actually the drummer of Bathory, a Swedish band. So, he was involved in this scene and knew of what happened. So, I think he gives a unique perspective. On the film, Dead did kill himself in April of 1991.

Øystein did find him, did buy a disposable camera and take pictures of the body before calling authorities. Necro Butcher wanted the photos to be destroyed and he quit when Øystein wouldn’t destroy them.

One of the photos does appear on a Mayhem bootleg album, The Dawn of Black Hearts, recorded live in Sarpsborg, Norway in 1990. I don’t recommend looking up this bootleg album cover. I’m always the person that when someone on a podcast tells me, oh, don’t look that up. I usually look that up. But this one was hard to look at. The scene in the movie is hard to watch and to see the actual image on an album cover is really disturbing. So, I do urge you to just skip that one. Don’t look it up. It’s not worth seeing. You’re not missing anything. The album cover was later changed. There were more photos with Dead in different positions that Øystein’s father later disposed of, which thankfully they don’t exist anymore.

But this band was really all about playing that part and being this dark figure that is obsessed with Satan and taking down the man, wearing all black and having this entire presence about them.

Necrobutcher has said “That’s why we started to wear our hair all black. We were singing about Satan, sadism, and everything that was wrong, like torture, stuff like that. The opposite of going to the beach, we were looking for perversity and craziness.” They really achieved that. I think that whether it was all an act or not, that is what their persona and entire being was perceived as.

Necrobutcher also said of Dead “The lyrics he wrote for us were so deep and so personal and so heartbreaking, and everything at the same time, beautiful, dark, great. All the emotions are in there. He was a true genius, that guy.”

In the movie, the rest of the band tries to move on from the death of their friend and lead singer. They all move out of this house. Øystein opens up a record shop called Helvete, which is Norwegian for hell. They meet a man by the name of Christian, who calls himself Varg at a kebab shop.

Varg approaches Øystein, and Øystein makes fun of his scorpions patch. Now, Varg is not deterred by any of that. He ends up wanting to be a part of this scene. And he comes to Oslo, where Øystein has relocated to and opened his record shop. He ends up becoming part of the inner circle called the black circle. Varg gives Øystein a demo, and Øystein is clearly stunned by it.

Varg gets money from his mother, because while Øystein loves the demo, he doesn’t have the money to fund it. So, he tells Varg that, and Varg says that he’ll take care of it. He gets that money from his mother to record what he describes as pure metal and evil. Øystein has become this big figure in the black metal scene. He describes himself as the creator of true Norwegian black metal.

And Varg comes off as this unassuming poser, but he may just be the most depraved out of this entire group of people. I’m not totally sure if Varg ever did approach Øystein or Mayhem, but Varg did send letters to the band. And he was from Bergen, which was six hours from Oslo. So he likely wouldn’t have met them after a show, but he did send Dead in one of his letters, the bullets that he eventually used to commit suicide. And Varg stated that he never liked the scorpions, but again, I don’t care what Varg says. Varg truly is the worst person. Øystein did open Helvete and Oslo.

He also opened his own label, Deathlike Silence Productions. And he did create the Black Circle, meeting in a dank basement. The record shop was funded by Øystein’s father. Varg did indeed have his album funded by his mom. At this point in the movie, the record that Varg recorded shows up and Varg wants to promote it.

Øystein doesn’t seem to care too much about promotion or marketing. And he tells Varg that he should just go off and do it himself. Varg takes it to the extreme. He goes and burns down the Fantoft Church. He likely did this because Øystein had told him once that religion is the oppressor. They needed to be burnt down. Varg began to become an icon going above and beyond Øystein. To try and slow Varg down, Øystein invites him to be the bass player of Mayhem because Varg really has become the talk of this entire scene and the black circle. Varg accepts.

He tells Øystein that they should burn down a church together. They go in the middle of the night. Varg sets a bomb and when the bomb doesn’t go off, Øystein sets the Bibles on fire. This was the same for the most part in real life as well. Øystein was the talker while Varg was the doer. Øystein wanted to be known as the leader and he was trying to record Mayhem’s debut album while Varg wrote and recorded multiple albums as Burzum.

He changes his name to Greifi Grishnack, which is a Lord of the Rings reference, while Varg wrote and recorded multiple albums as Burzum, another Lord of the Rings reference. Øystein spoke hateful rhetoric while Varg acted on it.

He began burning historic churches, starting with Fantoft. He often left inverted crucifixes and the number 666 on the ruins. Øystein was not actually linked to any church burning other than Holmenkollen burning on August 21st, 1992.

This was done with Varg and Faust, who was the drummer of another band called Emperor. There was a failed bomb at Holmenkollen. Varg did burn the Fantoft Stave Church by himself, and this was a 12th century church, and he said it was a sacrificial altar to Odin.

He was never convicted of this church burning and the date of this church burning was said to be significant because it was the anniversary of the first known Viking raid in 793.

Now, Varg is very clearly a nationalist, and he seems to take all this history and use it as an excuse to do these awful things he’s doing. It seems as though those in the black metal scene, just wanted to appear evil and worship Satan without actually being Satanists. Varg wanted to protest religions with his actions when they replaced the pagan gods of their ancestors.

There was a lot of racism, a lot of homophobia, and a lot of nationalism in this scene. Now, back to the movie. Faust goes out, looks like he’s going cruising, and then repeatedly stabs a man.

This scene seems like a little bit of a blip in this movie, but that happens because Faust hold Øystein. I wonder what it feels like to stab someone, and Øystein basically tells him, go find out. Now, they’re back at the record shop, and Varg continues to ask when he’s going to get paid since he hasn’t yet, and Øystein seemingly has no money. Faust is at the shop as well, and he confesses to Øystein and Varg, and to celebrate Faust being the new hero of the Black Circle, the trio burn down another church.

Øystein tells the Inner Circle about Faust, and he is getting paranoid and thinking that the police will come after them. In August 1992, Faust killed a man named Magne Andreassen in a park. This was celebrated because Magne was a gay man.

It was on August 21st that Magne was killed. Faust stated that he was never a Satanist or a Fascist, and a friend said that it happened on impulse, that Faust felt he was being attacked. He hasn’t seemed to show much remorse, so even saying, “It’s not a big deal, at least not in my opinion.” Faust is still playing music, and there is sadly not very much information on Andreassen other than his murder and murderer.

In the movie, Emory finally shows up again. She is a photographer, and Øystein has been asking when she’s going to photograph him. She finally agrees. A relationship starts to develop between them. Øystein and Varg argue over burning down the oldest cathedral in Norway for the next album cover. Øystein doesn’t really want to hear anything that Varg has to say.

The arguing and animosity only gets worse when Varg says he wants to go to the press and let them know everything they’ve done because everyone needs to know about the black circle. Øystein doesn’t want them all to go to jail.

Varg goes against Øystein’s wishes and he meets with a journalist and instantly implicates himself, then tells him that Fantoft was burnt on June 6th because it was the sixth day, sixth month at 6 a.m.

Varg wants to bring them back to their origins with Odin and he even confesses that they’re behind the murder of the man killed in the park. Varg doesn’t want his identity revealed but then lets them take photos of him with different angles, his hair in his face, a little out of focus, but he’s dumb and he then gets arrested.

They had no evidence so he got released, but Kerrang magazine calls Øystein looking for Uronimus asking about Mayhem, Varg, the rumors, the Norwegian Black Metal scene, and Øystein is more than happy to talk about all of that.

Varg ends up confronting Øystein for taking credit for everything. He wants to release his album on his own label, Wits Mayhem, and this is when Øystein tells Varg that he made up everything about being a sellout, tours, celebrity, even the fact that Dead’s necklace was just chicken bone.

He made everything up, it was all just a performance and part of the act. Obviously, Varg takes all of this very seriously. It is not a performance for him, it’s not an act, and that is how he really feels. The way he acts is the way he thinks as well. Øystein tries to fix things by giving Varg the rights to his music back, but things have really taken a turn. Varg did actually speak with a local reporter about knowing who committed the murder and who did the church burnings.

There was an article printed in January of 1993 called We Lit the Fires, and Varg says “Our purpose is to spread fear and evil.” Kerrang also did publish a cover story and spoke with Øystein.

The journalist from Kerrang says the film depicted them appropriately and that their image as dark, evil, scary was important to them. And this led people to want to know more about them and listen to Norwegian black metal.

Now, since Emory wasn’t a real person, she never took the infamous photos of Euronymous that have become so iconic. Varg actually took those photos. We’re reaching the end of this movie.

With the help of Emory, Øystein cuts his hair much shorter, which is a scene implying he was trying to distance himself from the theatrics of the black metal scene. This is when Varg finds out that Øystein said he was going to use his taser on him, drag him to the woods, torture him and make a snuff film because their friendship has imploded, seemingly beyond repair. Now, Øystein was speaking bullshit.

He clearly was mostly talk and he really didn’t mean any of those things, but it got back to Varg. So, Varg comes up with his plan. He gets Die Hard 2 on VHS, which is going to be his alibi. Varg has to avoid cameras or being seen and gets driven to Øystein’s. He comes with the signed contract only to stab him. He had no intentions of rebuilding that friendship.

Øystein tries to convince Varg that they can use this to their advantage and essentially look more evil because Øystein said he was going to kill Varg and Varg tries to kill Øystein. Anything for some PR. Øystein tries desperately to escape.

Varg stabs him as he’s crawling all the way down the stairs in the hallway. He repeatedly stabs Øystein in the torso. Another really gruesome scene of one final stab to the head. He also has a hard time taking the knife out and it’s definitely a really gross scene. Faust ends up getting arrested. Varg ends up getting arrested.

And the movie ends with Øystein telling everyone not to mourn him. In August of 1993, when Varg was 20, he thought that Øystein really did have plans to kill him. Varg decided to take matters into his own hands and kill Øystein first.

Øystein was only 25 years old. He was stabbed 23 times. Two times being in the head. And it really was a struggle for power. Varg claims self-defense, but I don’t really feel the need to discuss his story of what happened. In May of 1994, Varg was convicted and Mayhem’s debut album was released.

It was almost infamous since it featured lyrics from someone who killed himself and performances from someone who had been murdered and by the person who had murdered his bandmate.

Necrobutcher and Euronymous had reconciled and wanted to plan a Ten Years of Mayhem tour just before the murder. It was universally agreed that these young men had the talent and that they would have gained notoriety on that talent alone if hubris and ego hadn’t gotten in the way.

Necrobutcher had seen the movie prior to its release, but didn’t want to comment to let people come to their own conclusions. The current singer of Mayhem, who had worked on their debut album, visited the hungry set of the movie.

Varg didn’t see the movie, but he didn’t approve, saying it was all lies. He was sentenced up to 25 years, recorded more burzum music while in prison, and he was released early in 2009. He lives in France with his wife and two children.

Again, Varg is a racist, anti-Semitic, nationalist bigot, and the actor who plays him is actually Jewish, which is some kind of karmic, serendipitous moment.

Stubberud wrote a book called The Death Archives, Mayhem 1984-1994, with old band photos and worked on a second book, but he wants to leave all the negatives in the past, focusing on the future.

Varg’s unnamed friend and driver in the movie is actually Shorre Blackthorn Ruch, a second guitarist in Mayhem, and he had his own band called Thorn. He was imprisoned for his involvement as an accomplice to Øystein’s murder.

Bård Faust Eithun served nine years for murder. He initially was not suspected, but later confessed. He continued to play music and play in bands after his release from prison.

Fellow bandmates and members of other bands did not seem to care too much about the fact that he was a murderer and that he targeted a gay man. So take of that what you will. His emperor bandmate was also involved in the church arson.

The title Lords of Chaos was never actually used to describe this group, and it actually refers to a completely different, entirely separate case that happened in a different country. So, I’m not entirely sure why they called it Lords of Chaos, other than these young boys were doing absurd things and it sounded like a good title.

Øystein’s hair was cut by the coroner after the murder, and not because he felt like he needed to change or reform although Varg did state that Øystein was getting cold feet. That is the Black Metal Murders and Lords of Chaos.

I certainly do not want to end on Varg’s words, so I will get on my tiny little soapbox and give some personal opinions. I was never a big Black Metal listener, but I have always listened to punk music, and I feel like the stigmas related to each genre are very, very similar. The one thing that bothered me about this movie, and it does seem to be a common theme, especially when reading reviews of Lords of Chaos, that people are instantly seen as devil worshipers or satanists or bad people, or not the kind of people that you should be associated with simply because of the way they dress or the music they listen to or the movies they watch or any kind of media that they consume. And yes, this group of people were really bad.

A lot of it may have been for show, but there were also a lot of really awful people, and there were murders committed and they just wanted to be seen as evil. But that is not the group of metal listeners or punk listeners or fans as a whole.

I think that is really important to note. Yes, we’re living in 2025 when a lot of people are a lot more open minded, but there is still a lot of prejudices, a lot of hatred and a lot of criticisms where there shouldn’t be.

So, I do think that that is an important thing to keep in mind about the genre as a whole. I definitely do not agree with 99.99% of anything that these people believed, but I do have a problem with organized religion and the hypocrisy that is so often seen within organized religion. I really think that is a conversation worth having. I definitely don’t agree with destruction of the symbols of people’s religions at all.

I want to say that I think it’s amazing if you have faith and you believe in something, but I have found that so many use that faith and that belief to do really terrible things.

If more people followed what Jesus really spoke about and celebrated Jesus through their actions, not using it as a crutch for their own bigotry, then maybe there wouldn’t be so much animosity towards any religion.

This is not by any means condoning what these characters did by burning any of the churches or agreeing with them, but I think it is an important discussion.

I do want to make it perfectly clear that my feelings are not based on religion or God, God’s beliefs in general or as a practice, but to the people who pervert those beliefs and feelings into something hateful and disgusting.

I do know many people who either practice religion, any religion, believe in a God, whoever that may be to them, and do have some sort of spiritual beliefs. And I respect those people.

I respect the people that I don’t know that also have those feelings and beliefs. So I do just want to make it perfectly clear that my own beliefs have nothing to do with religions in general. And I think it’s a really beautiful thing if you do have faith. I was really happy to do a movie with another Culkin brother. Hopefully there’s one with Kieran. I guess we’ll find out in the future. Tell me what you think. Have you watched the movie?

Are you going to watch the movie? Have you ever heard of this case before? Please let me know.

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Let’s get wicked.