A limited theatrical release, it is based on the crimes of Robert Berdella, an American serial killer who raped, tortured, and murdered at least six men in Kansas City, Missouri during the 1980s.

[1] Beginning in 1984 and ending in 1988, the film follows Robert Berdella, a homosexual bazaar owner and sexually sadistic serial killer who is introduced drunkenly bludgeoning Jimmy Hower, a man who Bob had been holding captive in the basement of his Kansas City home, 4315 Charlotte Street.

During a game of poker, Bob serves the other players chili that is implied to contain human remains, and later drugs, sexually assaults, and murders a yard worker named Mike Walton.

There, Bob angrily tortures and mutilates the man, gouging out the junkie's eyes and going on a religious-themed rant before finally suffocating the addict with a plastic bag while repeatedly yelling, "You fucking robbed me!"

"[5] Writing for The Pitch, Alan Scherstuhl condemned Berdella, deriding its "halfwit script, wretched acting, glib amorality, and inability to establish a clear relationship between the action that takes place in any one scene to whatever happens in the next.