Elizabeth Kendall, the former fiancée of Ted Bundy, has made her thoughts known on Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, which was based on her memoir The Phantom Prince that relates her life with the convicted serial killer.
The book had been out of print for years, but when Kendall was approached by documentary director Joe Berlinger, who also made Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, she decided that working with the filmmakers would provide the most honest account of her tale. In an updated edition of the book reissued last month, she addresses the movie and describes her thoughts on how it portrayed her story, saying:
“If the story was going to be told again, the only way we could influence the outcome was to work with the film and documentary makers. We decided this was the most empowering way to proceed.”
Of the completed film itself, she states:
“It was well-directed and well-acted. We were left with the feeling that Zac Efron and Lily Collins got it right.”
The movie takes the unusual approach of not showing any actual killing, choosing instead to focus on the relationship between Kendall and Bundy, how his charm and affability blinded her to the truth about him, and the ways in which his arrest and trial affected her life. Of course, some things were changed for the adaptation, which was an inevitable necessity in abridging a lengthy recount into a sub-two hour narrative. And the alterations to the related events were why she felt it necessary to reprint the book.
“We realized that with the dramatization of a true story, things must be omitted, condensed, or combined to help the story fit within time constraints. It was essential that we tell our story in our own words as we experienced it.”
Overall, the reactions to Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile were distinctly average, but the story behind it is one that continues to fascinate, especially told from the perspective of someone closer to it than anyone.
