I thought it did a good job of balancing the “rock star” persona he perpetuated in court with highlighting his cowardice and how disgusting his actions were while calling his groupies “the dumbest bitches in the world.” I think to ignore that element would be to miss a significant part of the Night Stalker tale but at no point did I think the documentary had anything but contempt and disgust for its subject. Fittingly so.
Now American Horror Story 1984... that one has some questionable bits in its depiction of Ramirez.
Sure, some time is spent making sure we understand how despicable he was. It's just that it also creates this almost supernatural mystique around him, that even when they deflate it a bit with the occassional tale of what a weakling coward he was, the takeaway is one that makes him seem almost super human in his badness. It's even in the slick and flashy Refn like font it uses to seduce the audience when it spells his name out during the opening- Nightstalker. So cool. So seductive. So dangerously appealing. Even though Ramirez, even when sporting sunglasses, really was neither of the above. But somehow, by the end of the film, both me and my gf could almost entirely understand why he has such a groupie appeal amongst women. How could such a revelation not make me feel a little bit icky.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not getting bent out of shape with some moral outrage here. I shamelessly enjoyed this. But I just sometimes wondered at the choices the filmmakers made from time to time. Even their choice to not give us his backstory, at least not much beyond the childhood anecdote that his father tried to crucify him, just turns him into something that was pulled from the worst (best?) kind of horror film. I think the intent in not including much of his past, was a way of not humanizing him. Which in theory might be noble. But I think the end result of omitting this was that it ends up mythologizing him.
And it's not like you can't make these specials without the bad boy romance attached. The recent Ripper special, which recounts all of the horrors of that guys crimes, never makes him really ever seem like anything more than some pathetic loser reacting against the emerging women's lib movement at the time. Or even the Bundy doc where, as much time as it gives him to explain himself, he just comes off as a small and delusional man by the end. Nightstalker mostly keeps the elusive badboy image that Ramirez constructed around himself completely intact, and it proves to be a durable enough shell to survive the occasional dent the documentary attempts to put it in it. I just think they needed to try a little harder at that.