Not To Be Confused With "The Good Son," Starring Macaulay Culkin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                         You know, girls, it really is too bad Mr. Culkin did not fulfill the acting promise he displayed in childhood.  While he wasn't quite up to Henry in 1993's "The Good Son," he did, at times, convey a sense of creepiness, suggesting that, with time, experience, and maturity, he might have been the ideal choice to play Charles Cullen in a screen version of Charles Graeber's fascinating book.

                                           For the uniformed, Charles Cullen was a real life Annie Wilkes, though not nearly as interesting as Kathy Bates portrayed Annie.  Across a group of hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, he cut a murderous path, killing patients on his Critical Care ward.  The reason, from what I can fathom, has to do with his feeling a victim, thanks to his less than ideal childhood, (though plenty with childhoods far worse do not resort to what Cullen did) a sense of control, a God complex, and the irrational idea that he was being, somehow, merciful.

                                             The book is divided into two parts.  The first, and scariest, details Cullen's background, how he came to do what he did--and where and how.  You know what is scary, girls????????
Some nut out there could read this and use this as a template to do a copycat routine. Hopefully, security in hospitals has been tightened since Cullen's reign of terror, but who knows?  And if, like me, like most people, you have a healthy fear of hospitals, that fear will be intensified as you read this. It could turn the most terrified into Christian Scientists, a thought terrifying in itself.

                                                Nevertheless, it is undeniably fascinating.  I grew up in Jersey, not far from Somerset Medical Center, where Cullen was finally caught, and I knew the locales of the some of the other places he had worked at.  Which gave me pause to think.

                                                   Let me tell you, sweeties, if you could not handle "The Final Diagnosis," by Arthur Hailey, or "The Hospital," by Paddy Chayefsky, then forget this one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                    And where the hell was Nurse Ratched, when she was actually needed????????