True Crime Movies

[sdreid]

OK Judy, I will try to hunt that one down then.

[needler]

You won't be sorry, Stan. The film covers more than just the murders, and fills you in on what happened to Hindley's sister and brother-in-law. The saddest things about the aftermath are what happened to the families....Keith Bennet's must still be in their own private hell, and Pauline Reade's finally got the chance to bury their daughter..... but even as I write this, the latest crap word - "closure" - leaps to mind. There really is no such thing. Even knowing your daughter is buried in a cemetery somewhere doesn't mean you have closed that door or forgotten. Even knowing that the terrible twosome killed your son and that he's buried somewhere on Saddleworth Moor doesn't mean that burying him again will bring any sort of peace. I really get pissed off about that word...you might have guessed THAT already. "Closure" cannot apply to things like this, and I HATE that it's tossed around like a Frisbee........

OK, 'nuf said; I'll stop and shut up. Sorry for the rant.

Judy

[sdreid]

No arguments here

[needler]

Don't you just HATE it when crazy people get on the soapbox?????

Everyone please ignore me and go back to the films................if anyone gives a big one, I did a talk at the '02 US conference, with video, of the Ripper on film and my conclusion was that no one in the film trade has a clue about how fascinating the story is when told as it happened.....sad, that. The best mystery EVER and they can't get it right!

Cheers,

Judy

[sdreid]

Yes unfortunately, the film makers have treated the JtR case as a commodity but failed to realize its potential as is.

[sdreid]

Last night, I watched The Boston Strangler: The Untold Story - nothing great. If you are interested in the case, you might find it somewhat worthwhile. It is a little more in line with the modern understanding of the crimes than was the Tony Curtis version. The acting is pretty much humdrum as well with the exception of the actor who plays a guy obviously designed to remind us of Nassar.

[caz]

Hi Stan, All,

I don't think anyone has mentioned Dance With A Stranger yet.

It would be up there on my list with Let Him Have It, although not as high as 10 Rillington Place.

Love,

Caz
X

[sdreid]

Hi Caz,

Yes, love Dance With a Stranger. I have it on tape here somewhere. It would be in my top 15, I think.

[sdreid]

You should see An American Crime, a disturbing and powerful film about Gertrude Baniszewski, the woman who tortured a girl to death over a period of weeks in 1965. Sylvia Likens had been left in her care for the summer. Mrs. Baniszewski said, "I had to teach her a lesson." The whole affair is unexplainable. I remember the case when it was in the news and, at the time, our minister even mentioned it in his sermon at church.

[Sherlock]

Has anyone seen Yield to the Night starring Diana Dors, which I have just obtained on DVD?

It is often stated to have been inspired by the Ruth Ellis case, to which the storyline bears some similarities. However, I believe that the film was actually based on a novel of the same name. Indeed, I remember Diana Dors herself stating on a television interview many years ago that the film had actually been planned before the Ellis case occurred.

As Ruth Ellis was executed in 1955 and Yield to the Night was released in 1956, no doubt the two were often linked in people's minds, especially as the film does take a strong stance against capital punishment.

SHERLOCK

[Mayerling]

Here are a few I recall (hope nobody listed these already):

Madeleine (Dir.: David Lean: Ann Todd, Leslie Banks, Andre Morell) - a classy retelling of the trial of Madeleine Smith in 1857.

All This and Heaven Too (Dir: Anatol Litvak; Bette Davis, Charles Boyer) - based on Rachel Field's novel, it is the story of Helene Deluzy - Desportes and her relationship with the Duc and Duchesse of Praslin, and the events leading to the Duchesse's murder in 1847.

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (Ray Milland, Joan Collins, Farley Granger) -
Ragtime (Howard Rollins, James Cagney, Elizabeth McGovern, Norman Mailer)-
Both films deal (the first one in greater detail) with the murder of Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw over Evelyn Nesbit in 1906.

So Evil My Love - (Ann Todd, Ray Milland, Ramond Huntley, Geraldine Fitzgerald) - a fictionalization of the 1876 Bravo Poisoning Case, mixed (at the tail end) with a suggestion from the 1904 killing of Cesar Young in a hansom cab.

Ladies in Retirement (Ida Lupino, Louis Hayward, Elsa Lanchester) - the transplanting into an English setting of the French murder of a wealthy friend by Eurphrasie Mercier for the sake of her insane siblings in 1885).

The Verdict (Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, George Coulouris, Rosalind Ivan, Paul Cavanagh, Joan Leslie) - set in the late 19th Century, this film is based on the novella, THE BIG BOW MYSTERY by Israel Zangwill. There are elements suggestive of the locked room case of Israel Lipski in 1887, but the victim here is found horribly stabbed to death in his room - and that suggests another locked room case from 1888 that we know of, though of a different sex for the victim. To add to the issue, an illustrated magazine cartoon about the murder (which remains unsolved for much of the picture) resembles the figure of murder with a knife in a celebrated cartoon of the Whitechapel Murders.

Ivy (Joan Fontaine, Herbert Marshall, Patrick Knowles) - although reset in 1909 England (this is the only film I know showing Louis Bleriot's plane landing after he becomes the first man to fly across the English Channel), there are elements in it suggestive of the case against Florence Maybrick, except Fontaine's "Ivy" is guilty, and meets a sticky end.

Hangmen Also Die (Dir.: Fritz Lang,Brian Donleavy, Louise Rainer) -
Hitler's Madman (Dir.: Douglas Sirk, John Carridine, Ralph Morgan, Edgar Kennedy - a rare dramatic performance from this usually comic performer, Howard Freeman) -
These deal with the assassination of S.S. leader and "Protector of Bohemia",
Reinhard Heydrch in 1942. Considering he concocted the "Final Solution"
the previous year, you will excuse me if I like the pleasant fiction that this was actually a premature execution (Heydrich would certainly have decorated a gallows at Nuremburg in 1946).

Prince of Players (Richard Burton, Raymond Massey, John Derek) -
The Prisoner of Shark Island (Dir.: John Ford; Warner Baxter, John Carridine) -
Birth of a Nation (Dir.: D.W. Griffith; Henry B. Walthall, Lillian Gish, Raoul Walsh) -
There have been other films besides these three that dealt with Lincoln's Assassination. PRINCE OF PLAYERS was about Edwin Booth's career, and how his younger brother Jonnie nearly drove him off the stage (only to find the public did not blame him). Burton was Edwin, Derek was John WIlkes, and Massey (surprise) was not Lincoln, but Junius Brutus Booth, their dad.
THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND was about Dr. Samuel Mudd and his years in Fort Jefferson Military Prison as a convicted conspirator. Baxter was Mudd and Carridine was an angry Union guard who is furious about the murder of Lincoln. There was only one scene in BIRTH OF A NATION about the assassination at Ford's Theater, but it was a highlight of the film. Griffith's "Booth" was future director Raoul Walsh.

The Tall Target (Dick Powell, Adolphe Menjou, Will Geer, Marshall Thompson, Ruby Dee) - So far this is the only film to deal with the so-called "Baltimore
Assassination" Plot against Lincoln, supposedly led by an immigrant Italian barber.

The Three Musketteers (Walter Abel) -
The Three Musketteers (Douglas Fairbanks Sr.)
The Three Musketteers (Gene Kelly, Van Heflin, Frank Morgan, Vincent Price - as Cardinal Richelieu, Robert Coote, Angela Lansberry, Lana Turner, June Alyson, Gig Young, Keenan Wynn)
The Three Musketteers (Michael York, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Charlton Heston - as Richelieu)
There are other versions - the murder involved here (which helped end the French siege of La Rochelle in 1628) was the assassination of George Villiers,
First Duke of Buckingham and chief minister of King Charkes I. In the novel it was historically correct - done by John Felton at Portsmouth in August 1628.
But in the 1946 film from MGM whose cast I really recalled, Lana Turner commits the murder as Milady DeWinter.

Becket - (Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, John Guilgud, Donald Wolfit) - the
story of the rise of Thomas a'Becket to becoming chief minister to his friend King Henry II, the mistake of making Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, his gradual split with Henry on theological independence from the King, and the events eventually leading to his murder in the cathedral at Canterbury, and Henry's penance in 1171.


This Is My Affair - (Robert Taylor, Victor McGlaglan, Barbara Stanwyck) - a story about Taylor sent by the President of the U.S. at the turn of the 20th Century to the midwest to break up a counterfeiting ring. The trick in the plot is that Taylor is only known to one man to be a government agent: President William McKinley. And then Leon Czolgosz goes to see McKinley at Buffalo, just as Taylor's safety is becoming less and less certain.

That is sufficient for an early list.

Jeff

[sdreid]

OK, I'll make it a top 15:

15-The Krays (1990-U.K.-1:59) The Kray brothers and their crimes

14-An American Crime (2007-U.S.-1:38) The murder of Sylvia Likens

13-Dance With a Stranger (1985-U.K.-1:41) Ruth Ellis' killing of David Blakely

12-Psycho (1960-U.S.-1:49) Black and white Hitchcock film inspired by the Ed Gein murders

11-Murder In the Heartland (1993-U.S.-2:37) The Starkweather/Fugate murder spree

[sdreid]

A top 20:

20-Dandelion Dead (1994-U.K.-4:00) Murder by Herbert Armstrong

19-I Want to Live (1958-U.S.-2:00) Black and white film about the Barbara Graham case

18-The Murder of Mary Phagan (1987-U.S.-4:11) Leo Frank is accused of slaying a young girl

17-Crime of the Century (1996-U.S-1:56) Lindbergh kidnapping and murder

16-The Life and Crimes of William Palmer (1998-U.K.-3:00) The poisoning serial killer doctor

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Personally, I quite like Stalking Laura (called I Can Make You Love Me in the US), about the case of Laura Black and the mass murderer Richard Farley (who still is on death row).
I usually often get disappointed by Hollywood films that claim to be 'based on a true story' but this dramatisation feels quite close to the actual events, since I know a bit about the case.

The element that differs the most from the real case is probably Richard Farley's apparence in the film. In the movie he is played by the rather young looking Richard Thomas (known for playing the sympathetic 'all-american-guy' roles, like the one in the series Waltons), while the real Richard Farley was rather stout, wore glasses and a beard.

Richard Thomas does a hell of a good job, though, and plays a very convincing obsessive psychopath.

All the best

[sdreid]

I'll try to check that out Glenn. I've seen it in the TV listings but never bothered to watch it because I thought it was one of those Lifetime Channel movies, going by the title.