The feel good summer movie of next year casts lead serial killer.
NewsNew York had the Summer of Sam, Los Angeles had Richard Ramirez. Lou Diamond Phillips will star as the serial killer who terrorized LA in the upcoming thriller The Night Stalker.
Production is scheduled to start this summer.
The Night Stalker mixes the 1985 murder spree with a fictional prison interview where a lawyer tires to get Ramirez to confess to a crime to save another guy fro death row, kind of like Silence of the Lambs with a historic serial killer and no beans.
The Night Stalkerwas written and will be directed by Megan Griffiths who directed 2012’s Eden, starring Beau Bridges and the upcoming Lucky Them, starring Toni Collette and Johnny Depp
“I grew up in Southern California and spent the summer of 1985 in the shadow of Ramirez and it has been a fascinating process to delve into the history in writing this script,” Variety quoted Griffiths as saying. “I could not be more excited to see Lou Diamond Phillips bring this intense character to life.”
Richard Ramirez was a serial killer and rapist who terrorized Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Ramirez was caught by East Los Angeles residents in 1985 when he was trying to steal a car 12 hours after the LAPD issued an all-points bulletin for him. The mob beat him. When he was taken into custody he told the officers "Thank God you came."
Ramirez was convicted of 13 murders, 11 sexual assaults, five attempted murders and 14 burglaries in 1989 and sentenced to death. Ramirez was one of 59 people facing execution who died of natural causes since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978.
He was convicted of 30 felonies in addition to the murders and the murders were pretty gruesome. Ramirez gouged the eyes out of one victim.
When Ramirez, a self-proclaimed satanist, was sentenced, he told the judge, jurors and the family of his victims, "You don't understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all."
SOURCE: VARIETY
