Hollywood's morbid fascination with serial killers - typified by the continuing adventures of Hannibal Lecter - has spawned a series of dubious biopics about genuine mass murderers.

We've already seen movies based on Henry Lee Lucas and Ed Gein, and now comes a biography of the man said to have been the inspiration for the "serial killer" tag itself - Theodore 'Ted' Bundy.

The charismatic Bundy was responsible for a string of deaths in the mid-70s, raping and murdering anything between 30 and 100 women before his apprehension and belated execution in 1989.

In Matthew Bright's chilling chronicle, Ted (Burke) evolves from shoplifter and Peeping Tom to necrophiliac butcher.

Bright also depicts how Bundy incredibly managed to escape from custody on two occasions.

The measure of a film like this is how much insight we gain into the twisted mindset of its sociopathic anti-hero.

In this regard, Bright's exploitative extrapolation on real-life tragedy is a dismal failure.

We learn next to nothing about what made Bundy tick, and leave no closer to understanding how such aberrations occur.

On the other hand, we do get lots of gruesome detail and gore, courtesy of make-up ace Tom Savini.

Burke, to his credit, does attempt to put flesh on the bones of his bogeyman character, conveying a pathetic blankness when he tells his blinkered girlfriend, "Mostly I just want to be normal."

However, Bright deserves no credit whatsoever for using the senseless slaughter of so many as an excuse for an orgy of gratuitous violence.