The Official Website
of the 1985 Cult Classic Movie Thriller:
Confessions of a Serial Killer!

The movie thriller"Confessions of a Serial Killer" is the thinly veiled account of the chilling life and crimes of notorious Henry Lee Lucas, whose reign of terror came to an end on July 11th,1983.

The film, independently produced in Austin, Texas was picked up for distribution by Roger Corman's Concorde-New Horizons. Unfortunately, the film was shelved in the Concorde-New Horizons vault, unreleased in the U.S. until 1992. Through the years, despite multiple edited versions the movie began to develop a following in underground markets with illegally distributed bootlegs of the film, attaining cult status and growing demand for a proper U.S. release.

DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS FOR CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL KILLER IN ALL MEDIA ARE NOW AVAILABLE. ALL INTERESTED PARTIES SHOULD PLEASE CONTACT: JEFF BROWN

"Confessions of a Serial Killer" Trailer

From Roger Corman's Vault

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ROBERT "BOB" A. BURNS

Lifelong Texan and legendary art director/effects guru, Robert A. Burns, stepped into his only leading role in Confessions of a Serial Killer with a stunning portrayal of Daniel Ray Hawkins (a character based on the infamous Henry Lee Lucas). Burns' portrayal of Hawkins was so close to the mannerisms of Lucas, that several cast and crew members began to blur the line between reality and his abilities as an actor.

Though Burns played several bit parts throughout his career in film, his legendary status was set in stone by his art and effects work on such films as: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling and Re-Animator.

In May of 2004, Burns was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Rather than struggle through the hardships of his illness and suffer through the financial and physical pains of treatment, Burns decided to opt out of prolonging the inevitable-- much to the surprise of those closest to him.

Burns was discovered on June 1st 2004, in his home in Seguin, Texas. The official cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning.

Robert A. Burns was loved by all that had the pleasure of knowing him. His legacy lives on to this day, burned into the hearts and memories of his friends and loved ones, cherished forever in the films we all know and love.

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ROGER CORMAN

Confessions of a Serial Killer was the first independent film acquired for distribution by Roger Corman’s company New Horizons/Concorde. Until that time, Corman produced and released only his own pictures. The timing couldn't have been much worse. Due to various distribution delays, the actual release date followed closely on the heels of a competing movie, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The controversy and buzz about the graphic content of Henry… , soon overshadowed what many critics consider a far superior, Confessions of a Serial Killer, and it never gained traction.

Confusing the issue further, Corman, never one to miss an opportunity to cash in on the coattails of another film’s success, created cheesy, promotional key art portraying a serial killer wearing the same mask as the character wore in the box office smash Silence Of The Lambs – a completely misleading indication of the film’s content.

The film was soon lost in the shuffle and relegated to international distribution and heavily edited. At times entire scenes were deleted due to, “cultural sensitivities”. A once compelling film was carved into a narrative that hardly resembled its original story. But finally, in 2015, the rights reverted to the movie’s original producers who reassembled Confessions of a Serial Killer as its director Mark Blair* intended.

*Mark Blair, the director of Confessions of a Serial Killer, was the pseudonym used by the film’s actual director, John Dwyer. Dwyer was working on a major project for Disney at the time and his agent urged him to use an alias to avoid any potential controversy generated by the graphic content of Confessions…

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THE “REAL HORROR” OF CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL KILLER

CONFESSIONS is a fictional story, but it’s a thinly-disguised telling of the real-life gruesome actions of Henry Lee Lucas and his side-kick Ottis Toole. One of the most bizarre chapters in the history of police investigations began when Lucas was captured in June, 1983. Initially charged with illegal possession of a firearm, an arrest warrant for murder was soon discovered and Lucas, bullied by other prisoners and wanting better conditions, began telling a sordid tale of countless murders to a Williamson County sheriff. Emmy award-winning journalist James Moore was one of the first reporters to interview Lucas and publish his accounts in syndicated newspapers. John Dwyer, an Austin Texas filmmaker, was transfixed by Moore’s accounts, including Lucas's abused background. But it was the odd relationship between Lucas and Sheriff Jim Boutwell, a man notorious for his Wild West approach to law and order that really stood out.

It was the strange game of cat and mouse between killer and interrogator that captured Dwyer’s imagination and hatched the basic story structure for Confessions Of a Serial Killer. It was Lucas’s creepy-casual revelations slowly milked by Boutwell’s cool outward demeanor, masking his internal outrage.

And yet it was Lucas who prevailed, delaying his inevitable date with death row for years by playing Boutwell with false confessions, and ultimately avoiding the hangman’s noose. Lucas’s creepy-casual revelations, slowly milked by Boutwell’s cool outward demeanor baited Lucas into confessions for crimes that later investigators proved impossible.