Appropriate Adult

   The lurid lives of Fred and Rosemary West have been documented in half a dozen books including 'Happy Like Murderers' (Gordon Burn), 'The Corpse Garden' (Colin Wilson) , 'Fred and Rose' (Howard Sounes), and 'An Evil Love' (Geoffrey Wansell), my favorite of the bunch. The British thriller, Mum and Dad, was an impressionistic take on elements of the story. It focused on the couple's psychopathic dynamic without directly identifying them.  Several documentaries have been doing the rounds on the telly and on youtube. Now and then, authentic Fred audio leaks out to interested parties, of which I am one. As far as 20th century criminality goes, the West story is right up there with Manson, The Moors Murderers, The Monster of the Andes (Pedro Lopez), Gacy, Dahmer, and more recently, the Jaycee Dugard/Phillip and Nancy Garrido case, and that of Austria's Joseph Fritzl, who imprisoned and raped his daughter for decades (and fathered children with her).  Considering the depth, breadth, and lengthy time frame of the Wests' crimes against women, children, and the unborn, there is a mother lode of perverted drama to draw on for filmmakers and writers.

Britain's ITV has broadcast a take on the story from an "appropriate" point of view. Appropriate Adult is an example of how you do Fred and Rose on TV without offending 99% of your audience. A truly literal movie would be closer to Tim Roth's The War Game mixed with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deep Crimson, and Serbian Film.  You'd also need to weave in some of the most extreme Euro porn from the 70's such as Kilroy Was Here (one of Fred's favorites) and the German Violence and Slave Sex series. I'd also suggest, just for tone, you toss in some live action 'Antoine Bernhard' (look him up on this blog). In today's tender market, where something like Serbian Film is being banned and cut around the world, a graphic tale of Fred and Rose West is likely to remain the untold story.

 The producers of Appropriate Adult were clearly aware of all of the above, so, still determined to tell the story, chose an interesting point of view.  In Britain, if a person is being charged with a crime, and it has been determined that that person has learning difficulties and may be unable to comprehend what they are being charged with, an Appropriate Adult (AA) is assigned to them. In Fred's case, the AA was Janet Leach (Emily Watson), a woman whose previous experience was academic only. Needless to say, her time with the serial killer became a fiery baptism.

 Taking Janet's point of view, we only see what Janet sees when Fred is being questioned and charged,  but we also get to hear what Fred shares with Janet when the cops are out of the room or distracted. It is what Fred shares discreetly with Janet that provides the film with its more incendiary drama. Janet develops a strange, somewhat dependent relationship with Fred while he appears to be smitten with aspects of her that remind him of his true love, Anna McFall -- I say "appears" because we're never quite sure whether Fred is playing Janet for a fool or is sincere in his affection for her.  This ambiguity keeps the drama bouncing.

Although there are some visits to the house where Fred and Rose lived, loved, raped and murdered, this TV movie is mostly set in a police station and prison. Although it's quite talky, it's never less than fascinating in its limited way because West (played with enormous subtlety by Dominic West) is a compelling character, a man of contradictions who elicits both sympathy (at times) and hatred. We get to see the charmer who managed to charm the pants off the women he ultimately raped and killed. And, although it's not covered in this extremely abbreviated version of almost thirty years of mind-boggling events, West also charmed the police into believing that accusations and suspicions thrown at him were a bunch of hysterical hogwash. He was accused of raping and kidnapping years before close to a dozen charges finally stuck, but he always weaseled his way out of anything serious and happily carried on as a devoted husband to Rose and father to a brood of children whose numbers he was personally reducing in his basement.

Naturally, Appropriate Adult soft pedals Fred's true nature to easily offended TV viewers, so a rather distorted, milky picture of him emerges. The truth is, he raped his daughter Heather for most of her lifetime, and would accuse her of being a lesbian when she attempted to reject his advances. Heather's body was also shared by Fred with his brother John, who happily took Fred's rape baton. He was eventually charged. The majority of Fred's children were sexually abused or forced to witness the abuse that was commonplace in the West household, a household that was closer to a Sadean brothel than a home sweet home.  Fred was also obsessed with corpses and raped his way through the ones he created, often playing with and souveniring body parts. Because none of this is covered in Appropriate Adult "(Don't mention the war or the corpses!") , the picture we get of the man is extremely controlled and not a little inaccurate. What service such sanitization of character provides is a little uncertain to me, and this is where I found Appropriate Adult problematic.

If you want to tell a story about a shocking crime, is it appropriate to underplay the shocking aspects of that crime when it is the shocking aspects (and their implications) that made it notorious, and extraordinary, in the first place? To me, it's a little like having your cake and eating it, too -- you exploit the public's hunger for horror to reel them in, but you refuse to indulge their appetite for it when you've got them in your hand. It's the old bait and switch. I know the commercial reasons for it, but commercial reasons for anything have nothing to do with what may be right. 

 Because I know the Fred and Rose story inside out, I felt a bit cheated by the Fred and Rose Lite we get here. Although Dominic West (playing Fred) and  Monica Dolan (chilling as Rose) are totally convincing, and, yes, the production is a handsome and well written one, I wanted to see so much more, especially how Fred and Rose interacted as a couple before they were imprisoned and separated. That, to me, is what's interesting. But there is little here of  that 'Evil Love', that special connection, that inseparable partnership in which they experienced crazy love as husband and wife, parents, killers, rapists, and sexual adventurers. What kind of love survives that? What kind of love is strengthened by that? That's what's truly fascinating. That's the untold story so far.

Fred West Side Story

It might make me terribly unpopular to say it, but I have a lot of time and sympathy for Fred West. Fred was a kid once, just as we all were. He was a blank tablet upon which a life would be written. The upbringing he got ended up becoming the upbringing he gave to his own offspring. My sympathy goes out to the boy who was never given a roadmap to becoming a man. His parents (his first teachers) were abusers. He became, naively, a good student.

I always find childhood photographs of murderers and rapists awfully sad. You look at them and you see potential destined to be crushed. You stare into their eyes and you see that there was light once, a light that was gradually extinguished.


British publishing has a lot of time for Fred, too.

In fact, where would it be without him?

These are the best of close to a dozen books recounting the Fredster's lifestyle. Even Colin Wilson got in on the act with his luridly titled 'The Corpse Garden' -- and that's no metaphor, either. Fred's garden was chocka with corpses of his kids, ex-tenants, ex-wives, and unwanted visitors. The guy didn't suffer fools, that's for sure.

Although Howard Sounes was the journo who broke the story of Gloucester's royal couple of perversion, his 'Fred and Rose' was beaten to the punch by 'An Evil Love', the equal best of the books alongside 'Happy Like Murderers'. It's not that Sounes doesn't describe Fred's shocking life of abuse with passion and a little relish -- he certainly does. It's just that 'An Evil Love' is a better read. It's a "cracker", as they say, with more suspense, expert characterization, and surprise plot turns than the best Jack Ketchum novel.

Richard Ferguson, QC, had this to say about Gloucester's favorite son: "He was a man devoid of compassion, consumed with sexual lust, a sadistic killer and someone who had opted out of the human race...the very epitome of evil."

You've got to work damn hard to earn praise like that.

As monsters go, Fred wins. He's the real life Freddie Kruger without the metal fingers.

Not that Fred didn't go in for utensils and interesting contraptions to assist him in his reign of terror. He abused a litany of women with a devious contraption he'd constructed called The C*** Buster. Rose, his partner in crime, developed a very cosy relationship with this ferocious sex aid; it was so cosy, in fact, that Fred had to fight her for it when he had an itch to scratch. Fred also built metal frames, harnesses, and various restraining devices for his parade of unwilling "lovers" (inside and outside the family). He was relentless in his pursuit of perversion. If the guy had channeled all this energy and creativity into a lawful, legitimate enterprise, he could have given Virgin's Richard Branson a run for his money.

The most fascinating aspect of Fred West is that he got away with murder and other atrocities time and time again. He was seemingly bulletproof.

Gordon Burn's 'Happy Like Murderers' covers similar ground to the other books, but it is more detailed and more psychologically penetrating. A fiction writer by trade, Burns he recounts the Fred and Rose story as if creating highly credible fiction. The book is fascinating reading, and is the most explicit of the bunch.

Efforts have been made to bring Fred West's Sadean adventures to the big screen. None have succeeded so far. Although there have been brief TV recreations of his crimes in series such as "Crimes That Shook The World", the hands-down most chilling is the documentary 'Fred West Child Abuser Child Killer', which has been posted in 13 parts to youtube.

The first part is here: h***://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eSZ3-xwZZE&feature=related (replace ***'s with ttp, of course)

West even inspired a twisted musical parody called "Fred West Side Story" (also available on youtube).

Although the guy took his own life in a jail cell, it is more than his ghost that still lingers.