Ricky 6 (2000)
On June 16, 1984, Ricky Kasso murdered Gary Lauwers over a $50 drug debt in the woods outside Long Island, New York. Ricky Kasso was a self-proclaimed Satan worshiper, a fan of heavy metal music, a drug addict, and schizophrenic. Kasso was arrested for the murder less than a month later on July 5th, and hung himself in his jail cell two days after that.
Several books and films have documented Kasso’s case. Ricky 6 (also known as Ricky Six and Say You Love Satan) is unique in that it’s a film “based on a true story.” Only the names have been changed (yeah, right). In this film Ricky Kasso becomes Ricky Cowen (aka Ricky Six), while his real life partner-in-crime Jimmy Troiano becomes Tommy and Gary Lauwers’ name is inexplicably changed to Tweasel.
Director Peter Filardi’s biggest challenge with Ricky 6 was making the character Ricky remotely likable. He does this in a number of ways; one, by picking a somewhat attractive actor (Vincent Kartheiser, better known as Pete Campbell from television’s Mad Men).
In a rare case of making the fictionalized version of a news story less (instead of more) violent, Filardi also toned down a number of the facts from the case. In the film, Ricky stabs Tweasel and shouts “Say you love Satan!” In real life, Kasso’s victim was tortured to “three or four hours,” according to witnesses. Also in real life, Kasso shoved rocks down his victim’s throat and carved his eyeballs out with a knife.
Despite leaving out some of the more violent details, the film loosely parallel’s Kasso’s real life. Both stories show a troubled teen’s life spiraling out of control as he falls into heavy drug use (lots of mescaline and PCP-laced joints) combined with schizophrenia (hearing voices). Although Kasso was originally arrested wearing an AC/DC shirt and some press at the time mentioned the “heavy metal” angle, it’s not presented strongly in the film. Instead what we see is a fall from grace (and sanity) by a kid with some definite mental and chemical issues. We see Ricky go from a kid on the football team to a kid who dabbles in Satanism to a kid strung out on dope to a murderer to a kid who hangs himself in his own jail cell in under two hours. Forget those ABC after school specials; let your kid watch this and he’ll “just say no” on his or her own.
After making a brief visit to a few film festivals, Ricky 6 was shelved and never released. Some online sources say that the Columbine shootings played a part in that; others report that the film’s owner is now in prison himself (I could not verify this). Ten years ago this is the type of movie that, without distribution, would have dropped off the face of the earth. Fortunately for anyone interested you can watch the entire movie on Youtube.
I don’t know that I would watch Ricky 6 again or that I would even classify it as a horror movie. If you want to really be scared, read David St. Clair’s non-fiction account of the murders, Say You Love Satan. It’s a hell of a lot scarier than any fiction film.
(This review is a part of my month-long October 2014 A-Z Horror Reviews.)