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As a culture, we have an undeniable fascination with crime. We love bad guys as much as we love the hero; there’s something within us that likes to look to crime fiction as a point of reference for ourselves. How far would we go in that world? What would our decisions be?
But something happens when it’s not fiction. True crime often veers off from thrilling to horrific, as we see the true terrors human beings are capable of. With Foxcatcher releasing this week, we thought it was time we look back on the long history of fantastic true crime films that made us revaluate how we live our lives and what kind of society we are.
Please note: We excluded movies that featured fictional characters modeled after real criminals. That's why you don't see the likes of Psycho, Rope, Badlands, Casino or The Departed on here.
Before it was a joke on Seinfeld (“Maybe the dingo ate your baby!”), the famous case of the Chamberlain family baby that disappeared on a camping trip was depicted in Fred Schepisi’s 1988 movie A Cry in the Dark (Evil Angels in Australia and New Zealand). Meryl Streep and Sam Neill star as Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, a couple that is implicated in the disappearance of their infant daughter Azaria.
Astonishingly, they are found guilty – Lindy sentenced to life in prison and Michael an 18-month suspended sentence – until new evidence turns up a few years later and their conviction is overturned. A Cry in the Dark succeeds in its horrific depiction of the media and how it can truly destroy lives.
Based on the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent, a young man accused of being sexually and emotionally abusive toward his girlfriend and their friends, Bullytells the chilling true tale of a group of friends plotting – and committing – the murder of one of their own. Seeing these teens deal in death is truly disturbing, due largely in part to the solid performances of Nick Stahl as Bobby Kent and Brad Renfro as Marty, the kid who would do the actual killing and be sentenced to death after conviction (though he eventually got it down to life imprisonment).
Bully is a complex thriller that deals heavily with the notion of justice and the nature of friendship, making you challenge yourself and what lengths you’d be willing to go to help your friends.
Peter Medak’s engaging 1991 movie stars a young Christopher Eccleston as Derek Bentley, a man hanged for murder in 1953 on very shaky grounds. Bentley was an intellectually challenged young man who fell in with a rough crowd and was ultimately involved in the shooting death of an officer in that he was merely present at the time.
However, since the gunman was a minor, it was Bentley who took the brunt of the punishment – sentenced to death and hanged a month later, before any official movement for a pardon had begun. Eccleston delivers a powerful, sad performance and depicts the faults of a system more focused on hanging someone rather than the right someone.
If you’ve only seen Richard Attenborough as John Hammond in Jurassic Park, seeing him as serial killer John Christie may forever taint your picture of the well-meaning billionaire that brought dinosaurs back to life. Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place is a chilling account of an utter failure of police work, wherein a man named Timothy Evans is convicted of the murder of his wife and child when in reality it was his downstairs neighbor Christie that had done the killing and framed Evans for it, despite there being plenty of evidence pointing to such.
10 Rillington Place is a horrifying account of the system failing those it’s meant to protect and the finality of capital punishment. Evans was executed for the crimes he didn’t commit in 1950, while Christie would go on murdering – including his own wife – before he was eventually captured and hanged in 1953.
Harold Becker’s 1979 drama tells the true story of a murdered police detective and the effect the experience has on his surviving partner. Karl Hettinger (John Savage) and Ian Campbell (Ted Danson, in his feature film debut) are kidnapped by two criminals (James Woods and Franklyn Seales) who wind up murdering Campbell while Hettinger escapes.
The rest of the movie is a somewhat cerebral experience that explores the loopholes in the justice system and the psychological effects that the event has on Hettinger after the fact. It’s an oft-forgotten but penetrating look at the aftermath of a horrific crime and the horror of victim-blaming.
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