Horror film ‘Dorothea’ shows fictionalized version of notorious Sacramento killer
Chad Ferrin said he’d never seen Dorothea Puente’s episode of the Netflix series “Worst Roommate Ever,” nor had he visited her boarding house where she fatally poisoned residents in the 1980s. He’d been to Sacramento before, but it had maybe been a decade.
What Ferrin, a Los Angeles-based horror movie director, had was an interest in true crime and telling female-centric stories.
“It was finding a story that fit,” Ferrin said. “I came across Dorothea’s story. And it was intriguing.”
Ferrin’s interest has led to the latest take on Sacramento’s most infamous serial killer and what is also its most enduring true crime story. “Dorothea,” a campy horror film will have its world premiere Wednesday at the Valley Film Festival in North Hollywood.
It is unclear if and when “Dorothea” will screen in Sacramento. The film is being distributed by Dread, the horror label for Epic Pictures Group and will premiere in theaters on Oct. 31 and on streaming on Nov. 4, according to a spokesperson. Ferrin said the theatrical run could be extended if the film does well.
Fact versus fiction
To any moviegoer looking for a hard-boiled, fact-for-fact recounting of Puente’s story, “Dorothea” isn’t it. Even though some elements are inspired by fact, such as the names of Puente’s victims and her history of abuse, other parts of the movie look nothing like real life.
For one thing, the film was shot entirely in the Los Angeles area. Ferrin said he generally works quickly, going from one project to another. He wrote the screenplay for “Dorothea” in two weeks in January and shot the film in 12 days in March on a budget of $100,000. Ferrin tries to be pragmatic as a filmmaker.
“When you make it for 100 grand, you’re lucky to maybe make 150 back,” Ferrin said.
Instead, the bulk of the movie takes place in a Queen Anne Victorian on the east side of Los Angeles that dates to the 1880s, according to Angeline Phipps, who lives there. Phipps, who appears briefly in “Dorothea,” said the house has been a location for other film productions and is a concert venue known as HM157.
Phipps said that the person who built the house, who she referred to as Horace P. Dibble, once faced a murder charge that he beat on grounds of self-defense. She also said that today, her house is haunted. “Things will move on their own,” Phipps said. “The attic is very haunted. I’ve seen disembodied heads up there and I’ve heard strict children calling out my name and like taps on the back.”
Another part of Puente’s story that the film forewent for budgetary reasons was Puente’s practice of making herself look older than her actual age, likely so people would let their guard down with her. The movie includes an older actress who plays Puente as she’s dying in prison, but the star of the film, Susan Priver, isn’t made to look elderly.
“It would have been – because it’s such a low budget movie – too much makeup, too, too much FX to make me look that old,” Priver said. “ So (Ferrin) went in a different direction, as though she were younger.”
Priver looks glamorous for much of the film and gives a vampy performance.
In life, Puente was charged with nine murders and convicted of three. Her real-life modus operandi was generally to poison her residents, have them buried in the yard of her boarding house and continue to cash their Social Security checks. But “Dorothea” goes beyond this.
Puente is depicted committing several violent murders, even throwing lye on one victim while he lies dying in his own grave. In general, the film has an unmistakable undercurrent of dark humor. “I love humor and I’ve done a lot of darker stuff, even darker stuff with Chad,” Priver said.
Priver noted that she’d also worked with Ferrin on a project about serial killer Ed Kemper, with Priver playing Kemper’s mother.
Tracey Adlai, founder and executive director of The Valley Film Festival, said that “Dorothea” was a good film and that it will open the festival, a prestigious spot. Adlai said her festival is selective, screening only 10-12 feature films per year out of approximately 150 submitted annually.
Adlai noted that a film Ferrin had submitted for last year’s festival, “Unspeakable” did well with audiences. “His films are a little unsettling, but they’re fun to watch and they have great effects and good actors,” Adlai said.
Why Puente’s story continues to draw audiences
This is far from the first time a production has focused on Puente. Before she did “Dorothea,” Priver had seen Puente’s episode of “Worst Roommate Ever” as well as the Puente-inspired 1991 film “Evil Spirits,” starring Karen Black.
Married couple Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes, who own Puente’s former boarding house, have allowed filming at it before, such as when a home show renovated their front yard. They didn’t speak with Ferrin and said their house is too small to accommodate interior filming. But they’ve spoken with others interested in making films and have accepted their home’s macabre appeal.
“We’re keepers of the house, and we just – it definitely does not die down,” Holmes said. “And we still have multiple, multiple people out front on a weekly basis.”
She added, “It is what it is.”
Martin Kuz, a freelance journalist who lives in Land Park and generally writes about how international conflicts affect civilian populations, visited Puente six times at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla before he wrote a 2009 feature for Sactown Magazine about her.
“I can tell you honestly that it is the story on which I have received the most interview requests of any piece I’ve ever done,” Kuz said. “It’s the longest piece I’ve ever written and it is the one that appears to have the most enduring interest.”
Kuz cited Puente’s age and gender as contributing factors to public interest. He also noted the vulnerability of Puente’s victims – people who often lived on the margins of society – as contributing to “people’s sense of horror at what she was capable of doing while looking like most people’s grandmothers.”
Up to her death in 2011, Puente insisted she was innocent of her crimes. Kuz, through his meetings with her, avoided being taken in. “She’s a con artist of the worst kind,” Kuz said.
The flourishes of humor at Williams and Holmes’ house, such as a mannequin of Puente out front, can sometimes be polarizing for people, given Puente’s crimes. This wasn’t a concern for Ferrin, though, who said that he grew up on a farm in the Midwest where he saw death “on a daily occurrence.”
“Horrible things happen every day, every minute and it’s just like you’ve got to either look at the positive side of every angle or fall into a deep depression on all the horrible things that are happening to people around the world,” Ferrin said.
This story was originally published September 16, 2025 at 3:00 PM.
