True Crime Movies

[sdreid]

There was a good television movie back in the 1970s with Elizabeth Montgomery as Lizzie, and Fritz Weaver as Andrew Jackson Borden.

Jeff

I agree.

[Pcdunn]

I agree.

The Elizabeth Montgomery TV movie gave me nightmares when I saw it. Pretty evocative for the period. Years later, I read a very long magazine article in Atlantic (?) by a scholar which talked about the town, the crime, the trial, and modern attitudes to Lizzie, including the famous rhyme. This was the first time I learned some psychologists felt there had been incest involved.

The TV series is interesting, but has Lizzie as a full-fledged sociopath, managing to kill off absolutely everyone who offers the slightest inconvenience to herself and her elder sister Emma. Christina Ricci plays her as a fragile, doe-eyed innocent who can turn into a frenzied assassin at a (carefully-chosen) moment. The taller, stockier actress playing Emma Borden is far closer in appearance to the real Lizzie. Still, it's good psychological drama meets horror entertainment, as long as you take it as fiction.
I do reccomend the pilot for this series, which did focus on the murders and the trial, and which introduced Ricci as Lizzie. It is well done.

[Mayerling]

The Elizabeth Montgomery TV movie gave me nightmares when I saw it. Pretty evocative for the period. Years later, I read a very long magazine article in Atlantic (?) by a scholar which talked about the town, the crime, the trial, and modern attitudes to Lizzie, including the famous rhyme. This was the first time I learned some psychologists felt there had been incest involved.

The TV series is interesting, but has Lizzie as a full-fledged sociopath, managing to kill off absolutely everyone who offers the slightest inconvenience to herself and her elder sister Emma. Christina Ricci plays her as a fragile, doe-eyed innocent who can turn into a frenzied assassin at a (carefully-chosen) moment. The taller, stockier actress playing Emma Borden is far closer in appearance to the real Lizzie. Still, it's good psychological drama meets horror entertainment, as long as you take it as fiction.
I do reccomend the pilot for this series, which did focus on the murders and the trial, and which introduced Ricci as Lizzie. It is well done.

The only person who has ever been really presented as a possible alternative to Lizzie was Bridget Sullivan, the maid. But the speculation against her was stretching things a bit. Since then they've suggested Andrew had an illegitimate son who got into the house to wreak vengeance on his father and stepmother. At the time people talked of a wandering tramp (the earliest major chronicler of the case, Edmund Pearson, got so tired of this will-of-a-wisp suspect, he always pointed out that in that period people like to blame murders on transients at the drop of a hat*). I remember there was an episode on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" about Lizzie, and it suggests that it was actually her sister Emma who was the killer (Lizzie protecting her sister). If so they did not remain friendly after the estate was divied up (I think Emma survived Lizzie or vice versa in 1927 by about two weeks or so).


[*He wasn't the only one who made this into a joke - Stephen Leacock, the Canadian humorist, did a spoof on "The Great Detective" and his loyal, ever amazed "Watson" whom Leacock calls, "the poor Nut!". He takes apart, in typical fashion, all the key moments in a Conan Doyle story, such as the Great Detective showing off encyclopedia knowledge - he overhears a casual mention of "Istanbul" and suddenly looks up and says, "That used to be "Constantinople", wasn't it?" Finally they get to the solution, including a "Moriarty type" nobody has ever head of named "Blue Edwards" (who blew up some Russian peasants with a bottle of Epsom salts), a ferocious unrepentant foreign adventuress who hates everyone, and a tramp with a lost, wild look in his eye. Leacock points out that the problem is punishment of the perpetrator, especially when he has a "lost, wild look in his eye", which causes for one to feel pathos for him.]

Jeff

[Pcdunn]

Couple of new TV movies or miniseries about true crimes airing on different cable channels out here:

"Aquarius" stars David Duchovany as a Los Angeles police detective looking for the missing daughter of a friend. He is eventually led to a small-time criminal named Charles Manson. Set prior to the Tate-LaBianca murders, we see the wannabe musician writing songs and setting up his "family" in a secluded area.

"Angel of Decay" is a three-part miniseries airing on a new series called "Serial Thriller" on the ID Channel. Apparently it dramatizes real-life serial murder cases. This one is described as police noticing a pattern when people with similar profiles begin disappearing. The case isn't identified at first, allowing viewers to follow the clues as the investigators do.

[GUT]

An oldie but a goodie

Serpico

[sdreid]

I have given up on the Manson show Aquarius.

[Pcdunn]

I have given up on the Manson show Aquarius.

[shrug]It's over, anyway. They never got around to the Tate-LaBianca murders... just a not-so-veiled reference at the every end of the last episode, when Charlie tells his girls "We're a family, and someday everyone will remember us."

I did like his story about learning as a small child that to avoid being scared, you become "the thing other people fear."

[sdreid]

I'm going to watch the 1937 film Love From a Stranger tonight. It was supposedly inspired by the G. J. Smith murders. The Brides in the Bath Killer was hanged 100 years ago.