Albuquerque 1965. The movie Dead Beat first begins as a youth comedy, and then it becomes clear that this is a cruel drama. It’s as if director Adam Dubov is intimately familiar with detectives investigating true crimes. Such are the details there. But all the tragic events are presented somehow easily and calmly. The main character, Keith (Bill Ramsay), this womanizer, a slippery type, is capable of going too far. It turns out that he is still that criminal. But still he has pangs of conscience, but he does all the bad things casually, without really thinking about the consequences.
The plot of the Dead Beat
Keith and Kirsten: a scandalous couple
It seems like this Keith has the makings of an artist, but he performs with playback. He is essentially a fake. But he decides that he can do anything. His current passion Kirsten (Natasha Gregson Wagner), the daughter of rich parents, is left to her own devices, her ancestors simply ignore her and don’t put her in anything. So she sleeps with everyone in a row in order to somehow feel not so lonely, and to compensate for low self-esteem in the absence of parental love. She meets Keith and that’s when they arrange a rocky relationships with each other. And Keith, as proof of his love, initiates her into his secrets, it would be better if he didn’t do it.
Debbie Harry cameo as Donna's mother
His friend Rudy (Balthazar Getty) looks into the mouth of an older friend and wants to be in something like him, for example, to be successful with girls. Keith compensates for his shoals in friendship by giving Rudy some money. And the quarrelsome Kirsten dislikes the simpleton Rudy and spreads scurrilous rumors about him. And it’s amazing, but everyone believes them. It is very American to spread a rumor about a person and he will immediately be cancelled from his positions, we have been seeing this in recent years on the scale of a country of the greatest opportunities, not a small town or a local school.
He will play his part in this story, this Rudy, even if he is a beaten loser, but he has the guts to act, separating what is good and what is bad. The moral is that young people should not be placed in greenhouse conditions when they do not need to earn a living. And then they start creating all sorts of game. And they are capable of the most notorious evil, which they will commit only by shrugging their shoulders, out of boredom, or something. No one fathered such guys, that’s the result.
Beat Generation
The leitmotif of the film is Bobby Fuller’s New Shade of Blue, previously familiar to us from the song I Fought The Law; the soundtrack to Dead Beat is of considerable interest, also thanks to the song by Del Shannon, which sounds in the finale. In general, Dead Beat seemed to be intended for a Rebellious Highway. Natasha Gregson Wagner is even more of a jerk here, not as modest as in the Dragstrip Girlfriend. Balthazar Getty is playing a klutz here, not rock and roll as in the Red Hot. And Bruce Ramsay is a very organic smooth operator and works in a barbershop just like the gentle hero of Rourke in an old movie Diner.
Download or watch Dead Beat movie online in SD (470 Mb)
The real story
The film is based on the story of serial killer Charles “Smitty” Schmid, nicknamed the Pied Piper of Tucson (Tucson piper-seducer or Tucson Pied piper by analogy with the Hamelin boy who hypnotized rats). He was small in stature, only 5 feet 3 inches. To overcome this disadvantage, he seriously engaged in sports, which gave him strength and confidence. He was good-looking, well-mannered and knew how to communicate. And he was also a pathological liar and could tell pack of lies, so everyone believed him. He hung out mostly with teenagers younger than him, it was easier to impress them than his peers. Among the local guys, he began to be considered an authority. He did not work anywhere, his adoptive parents gave him $300 a month, which was quietly enough for a carefree life.
Schmid was adopted immediately after his birth, the family was well-off, they kept a nursing home, but his adoptive father disliked him, and until the age of 4, Charles’s life was unsweetened, and then his parents divorced, his mother remarried after. As a teenager, Charles Schmid sought out his biological mother, but she told him never come again.
The Tucson highway, where Schmid the slacker and his friends liked to hang out.
And so he spent his time hanging out at local roadside establishments with his buddies and hitting on girls. He had parties at home, had fun with girls, among them were single “moms”. Then he expanded his interests to sexual orgies. It was in the spring of 1964. One of his girlfriends was a certain Mary French, he also invited his friend John Sanders, who regularly lived with him, to share the three of carnal pleasures. And then he got bored and he said that “it would be nice to kill someone,” hinting that Mary could become that someone. She got scared and turned his attention to her friend Ellen Rowe, whose mother worked as a nurse on the night shift, and therefore she could not ask permission to leave the house and take a ride in the middle of the night. Schmid realized his terrible idea. All three preferred to keep quiet about the murder, and when the police began to ask questions, Schmid said that he had stopped by that evening to pick up the girl, but no one was at home.
Grechen Fritz was the daughter of a famous cardiac surgeon. Schmid dated her (his friend Richard Bruns described this relationship as “a strange combination of hatred and adoration”), and once told her his secret, and when he decided to leave her, she began to blackmail him that she would tell everyone about it. Therefore, in August 1965, he killed Grechen, as well as her younger sister Wendy, who was with her and dumped the bodies in the desert. The father of the missing Grechen hired mafia guys, they came to Schmid to shake the truth out of him, but he managed to convince them that Grechen had gone to California, and even went there himself and interviewed people, “helping the investigation.”
Charles Schmid told Richard Bruns about what he had done and forced him to help him hide the bodies better. He saw that Schmid had completely lost his mind, and was afraid for his girlfriend Katie Morat, who had previously dated Schmid, and could be next. Richard flew to Ohio and there 3 months later, tired of struggling with the rage and shame that overwhelmed him, he told his family about the murders, and went to the police, became an informant and one of the main witnesses in this case.
The informant Richard Bruns
Bruns kept a diary, participating in court sessions from 1966 to 1967, but did not show it to anyone. 50 years later, his daughter discovered these records and persuaded him to publish them. A book called “I, a Squealer” was published in 2018, it describes on behalf of a direct witness the events that shocked the whole country and forever changed the town of Tucson.
The police found the remains of the Fritz sisters exactly where Bruns indicated, and on the same day Charles Schmid was arrested, it was in November 1965. In 1966, Schmid was found guilty and sentenced to 50 years in prison for the first murder, and then to death for the other two, but due to a series of appeals, the case dragged on, and in 1971 the death penalty was abolished in the United States. In 1972, Schmid, in the company of another murderer, managed to escape from an Arizona prison, held hostages at a ranch, after which he was caught and put back behind bars. Schmid lived a terrible life and a terrible death awaited him. In 1975, two prisoners inflicted 47 stab wounds on him, Schmid lost an eye and a kidney, and died of all injuries 3 weeks later in a prison hospital. Schmid’s adoptive parents sold everything they had to pay lawyers, and were forced to spend the rest of their lives in poverty.
The arrest of Charles Schmid
This case shocked the public and in the 1960s served as an example of the immorality of modern youth. Several teenagers were aware of Smitty’s obsession with the idea of murder and no one said a word. The story has been reflected in many films, one of the latest is the directorial debut of actress Rose McGowan, the short film Dawn (2014), based on the tragedy that happened to Ellen Rowe.
Charles Schmid at the preliminary hearing
It was very nice to see a well-designed true edge story in the article. It’s an interesting format in general.
Thank you, Kolya! I’ve spent a lot of time on it, and I’m really glad you appreciated it. I really hope that there are and will be cases when friends and family can stop people next to them from crossing this line, the point of no return.