True Crime Movies

[sdreid]

Appalling

That's it!

[sdreid]

Decent

I just watched The Sadist (1963) which was said to be inspired by Starkweather. Good low-budget fare.

[Mayerling]

How about this:

- So bad it's campy good!

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Black Dahlia movies

Hi Stan,

While I agree that TRUE CONFESSIONS was the best serious commercial film based on the case (or suggested by the case), and that WHO IS THE BLACK DAHLIA? with Lucie Arnaz (with all it's 1975 bowdlerization) is the best straight account of the story that television has produced, I was surprised to find this out (which you may be aware of).

I checked it on Wikipedia. When Orson Welles did his 1947 film THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, in the actual shooting and script were numerous references to the Dahhia Murder. Actual about an hour of film was scrapped by order of Harry Cohen (head of Columbia Pictures, which produced that film) including most of the references to the murder of Elizabeth Short. Welles apparently was making a comment on the defects in police protection to the public, and in finding criminals, in order to give some background to the rotten (but successful) lawyers Bannister and Grisby (Everett Sloan and Glenn Anders) who represent the legal world, and who (with Mrs. Bannister - Rita Hayworth) represent the corruption that leads to murders in the storyline. Cohen, who hated the finished film (he couldn't understand it), ripped out that hour of footage probably on the very sound basis that the local police would not like to know their incompetence was being commented on. You can add THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI to the list (with an asterisk, as the scenes are no longer in existnace) of hilms based on the Dahlia Mystery.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Thanks Jeff, I don't remember hearing that but there was a goofy claim by someone a few years ago that Welles was actually the killer.

I do have an old film noir movie on DVD that makes reference to the Dahlia murder but I don't recall right now which one it is.

[sdreid]

Decent

I watched Murder in the Red Barn (1935) the other night about the Maria Marten murder and the perpetrator William Corder. It's entertaining if you're up for a melodrama.

[Mike Covell]

Dear Mr Gacy

The New John Wayne Gacy movie is released this year.

Trailer,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Tjl2n57Ks

Internet Movie Database entry,

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371117/

Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Mr._Gacy

[Mike Covell]

And of course it was released this week that John Landis was back, and looking at directing Burke and Hare!

http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&source=hp&q=john+landis+burke+and+hare&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=OSlbS_mEJJi60gSfx-SaAg&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAwQsQQwAA

[looby64]

The New John Wayne Gacy movie is released this year.

Trailer,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Tjl2n57Ks

Internet Movie Database entry,

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371117/

Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Mr._Gacy

Hi Mike, thanks for the link, looks really interesting, saw the Brian Denenehy version a few times, the new one seems to show more of JWG in jail.
Will look out for it.
Thanks Looby

[sdreid]

Thanks for the heads up Mike.

[sdreid]

Decent

I watched The Stepfather the other night. It was said to be inspired by the John List family murder case and was entertaining, I thought. This film was a remake of a 1987 movie that was also from List according to some sources but who knows since that case didn't really get national attention until 1989. Maybe the film maker was just more up to speed on the case back then than I was.

[sdreid]

Charles B. Pierce, director and actor from the cult true-crime classic The Town That Dreaded Sundown has just died. He was 71.

[sdreid]

Decent

A more accurate although not necessarily better List movie from 1993 was Judgment Day: The John List Story starring Robert Blake.

[Pippin Joan]

Another true crime movie I remember -- "The Man in the Attic", not the JTR/Jack Palance one, but based on the Otto Sanhuber case, starring Neil Patrick Harris. A middle-aged woman keeps her willing boy-toy in the attic for nigh on to 20 years, even moving him cross-country to other houses, all without the knowledge of her husband. The whole thing comes out into the open when hubby is shot.

Wasn't the Belle Gunness case an inspiration for the murderous mother in "The Bad Seed"? Little Rhoda's mother is adopted by loving parents, but she eventually remembers that she is the daughter who escaped being murdered by a psychopathic mother in a prairie farmhouse.

[sdreid]

Hi Joan,

I just watched the film Hurt earlier this week and it reminded me a lot of The Bad Seed. Regarding the latter, I need to watch it again and see if I detect any similarities with Gunness.