Macaulay Culkin Portrays Killer Club Kid

Sept. 5, 2003 -- After a nine-year hiatus, Macaulay Culkin is returning to the big screen, but he won't be playing the sort of fresh-faced, lovable character that made him a child star in the Home Alone films. He's starring in a low-budget independent docu-drama about a gay, cross-dressing, sociopathic killer.

Watch the full report on 20/20, this Friday at 10 p.m.Watch Barbara's Nov. 17, 2000 Interview with Macaulay Culkin: Video: Click Here

In Party Monster, Culkin portrays Michael Alig, a twisted sort of Pied Piper, whose escapades eventually lead him from New York's club scene, to a grisly killing, and, ultimately, to prison. It is a true and truly bizarre story.

Culkin, 23, says the role was a challenge, but he was intrigued by Alig's incredible story. "It was just so outrageous, and you wouldn't believe it unless it was true, so I just had to be a part of it."

In the film, Culkin adopts Alig's effeminate characteristics and eccentricities. But he says he isn't concerned how this will be received by his fans. For the record, Culkin is not gay, but he says he wouldn't be bothered if audiences perceive him that way.

Culkin was so fascinated by the bizarre world that Alig created, he visited him at New York's Attica State Prison to learn more about him.

"I had to try to find a way to connect with him, and … try to find similarities between him and I. … It's so easy for other people to make him out to be a demon. I think that was one of the things that they always said was that he was a wicked person. … He was wicked, but you loved him anyway."

The Real ‘Party Monster’

Contributing 20/20 correspondent Bill Ritter also visited Alig, and learned more about the wild world of the "Party Monster."

Alig grew up in South Bend, Ind., where he said he just never seemed to fit in. Alig says kids picked on him, made fun of him, hit him, spit on him, because he was gay.

"I had a lisp. … I didn't know how to play any sports. … It was all very macho, and very manly, and very you know, everybody was into tractor pulling and, you know, things like that. … I just didn't have anything in common with the kids I went to school with."

So, at 18, Alig left the Midwest and headed for New York City. Alig said he thought he'd come to New York and make a name for himself and prove everybody wrong.

He soon found his niche as a party promoter in the New York club scene.

"Michael Alig was king of the club kids. You didn't get any higher than that," says James St. James, Alig's best friend during his manic, partying days.

‘Magnet for Misfits’

St. James describes the crazy fantasy world that Alig created, the drug dealing and the grisly killing of Angel Melendez in his book Disco Bloodbath.

St. James said Alig was a magnet for misfits. He would tell them how to dress, roles to play and even gave them names. St. James said, "He sort of gave everybody their little personalities."

Filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato documented the club scene and Alig's role in it. Bailey said the club kids knew they were creating quite an impression in the clubs. "They soon realized that the level of absurdity with which they could dress up was precisely the thing that could get them the attention that they were denied all the time," Bailey said.

St. James recalls, Alig "would sweep in with 30 or 40 of these club kids, these freaks, these drag queens and sort of take over."

All the outrageousness was making the clubs a lot of money, but it was also making Alig rich. He was pulling in more than $10,000 a week.

Alig didn't limit his venues to clubs and discos. He'd gather with hundreds of club kids and hold an illegal dance party on the subways, or storm a burger joint. Alig and his club kids were becoming famous.

‘Blood Feast’

In 1992, Alig began calling his parties DISCO 2000, and each became more outlandish than the one before. Perhaps the most outrageous was a series of parties he called "Blood Feast."

The poster for the parties featured a hammer and had dismemberment as a prominent them — an eerie preview of things to come.

To keep these parties going, Alig and his crew used an assortment of drugs. Alig took them, too. His favorites: an animal tranquilizer called Special K, and heroin.

"We were sort of in the middle of this vibrant scene that turned so dark," filmmaker Babato said. "They were all doing drugs, and just sort of … lost their way. … I think he built, he created this world where it was bound to end in disaster."

It finally come to a gruesome end on a cold winter day in 1996. Alig and Melendez got into a fight over money. Then, in a scene right out of one of the Blood Feast posters, Alig's friend Robert "Freeze" Riggs struck Melendez with a hammer — three blows to his head.

Melendez wasn't killed by the hammer beating. Alig said he was still conscious — until Alig pulled a sweatshirt over his face and suffocated him. But Alig and Freeze didn't stop there.

They poured drain cleaner down his throat. They cut off his legs. They left him in Alig's apartment for days, using ice and baking soda to mask the smell of the corpse.

Then, with the help of a doorman and a cabdriver, they dumped Melendez's body into the Hudson River.

Party’s Over

If Alig felt remorse at the time, he didn't show it. He continued organizing his parties around New York. In a show of shocking bravado, Alig appears on camera in Bailey and Barbato's documentary bragging about the slaying.

The filmmakers at first thought Alig was making some sort of crude joke.

But Johnny Melendez, Angel's brother, didn't think Alig was joking. He thought Alig was guilty, and when Angel's body washed up on Staten Island, others thought so, too.

Cops began to question Alig and Freeze, and Freeze quickly confessed and told them of Alig's role in the killing. Alig's party days were over.

Alig, 37, has now served six years of a 10- to 20-year sentence for Melendez's the slaying. Freeze also received a 10- to 20 year prison term.

Seeing Alig in prison, he appears not to be what he wasn't back in 1996 — remorseful.

Alig says he noticed something about Culkin when the actor visited him at Attica. "Macaulay really embodied that kind of goody-two shoes, but not really. There's something naughty about him."

Culkin says he does have a dark side — but not as dark as Alig's. "It's so easy to see me as this wicked little thing … this wicked little blond-haired kid making trouble for everybody."