'Torso' filming in Cleveland?

More news for all you torso enthusiasts! Cleveland.com reports progress toward shooting Torso, a feature film about Cleveland's infamous serial killer. I'm excited, but skeptical.

Here's the backstory. In January 2006, Fight Club director David Fincher announced he wanted to adapt the graphic novel Torso into a film, dramatizing Eliot Ness' attempts to solve our town's grisly 1930s dismemberment-murders. Then 2 1/2 years went by with few updates.

Until this week, when the Plain Dealer quoted Bill Mechanic, a co-producer on the project, saying Paramount Studios wants to start shooting in early 2009. The filmmakers want to shoot it all in Cleveland, Mechanic says, but they may have to do only street scenes here, and the rest in Detroit, because Michigan has new tax breaks for filmmaking that Ohio doesn't.

Well. A few thoughts. Of course Cleveland movies ought to be filmed in Cleveland. And of course Ness' Cleveland years were filled with cinematic drama. I can't wait to see the scene of Ness, on his first day as safety director, walking out of the old Payne Avenue police headquarters, promising action. And even though Detroit's gorgeous 1920s architecture could easily stand in for Cleveland's, Ohio should look to Michigan's new law for ideas on attracting film projects.

But a close read shows reasons not to dust off your head shots, in hopes of becoming a fedora-topped or post-flapper-bobbed extra, just yet. The PD, citing Mechanic, says "Paramount executives are putting together the movie's budget and a critical piece of that involves receiving tax breaks." In other words, the funding isn't nailed down yet. Also, the PD says the film "will star Matt Damon as Eliot Ness," but Damon's not listed on Torso's page on IMDBPro (subscription only). I think the PD is going off vague 2006 reports that the filmmakers were talking to Damon about the role. An anonymous poster to Cleveland.com who says he's in the film industry is skeptical too.

Torso could be a great movie if Fincher can see his ambitions through. He says he wants to make it the Citizen Kane of cop movies -- and demythologize Eliot Ness. A worthy goal, but given his source material, I wonder. The graphic novel Torso, while closer to the historic Ness than the Untouchables film and TV series, takes plenty of fictional leaps. To create an effective climax, Ness catches the killer. The real torso murderer was never caught.

Haunted Cleveland torso murders tour

This weekend, I went on Cleveland's most macabre tour, which includes no haunted houses or ghost tales, just actual killings. Haunted Cleveland's Torso Murders tour tells the homicide-curious the story of the never-identified serial killer who decapitated and dismembered 13 victims in Cleveland between 1935 and 1938.

I've read the two main books on the murders, Steven Nickel's Torso and James Jessen Badal's In the Wake of the Butcher, so I figured I was prepared. Anyone who'd pay $50 for this tour likely has a strong stomach and an appreciation of dark horror. But my friend and I were still caught off guard -- we did not expect such an uncensored trip through the county coroner's office, including the sight of bodies under sheets, their toe-tagged feet sticking out. By comparison, the bus ride through Lake View Cemetery was downright sunny. Our destination was Eliot Ness' gravestone. The legendary Treasury agent and Cleveland safety director investigated the torso murders but could not solve them -- a failure many torso enthusiasts blame, inaccurately, for his career's decline.

Buddy Kovacic, a retired Cleveland homicide detective, narrated the tour. As the sun set and the tour followed Kinsgbury Run, where many victims were discovered, Kovacic explained historians' leading theory about the murders. Their research points to deranged surgeon Francis Sweeney, whom Ness secretly interrogated for days, and who sent Ness disturbing, taunting postcards for decades afterward. (Click here and scroll down to read James Jessen Badal's 2006 Cleveland Magazine article about Sweeney.)

Last stop was the Cleveland Police Museum, which has a torso murder exhibit that includes the death masks of some victims (pictured). Badal, the torso-book author, took questions about the murders and revealed he is working on a second book about them. It will focus on suspect Frank Dolezal, who died in jail after his arrest for one of the murders, and Sweeney, the secret suspect.

Haunted Cleveland may run the torso tour once more this year, but its focus this fall is on its Halloween-season Burning River Ghost Tour.