Truman Capote and IN COLD BLOOD - three movies compared

IN COLD BLOOD (1967)

CAPOTE (2005)

INFAMOUS (2006)

It’s not about Capote vs Infamous – the must-see is In Cold Blood

The story so far…

Kansas, 1959. Two men rob a remote farmhouse at night. They kill the entire family in cold blood and flee. The story hits headlines across the country and a manhunt begins. Celebrated author Truman Capote takes an interest in the story and travels to Kansas to begin documenting every aspect of the case, interviewing the police, detectives, as well as friends and relatives of the victims. When the killers are finally caught, Capote interviews them, at length. The resulting book is a unique, narrative presentation of a crime. It’s widely lauded as a critical success. Two years later, In Cold Blood becomes a hit film.

Almost forty years later, two more movies are being made, Capote and Infamous, based on different books. But both telling very similar stories about the killings and how the writing of the book affects the author. Capote is released to wide acclaim in 2005 and gets five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. But Infamous has its release delayed until 2006 - the reviews are good, but it barely competes with the Oscar-winner (Best Actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman) that beat it into cinemas.

Capote and me

I first saw Truman Capote in his suitably bizarre role in the Neil Simon comedy Murder By Death back in 1978. I knew he was famous, but not that he’d written Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Seeing photos of him at Studio 54 and reading stories about him in Gore Vidal’s books, I built an image of a short, loud, unique, gossipy gay individualist who wrote fluffy comedies about New York society. That he’d also written the best screen adaption of The Turn of the Screw (filmed as The Innocents) and a tough documentary novel about mass murder didn’t quite fit that image.

When I later saw Michael Mann’s Manhunter, I thought the opening hook, that a serial killer would kill an entire family, was a new idea. I eventually tried to read In Cold Blood, but thought it a long, dry presentation of endless facts.

So now, Capote and Infamous come along, I had two chances to learn more about Capote and his reasons for writing In Cold Blood.

To try and get a different angle I watched Infamous first, to give the underdog a chance. Then Capote, and finally In Cold Blood, the reverse order of their original release dates.

INFAMOUS
(2005, US)

At least, Hollywood didn’t remake In Cold Blood (there was already a 1996 TV movie) opting instead to tell the story of how Capote wrote it. Unfortunately for Infamous, a rival production was filming the same story.


It starts off well, as a comedy, Truman in fine form amongst the jet-set of Manhattan society. I was surprised by the added starpower of Sigourney Weaver and Isabella Rossellini in cameo roles. The comedy continues as Capote (Toby Jones) travels to Kansas with Nelle Harper Lee (an excellent performance from Sandra Bullock) who has crucially just written To Kill A Mockingbird.

Even in a small farming town, Truman doesn’t tone down his extravagant, out-gay personality even a notch. Even though he’s constantly mistaken for a woman. Respectfully he becomes more serious as he attempts to talk to the townsfolk, in a tight community that’s been shaken by the tragedy.


When the killers are captured, Capote manages to talk to them and stays in Kansas, developing a long-standing and increasingly close relationship with one in particular (played by Daniel Craig). Though it’s not clear why he focuses on only one of them, Capote needs to build his trust in order to find out what happened that night, but if he confesses it could affect both their sentences…


As the case draws out over the years, the stress takes its toll on Capote as he struggles to complete the book. He’s not shown in a perfect light, when he lies to his friends. The story gets a little fragmented, looking more like they've skipped to all the juiciest bits from the book, rather than keeping to a narrative.


Infamous successfully depicts the effect the murders have on the town, and even the country. But the murderers also get sympathy, sitting on death row. Truman says that the title of his book is as much about the death penalty as the original crime. However, this could be another lie to keep the killers’ cooperation, and therefore keep the flow of material for the book. But the fate of the murderers looks as brutal as their crimes.

CAPOTE

(2005, US)

Watching this a few weeks after Infamous, the story was far too similar. The story based on exactly the same events. I felt that many scenes were too short, not including as much background information. Important supporting characters were given far more time in Infamous, especially the Detective in charge (Chris Cooper) and Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener).

Also, a couple of pivotal scenes have little dialogue, the audience supposedly settling for Philip Seymour Hoffman just standing there acting... (like the bizarre scene, above). Hoffman is also allowed to indulge his impersonation of Capote’s mumbling lisp to the point of inaudibility.

Toby Jones’ Capote in Infamous, is more sympathetic and more audible, not to mention the closer physical resemblance. I’d first seen Jones in The Mist and then learnt he’s the son of Freddie Jones, one of my favourite British character actors. Not only did his dad play the best Frankenstein experiment (Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed) but is a regular collaborator with David Lynch (Dune, The Elephant Man). Not much bearing on Toby Jones as an actor, but interesting trivia.

Capote focuses on Truman manipulating the situation for his own ends, which admittedly was affecting his life drastically. While concentrating on his more controversial decisions, it also presents less context for the viewer to decide for themselves. Infamous concentrates on Capote’s developing relationship with one of the killers, which I thought was more interesting, as long as it was true.

In comparison, Capote felt like it had more money up on the screen, with more extras in the crowd scenes and wider shots in the historical recreations of settings, like the courtroom. It’s also noteworthy for the beautiful but bleak cinematography, emphasising the wide open spaces of flat Kansas farmland.

Whichever you see first, the other will seem like a close copy. Two too similar versions of the same events. It’s almost unbelievable that both got made.

IN COLD BLOOD

(1967, US)

Wow. The film of the book, released only two years after it was published. A book and a murder case that the whole country had been talking about, but Richard Brook’s movie doesn’t play it safe. Like the book, it’s a meticulous recreation of the events, but also one of the best true-crime movies. It takes risks with the narrative and the cinematography, with edgy language and superb performances.

It starts with Quincy Jones’ exciting offbeat music and stays gripping to the end. It felt like they were trying to cram in as much detail from the book as possible. I was particularly impressed with the transitions between scenes, locations and time frames. Sometimes visual links, sometimes stream of consciousness logic. It keeps the audience concentrating - blink and you might miss a switch to a different location, or a different month.

The black and white photography is superb, even Vegas looks good. The look of monochrome in 2.35 widescreen was short-lived but I really like it. It was by the late Conrad Hall, an award-winning cinematographer who also filmed many episodes of classic The Outer Limits, Marathon Man (1975) and American Beauty (1998).

At the time, shooting in black and white would have been cheaper, as well as a less bloody choice, but it would also be more familiar to 1967 audiences as ‘the look’ of the 1950s. Only the handheld camerawork and zoom lenses identify it as late 1960's.

Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were offered the roles of the killers. This was obviously a prestigious project, but casting the most handsome and charismatic actors in Hollywood would have glamourised the killers.

I already knew Robert Blake (Electra Glide In Blue, Lost Highway) played one of the killers, but was surprised to see Scott Wilson as the other. I’d known Wilson from The Ninth Configuration and Exorcist III, not to mention his recent cameo in South Korea’s The Host. I never knew he was in this. His character is enthusiastic, sleazy and dangerous - usually he plays paranoid and downbeat.

The late John Forsythe (Scrooged, The Trouble with Harry, Dynasty) is the detective in charge of the murder hunt. The strongest performance I've seen him give. A dogged and professional policeman, a level-headed choice to nail one of America’s most sensational murder cases.

Of the three movies, this is very different. Truman Capote isn’t represented at all, which feels strange knowing the amount of his involvment. There’s just a small role, a detective, who subtly represents ‘a writer’. But this is really just the story of the killers, not about the writing of the book. While the effect of the murders on the local community isn’t shown as much as Infamous, this is the only version that fleshes out the family of victims as characters. Something I felt lacking in both the recent films.

The script for In Cold Blood still feels modern - tough-talking, swearing even, interested in psychiatry (and psychics) for clues to the murderers’ identities, with a weary cynicism about press involvement.

Afterwards, I discovered that In Cold Blood was shot in many of the actual locations, including the house where the murders took place! A rather ghoulish and cold-blooded attention to detail which occurs in other murder recreations (like 10 Rillington Place and Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures). Maybe it helped sell the film, but surely it’s in poor taste for such a major work.

The exceptional Quincy Jones’ soundtrack sounds like it’s been influenced by Henry Mancini and Lalo Schifrin. I can’t believe it’s never been on CD.

In Cold Blood was all the more impressive because I’d watched it last of the three and it was still fresh and compelling. If you only watch one film, watch this one.

In Cold Blood was a big deal in 1967, but 'true crime' is now a whole department in bookstores, and we’re spoiled for murder documentaries and crime movies 'based on a true story'. It’s still rare that an acclaimed writer interviews the murderers, and an artist directs the movie. While it's a very impressive entertainment, I still feel guilty that if they hadn't murdered anyone, we wouldn't be so interested in their lives. If only they hadn't forgotten to buy that pair of black stockings...



Conclusion

Whichever you watch first, of Infamous or Capote, will probably be the one that impresses you the most. I watched Infamous first, and it was the more rewarding of the two. But In Cold Blood is the movie you mustn’t miss. You can even watch it after either of the others. It’s really that strong. And there isn’t a Truman Capote impersonator in it.



Capote and In Cold Blood are out now on a 2-disc Blu-Ray double bill. Details and screengrabs here on the exceedingly thorough DVD Beaver.



In Cold Blood trailer on YouTube...

THE NANKING MASSACRE - two films to remind us

Why do I do this to myself? First I watch two intensely depressing dramatic recreations of war atrocities, intense enough to haunt me for days. Then I decide to review them, challenging my love of Japan with these accounts of atrocious conduct by their armed forces.

In 1937, when Japan was invading China, its armies conquered the (then) capital city of Nanking. The Japanese army then began killing the prisoners of war, then the civilians, to strike a psychological blow to the rest of China. Knowing full well that they were breaking international conventions of war, they disguised the massacre from the rest of the world.

These are two very different films about the siege, serving two audiences: one is obviously intended for 'international cinema', the other (possibly unintentionally) is 'exploitation'.

Though they're tough viewing, knowing that these events actually happened, I wanted to learn more about the depths that the Japanese army sank to. While I admire Japanese culture, pop and otherwise, I've mainly been learning about their history from their viewpoint. But after visiting several of Japan's neighbouring countries and reading their news sites, I became increasingly aware of 'old wounds' and lasting hostilities.

While the US and Europe are hyper-conscious of the history of Nazi Germany, we mainly remember wartime Japan for Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. In China, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, Japan was regarded the same way we saw Germany. Indeed, the scale of Japanese war crimes and the variety of atrocities rivals Nazi Germany.

So I'm having trouble joining the dots between their peace-loving society of today and the extremes of their wartime mindset. How can a country change so quickly and so completely? I guess the answer is closer to home - my own country has much to answer for in it's conduct abroad, both recently and historically.

I'm not going to boycott Japanese culture for the crimes of the past, but I'm not going to ignore history either. When I first heard of the 'Rape of Nanking', I naively assumed it happened centuries ago in more barbaric times. To find that it was only last century showed up a large gap in my historical knowledge.

BLACK SUN: THE NANKING MASSACRE,
MEN BEHIND THE SUN 4
(1994, Hong Kong, Hei tai yang: Nan Jing da tu sha)

Relentless gory propaganda

This is a weird film that would need much more research to determine what the film-makers were trying to do, if I was at all impressed by it. The director, T F Mou, denies it's an exploitation film, and the size of the budget seems to lift the project out of that genre. But it's an endless diary of gory re-enactments of war atrocities, with little story or drama, and a near absence of continuing characters. The Japanese soldiers storm around the city, killing and raping. The commanders take pleasure in trying out various methods of execution, from machine-gun to samurai sword.

It looks like a wartime propaganda film, but it was made 1994. I'm almost guessing it was intended to pressure the Japanese government on outstanding issues - maybe compensation, apologies, selective history books? The other likely result was to incite outrage amongst Chinese audiences.

Compare this blunt approach to any modern American movie about the Nazis. One moment in Black Sun made me remember a silent movie where Eric Von Stroheim throws a baby out of a high window. The scene looked comical: a swift but lazy cinematic shorthand to make you hate the character in seconds, and tell you what to think about all German commanders.

While City of Life and Death shows only one Japanese leader orchestrating the destruction of the city, Black Sun takes pains to name and shame many different commanders and their personal roles in the killing. This is perhaps another clue to the movie's intentions.

After a while, the many shock moments reminded me of the climax to Soldier Blue, but in contrast with it's involving characters, storyline and complex portrayal of the invaders as well as the invaded (Soldier Blue himself is shocked by his own sides' misconduct). The Japanese soldiers of Black Sun are portrayed with a uniform hive mentality. It also doesn't help that the Japanese soldiers all look very Chinese. Only the commanders look as if they're played by Japanese actors. Lazily and inaccurately, the soldiers of both sides talk in Chinese.

I expected this to be far more cheaply made than it is. It looks largely authentic, uses a lot of extras and some extensive locations. The most spectacular scene illustrates how the Japanese burned the bodies of civilians before dumping them in the river. They could then claim that they'd only killed soldiers. The scale of the fire of hundreds of bodies along a riverbank rivals the inferno at the end of Apocalypse Now.

But if there's any doubt that what we're being shown happened, the catalogue of atrocities is verified onscreen, by cross-cutting with actual photographs and filmed footage. The power and importance of these images was not lost on the Japanese army who made every effort to destroy any incriminating material that left Nanking at the time, and they burnt any such evidence of their own when the war was lost.

There's no doubt that all this and worse actually happened, but without any emotional involvement and a clumsy, one-sided approach, it's a far less powerful and informative film than it should have been.

I watched the US region 1 DVD, which fills in much of the historical context with an informative old documentary episode of Frank Capra's Why We Fight as a DVD extra.





In the UK, it's purely been sold as exploitation, check out the crass DVD cover, which somehow borders on comedy, using a poorly staged publicity shot of one of the film's most infamous scenes. Contrast that with the US DVD cover that uses an actual archive photograph.

This is actually the fourth in a series of films, called Men Behind the Sun, which I won't be investigating any further. The first film in the series has an important subject, the horrifying human experiments of Camp 731, but the inclusion of animal cruelty and mondo footage (using an actual corpse for one scene) means I'll avoid it. However, the story of Camp 731 has one hell of conspiracy storyline and I'd like to learn more about it.

Black Sun is a bizarre experience - as it abandons so many movie conventions - that it's fairly silly to compare it to the professionally and artfully produced City of Life and Death. But I have.

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH
(2009, China/Hong Kong, Nanjing! Nanjing!)

An involving man-made disaster

This major new film, shot in black and white, is still being premiered round the world. It's also about the Nanking during the Japanese siege.

While Black Sun throws out plenty of factual context in captions and voiceovers, this has no such introduction and relies on small badly-written postcards to set up a little historical background. Black Sun also portrayed the Chinese, soldiers and civilians alike, as totally defeated. This begins with the army still defending itself, albeit with guerrilla tactics. It also sets up storylines with soldiers from both armies, one Japanese soldier being just as traumatised.


The success of the film is the emotional involvement with the characters, focussing on the family of the Chinese translator to John Rabe - a German envoy famous for his attempts to protect the civilians against impossible odds.

Unlike Black Sun, if anyone gets hurt, raped, slaughtered, the impact is devastating. There's a dreadful scene that's basically a point of view experience of being herded into a mass slaughter.


After the threat of counterforce has been systematically eradicated, the invading army are rewarded with 'comfort women', Japanese prostitutes rationed out to the soldiers. But as the siege wears on, the supply of women starts taking Chinese 'volunteers'. The widescale use of civilian women for sex lends an awful, literal meaning to 'the rape of Nanking'.

While the Japanese use of unnecessary force was meant to terrify the rest of China, it instead unified the regions of the massive country into an unbeatable foe.

The inclusion of a sympathetic portrayal of a Japanese soldier has drawn criticism from Chinese critics, complaining that the tone of the film wasn't harsh enough on the Japanese. Perhaps they would have preferred a less-sensitive, less balanced film, like Black Sun perhaps?


I'd recommend City of Life and Death as a beautifully made and observed film on a harrowing subject.

It had a limited cinema release in the UK and there'll be a DVD and Blu-Ray release in August. I watched a Chinese DVD, which may be slightly censored (missing some violence). The subtitles didn't translate all the onscreen signs and nameplates.

The excellent WildGrounds site has an article comparing City of Life and Death to actual (and upsetting) photos from the siege.

Taking the Kool-Aid: three horrifying visions of Jonestown

You want horror? Maybe this is too much...

Real horror, actual horror, is deeply upsetting. It would be wrong if it wasn't. But it's misleading that we describe ourselves as 'horror fans'. Perhaps this is why strangers treat us more cautiously. Perhaps they are worried that we might enjoy the horror of actual tragedies. Of course, what we mean is supernatural horror, fictional slashers, impossible monsters... rather than the extremes of actual suffering. I just want to warn you that this story shouldn't be treated lightly.

I've seen many documentaries and recreations of tragic events, but this one proved to be powerfully depressing. It wasn't simply that hundreds of people died, it was that they'd taken their own lives, all at the same time, because they were told to. One Sunday morning, late in 1978, I saw photographs of dead bodies, possibly for the first time. In a news magazine there were pages of colour photographs of the aftermath of Jonestown. If I'd seen photos like that before, they hadn't been in colour. Hundreds of people face down in mud. I still remember the brightly coloured t-shirts, the fact that there were children as well as adults, and I mistakenly assumed that the victims were South American.

I recently decided to learn more about the Jonestown 'massacre', prompted by the showing of a recent documentary on TV. I'd not considered the movie versions, assuming they were exploitation flicks. Curiosity now compelled me to see how the events were depicted and exploited. This is the type of incident that gets described as 'something out of a horror movie' and inevitably leads to one being made. But these dramatisations beg the question - is this really the way it happened? Were they actually made into horror films?

The first to be released was Guyana: Crime of the Century (also called Cult of the Damned) and was sold as horror. The events then appeared as a TV mini-series in 1980, Guyana Tragedy. From the cover art, I thought this was also exploitation, but the cast and the writing credentials are quite impressive. More recently in 2006, was a new documentary titled Jonestown. Interviews with survivors, relatives and eye-witnesses to the life and works of Jim Jones. I've watched all three.

GUYANA: CRIME OF THE CENTURY

a.k.a. Cult of the Damned

(1979, Spain/Panama/Mexico)

Dull recreation that eventually packs a punch

There's a fine line between exploitation, and drama based on real events. The timing of this film and the TV movie both seemed far too soon to be at all respectful. In terms of accuracy they both appear realistic, but the exaggerated accent on torture and gunplay places Cult of the Damned firmly in the category of exploitation.

The fateful events at Jonestown climaxed in November 1978. As the news reports began, the scriptwriters must have started taking notes. The first finished version of this film, 110 minutes long, premiered only 10 months after the event! Their knowledge of the facts would have been limited, while investigations was still in progress. To cover themselves, they resorted to fictitious character names, even calling the Guyana encampment 'Johnsontown'! 

This was directed by Rene Cardona Jr. Unsurprisingly, he was the scriptwriter on another true-life dramatisation - based on the story of the Andes air crash that resulted in cannibalism, Survive was also sold as horror. The result here is mostly lacking in drama or tension, even when you know what's going to happen. The first 90 minutes are very dull - the director only seems to take an interest whenever there's violence, like the opening scene with the splashiest onscreen pistol suicide I've seen.

It follows the events from Jones' church in San Francisco onwards. Stuart Whitman plays Jim Jones as an unconvincing bible-basher, no more enthusiastic than the average TV evangelist. Given such a meaty role, Whitman does very little with it. Yvonne De Carlo (The Munsters) and Bradford Dillman (Bug!) take their roles more seriously as Jones' colleagues. Gene Barry (The War of the Worlds) plays the congressman who visits 'Johnsontown', unwittingly triggering the fateful final events. Not a bad supporting cast, considering.

I can't say what's inaccurate about this version, but it's very noticeably a community of white people who travel down to Guyana, when in reality there was a majority of African-Americans. The jungle scenes are convincing to look at, right down to the look of the buildings and the chilling sign set up behind Jones' throne. It read 'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it' (see the screengrab at top). The film relishes in showing a few torture scenes and makes the most of any shootings, filmed with a handheld camera, as if the victims were being chased at close quarters. 

The climax is simply staged but horrific, the most extended depiction of the events in the three versions I watched. But it succeeded at being the most powerful, possibly because I watched this first. It ends leaving many loose ends, with even the demise of many central characters not mentioned at all. Cult of the Damned also describes incidents not mentioned in the TV movie or the documentary. Is this because they never happened? One scene has the congressman's delegation demanding entry into a large warehouse, only to discover it's an overcrowded, under-equipped hospital. A turning point as they realise that 'Johnsontown' has serious problems...

VCI have released the film on DVD from a soft-looking transfer, letterboxed widescreen, with a muffled English-language audio track. This is the longest version of the film that was made. I think it's the original length cut that was released in Mexico. It was then re-edited and shortened for a US release.

GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE JIM JONES STORY

(1980, TV, USA)

An impressive and accurate dramatisation

Three months after the US release of Cult of the Damned, came an impressive mini-series (shown as two back-to-back TV movies, I believe). The script was by Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection, Shaft), using the real names of characters and locations.

The research was partly based on a book and the news reports from The Washington Post. Many of the dramatised incidents are also described in the 2006 documentary, Jonestown - a testament to the accuracy of the research. Unlike the linear narrative of Cult of the Damned, Guyana Tragedy starts with Jim Jones in Jonestown, on his throne, haunted by memories of his lifetime.

With a three hour total running time, this story goes all the way back to his childhood. As Jones successfully built up a congregation in a rundown Indianapolis neighbourhood, he faced open and violent racial prejudice when he refused to restrict who was welcome in his church. His enormous success lead to a string of grateful property donations which built up his funds for a series of idealistic projects, centred around and communal living. He first set up an alternate society in the redwood forests of California, before moving to San Francisco. 

Jones starts off as an inspirational figure, an outspoken socialist, and a challenger of racism. But ends up as a paranoid, power-mad dictator, over-reliant on drugs, punishing and sexually abusing members of his congregation. Whenever a scandal breaks publicly, he runs away, ending up in the South American jungle in a specially built community. When Jones believes the authorities are closing in, he simply talks his followers into the abyss. His ranting is based on an actual recording made at the time.

The climax is more dramatically staged than Cult of the Damned, with an impassioned eleventh hour challenge to Jones' decision. Powers Boothe (Southern Comfort, Frailty, Sin City, 24) rightfully won an Emmy for his performance as Jim Jones, though at the time he wondered if he'd ever work again.

Levar Burton (Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation) plays one of the congregation, as does Irene Cara (the same year as the movie Fame). Angela Cartwright (in the same year as Alien) plays Jones' wife. Brad Dourif (Alien Resurrection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) plays his attendant doctor, Diana Scarwid (Psycho III) plays the doctor's wife. There's also Ned Beatty, Randy Quaid, Meg Foster (early Cagney and Lacey), and a very brief appearance from James Earl Jones.

I was glad to see Rosalind Cash - she was one of the highlights in The Omega Man, who I'd always hoped would get far more work after playing such a strong and impressive role. It's good to see her in another high-profile role.

The quality of the cast demonstrates what a major TV event this was, but the DVD makes it look like grindhouse that's not worth restoring. Hopefully such a major drama as this exists in better shape than this DVD from VCI. The soft image is the least of its problems. There are constant jumps and film faults. Missing frames, film damage, video faults and poor audio. This would look bad on VHS.

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JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE

(2006, USA)

Eyewitness accounts of Jim Jones' life and death

I thought this documentary would contradict the old dramatisations, but it told many of the same stories as the TV movie. At least here there are interviews with many of the people who knew Jones at every stage of his life, even when he was a child. I was surprised that there were survivors of Jonestown. 

There are still insights and surprises about Jones' life, not least his abuses of both his power and his parishioners. It details each of his projects, all of which he ends up running away from until there was nowhere else to run. The final mass suicide being described by eyewitnesses losing their entire families is of course both shocking and moving. 

With a tragedy of this scale, I'm still struggling to understand how it could happen. The documentary gives valuable clues. For instance, Jones kept his followers sleep-deprived, and successfully isolated them from each other, even their own family. This infers he'd discovered (or, I'm guessing, borrowed) some efficient methods for keeping his followers faithful. Failing that, there were armed guards who patrolled the compound, supposedly to keep danger out...

The documentary is of course the most reliable and accessible way into the story, but I felt that both the dramatisations made more of an impact in the final scenes. I had to see it all to believe it could happen. However he convinced them, the fact remains that the majority of victims willingly drank poison, which was mixed in with a fruit drink. Today, the reference to "taking the Kool-Aid" are Jim Jones' only legacy. A rather flippant catchphrase derived from a truly horrendous event.

Jonestown the documentary is widely available (there's a trailer here on the UK site for Artefact Films) but I was surprised at how poorly treated the Emmy award-winning TV series looked on DVD. It's a powerful film with an excellent cast that still deserves an audience. There are several different DVDs out there. I hope that they are all better than the one (from VCI) that I saw (pictured above).

I previously compared documentaries to dramatisations of the Charles Manson murders and the 1972 Andes plane crash that inspired Survive! and Alive. 

(Update April 2012: while the "taking the Kool-Aid" phrase was still being used on TV and in the political arena at the time of writing this, I've only just learned that the victims were actually drinking Flavor-Aid on that fateful day, a product similar to Kool-Aid.)

MANSON (2009) and his HELTER SKELTER (1976)

MANSON (2009, UK documentary)
HELTER SKELTER (1976, US TV movie)

Real-life horror as entertainment

I just had a depressing week looking into the Charles Manson murders. While he's not convicted of committing any, he incited his followers to torture and slaughter two households on consecutive nights in 1970. Living outside LA in a sort of hippie commune, his 'family', Manson had failed to get anywhere with his band and was running out of money. He planned to take revenge on the society that excluded him by inciting a race war, the prophesied 'Helter Skelter', by murdering respected and influential white people, and leaving clues that incriminated radical black groups.

The first attack was on a house being rented by Roman Polanski and his new wife Sharon Tate. Polanski was away on business but Sharon and three friends were all tortured and killed in a frenzy. Sharon was eight months pregnant. The murderers were three women, one man, all aged about 20, Manson wasn't with them.

Watching two different accounts brought home the emotional devastation to the families and friends, and the panic that hit L.A. in 1970 when suddenly faced with random murderous assaults in the home. Like any big news story, the documentaries and dramatic reconstructions soon followed after the case was closed. American TV waited a fairly respectful six years before making Helter Skelter, and made extra money by releasing it as a film overseas. As recently as 2003, The Manson Family recreated the murders again and there was an American TV remake of Helter Skelter in 2006. Last week, a new documentary aired on British TV.

MANSON
(2009, UK)

Neil Rawles' new two-hour programme mixes dramatic reconstructions, a little archive news footage and a long interview with 'family' member Linda Kasabian. She gives eyewitness accounts of both the infamous Manson 'family' murders. Everyone else who was there are still serving life sentences.

The reconstructions are OK, but while the actor playing Manson looks the part, he didn't impress. The actress playing Kasabian was far better, adding reality to her reactions as she watches the murders. She also evokes sympathy and generates suspense as she tries to escape Manson's clutches without meeting the same fate.

The saddest part of the doc was the actual crime scene photos, which I'd not seen before. These brought home how brutal and tragic the murders were, and should derail any anti-hero status of Manson and his followers. The case was all the more newsworthy because one of the victims was a Hollywood actress - Sharon Tate had starred in The Valley of the Dolls, Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers (Dance of the Vampires) as well as the offbeat horror Eye of the Devil.

The documentary focuses on the events leading up to the murders, including a torture scene that puts Reservoir Dogs in the shade, with Manson wielding a sword. It skips the lengthy court case, which many other programmes have detailed. While Manson is a good documentary to start with, it's a huge subject. A look at Manson's life would be a story in itself, as he seems to have spent much of his life drifting, causing plenty of other mayhem. Not that I want to become an expert, but I'm still not clear on how on Earth he could influence his gang to such extremes.

HELTER SKELTER
(1976, US)

I then went back to see how this TV movie compared to the new account. Helter Skelter was mainly based on the transcripts of the court case, where Kasabian was the star witness, so it's not a very different story, but a very different approach. Even though it was sold as a horror movie, it's mostly a courtroom drama, the emphasis being on how the prosecutor can make a case against Manson stick, even though he hadn't committed any of the murders.

It begins with the discovery of the bodies at Sharon Tate's house, a scene made all the more painful by the reactions of Polanski's agent as he identifies them all. From the documentary crime scene photos, the bodies are even laid out accurately.

Despite two more murders the next night, the police still don't have any conclusive evidence and only by a stroke of luck, months later, inside prison, do they get the lead they need...

For a TV movie this has more good performances than bad. But as a movie, it's lacking stars, recognisable faces even, or glossy production values. It looks like TV, but the subject is far more gruesome than any other seventies TV movie.

The actors playing 'the family' are all pretty good, but the prosecutor and defender annoyingly try to outshout each other in court, and there's no insight into them as people or even lawyers. George DiCenzo as Vincent Bugliosi is also lumbered with several speeches and the movie's 'voice of the establishment', verbally slapping Manson down after final judgement has passed.

To hint that this is a horror film, the star of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Marilyn Burns no less, plays Linda Kasabian. She gets to do her frightened, crying bit as she relives the flashbacks of the murders. The Sharon Tate murder is noticeably not recreated though.

It's Steve Railsback who makes this the best Manson movie. His chilling, staring portrayal was his career-defining role. Since then he was an unlikely romantic lead in The Stuntman (1980) and had a recurring role in The X Files TV series before another chilling role as inspirational psycho Ed Gein (2000).



I'm guessing that the international cinema release of Helter Skelter was a 'harder' version with swearing and more violence shown, as well as being cut down to under two hours. This is the version that was released on VHS (the UK cover art is pictured at the top). But it was originally made for TV as two 90 minute episodes and has no swearing and less blood, to meet TV guidelines. I think that this longer version is the one currently available on DVD in a 2 disc set.

SURVIVE! (1976) - an exploitation nightmare

SURVIVE!
(1976, Mexico, Supervivientes de los Andes)

A true story more famous than the films

There’s always been an appetite for movies based on real events, especially gruesome ones. It’s now common to see reconstructions of fresh, shocking crimes in TV documentaries, like the Columbine shootings, but it used to be more of a taboo, usually out of respect for the families of the deceased. In the 1970's it was usually exploitation movies that moved in too soon, despite protests. TV movies were only beginning to gain spectacular ratings with dramatisations such as Helter Skelter (1976), that focused on the Charles Manson family killings. But the events in Survive! were too strong for TV.

Other seventies horror movies that tried to gain attention by announcing they were based on truth were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Amityville Horror (1979), and even The Exorcist (1973), though their connection with facts were all found to be extremely tenuous.

Survive! told a story that I knew to be true. I’d read the story in the Sunday supplements and seen colour photographs of the survivors trapped high in the Andes, after a small commercial flight crashed, way off course. When all hope of rescue seemed lost, they faced months of being snowbound, without any food. The only way they could survive was to eat the dead…


I ventured to the cinema to see what couldn’t be shown in the papers, even though I was too young to see an X certificate at the time (over 18’s only). Before home video, it was much easier to prevent the under-aged from accessing adult movies. It felt like a much bigger deal than it is now.

I saw Survive! at the end of 1976, on an unsuitable double-bill with an Alistair MacLean thriller, Fear is the Key. The posters and publicity were mercilessly playing up the cannibalism angle. Survive! played in my local 'grindhouse' cinema, Studio 7, which always had the dodgiest films and the lowest-budget horrors. I steeled myself – I was new to gore on the big screen…

But what I got was a low-budget Mexican film that had been dubbed into English. Little did I know, Robert Stigwood and Alan Carr had picked this up cheap and marketed it for a wider English-speaking audience, making themselves millions of dollars in the process. Perhaps Survive! helped finance their movie blockbuster Grease? Strangely, Survive! is missing from both Stigwood and Carr’s resumes on IMDB.

Mid-1970’s, this story was a timely gift to cinema – it fitted both the disaster movie and horror genre. Instead of Hollywood having to brave the protests against making a bad taste movie, they simply had to revoice the Mexican film to make a pile of money, one of Paramount Studio’s biggest hits of 1976. Though the news stories had already sold it for them, the marketing didn’t pull its punches. The posters showing the scene of a naked body being pulled through the snow, the trailers freeze-framing on the shot where flesh is cut from a corpse. Tasteful. (…and also on youTube).


I haven’t seen many Mexican movies, but I’m impressed with Survive! The plane crash is well-mounted for the time, and the snow-bound set looks just about convincing. But because they’re sticking fairly closely to the facts (despite changing the names of all the characters), the camera keeps its distance and you never get to know any of the characters very well. The rescue mission is similarly covered almost like a news story, in a very dry, uninvolving manner. For such an emotional story, there’s only ever real feeling when someone loses a relative.

For most of the time, it's a straightforward telling of real events in an unambitious TV movie style, but things suddenly get gruesome for the initial scenes of cannibalism. Flesh being flayed and a couple of half-eaten corpses are both shock effects more suited to Italian horror. Although the scenes are intact in the UK home video, I certainly didn’t see them like that in the cinema (they were mostly censored out). Seeing these brief scenes for the first time on video, I was shocked at how far they went at the time.

The Mexican version is 26 minutes longer than the English version that played in the UK and US, much more of the attempted rescue mission is shown. It was directed by veteran Rene Cardona, who was 70 at the time! Cardona was no stranger to Santo wrestling movies or Mexican horror, such as the infamous Night of the Bloody Apes.

The English version adds a photographic montage at the start and end, and lays on even more documentary-style voiceover. Obviously all the actors are dubbed, fairly loosely, into English, but this was a standard practice for foreign films in the seventies.

Besides cutting out large chunks of the story and tightening up many scenes, the order of events is changed in the English cut, like the timing of the discovery of the tail-section of the plane. A re-ordering of the facts to suit the flow of the narrative. But the most noticeable change is the addition of almost wall-to-wall music, a score by TV composer Gerald Fried. The Mexican version hardly has any music in it, giving it a more realistic feel, but the English version sounds like a TV movie, with many musical themes sounding far too upbeat. When the rescuers are out looking for the missing plane, they get a jaunty adventure theme, despite the fact that they are about to give up all hope.

Some credit is due though. The moment when the survivors decide to eat their dead colleagues and go out to their frozen graves, has a suitably nightmarish accompaniment, that reminded me of a cue from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Poltergeist II.

I can’t imagine what the relatives thought of this film coming out so soon after the crash ordeal. The publicity from the news stories must have been upsetting enough. The story never really went away either. Hollywood eventually filmed their own version of the story as Alive (1993), a respectful twenty years after the crash. But despite the bigger budget and location filming, it’s hardly any different from Survive! It's the same story, but this time with English-speaking actors. The film peaks very early with the horrifying plane crash. But the cannibalism is only slightly less exploitative, the bodies in the snow now barely recognisable as human. There’s a bit more action as the survivor's attempt to reach the outside world, to tilt it towards the adventure genre. Alive felt less gritty than Survive! and concentrates more on melodrama, which the young cast barely carries off.


The best way to learn about these events is through a documentary. Both movies end with their rescue, but the story was really only half over - the survivors then had to face the press as the world learned that they had eaten human flesh. Joy at their survival was replaced with angrier reactions, opinions divided by moral and religious concerns.

Only recently have all the survivors felt comfortable talking about their ordeal in front of cameras, and they even revisit the crash site in a new feature-length documentary, Stranded! The Andes Plane Crash Survivors (2007), also called Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains. Besides recalling their experiences, a camera found in the wreckage documented some of their story. Then the final moment when they were rescued was of course filmed by a news crew - a wonderful moment to see.

Watching the new documentary, hearing what they were thinking at the time is a completely different experience to seeing recreations of what they were driven to do. The various versions of this story through the years demonstrate how perceptions change.

Of course, if you still want to see it, there are only two ways to see the original Survive! at the moment. The Mexican version is on DVD as Survive: Supervivientes de los Andes and runs at 111 mins - there's a Mexican trailer included, and good English subtitles. (Available here from CD Universe.)

The shorter English version is rarer, on a long out-of-print VHS. But they still sell for low prices on eBay. Strangely the VHS (released by Thorn-EMI) was from a far better-looking print than the current DVD. The colours are more vibrant and the grading brighter. The VHS runs just under 82 minutes and is uncensored. The end credits cheekily list everyone who helped redub the film, but only mentions six members of the original cast!

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