At the outset of the mannered and gimmicky and ultimately off-putting “He Went That Way,” we get a title card saying, “This really (mostly happened),” so let’s dive into the true story stuff, which you can read about in a Sun-Times article by Stefano Esposito that is frankly more fascinating than this fictionalized and heavily stylized telling of the tale.
In 1964, Evanston native Dave Pitts was traveling across the country with a famous companion: Spanky, an ice-skating chimpanzee who had appeared on national TV shows and was a star in the Ice Capades. Pitts picked up a 19-year-old hitchhiker for a three-day ride, not knowing at the time his passenger was a serial killer.
