In Cold Blood

I happened to be sitting in a lovely hotel room at a wonderful resort in the Ozarks, ready to go out on the boat after golfing 18 holes in fine weather, when I made the mistake of turning on the TV. One of the cable channels was screening "In Cold Blood." I watched the opening sequence. Despite the beautiful weather, and the girlfriend nagging at me to get up off the couch and go outside, I knew I wouldn't leave the room until the movie was over. I can't add much to the fine reviews by others, particularly the review by the gentleman from London, except to add that the dialogue in the movie is marvelous. The writer and director caught the laconic, spare speech of the Midwest. The questions and answers between the characters are perfect. (Paul Stewart, the reporter: "Don't the people in this town lock their doors?" John Forsythe, the detective: "They will tonight.") And the way Perry and Dick look at each other menacingly in critical situations gives one the chills. (Dick: "Don't worry baby; we left no living witnesses." Perry, staring at Dick: "I know one.") Of all the great performances in the film, my favorite is John Forsythe as the KBI detective who grows weary from contemplating the evil minds behind the murders of his Kansas neighbors, the Clutters. A close second among the great performances is Scott Wilson, who makes Dick a charming loser going nowhere in life, unable and unwilling to civilize himself to live in society.

Certainly this is one of the ten best movies ever made, and the best of all the "True Crime" movies. (The made-for-TV remake was a horrible, lame joke.) I just hope when it comes on again it's a miserable day outside so I don't miss out on the boating! Ed in St. Louis

Although it was released way back in 1967, IN COLD BLOOD still remains the benchmark by which all true-crime films are matched. Veteran writer/director Richard Brooks (ELMER GANTRY) adapted Truman Capote's non-fiction book into a chilling docudrama that retains a disturbing power even today, thirty-five years later.

Robert Blake and Scott Wilson portray Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, two ex-cons who, on a tip from Hicock's old cellmate Floyd Wells, broke into the Holcomb, Kansas home of Herbert Clutter, looking for a wall safe supposedly containing $10,000. But no safe was ever found, and the two men instead wound up killing Mr. Clutter, his wife, and their two children, getting away with only a radio, a pair of binoculars, and a lousy forty dollars. Two months on the run, including an aimless "vacation" in northern Mexico, ended in Las Vegas when cops caught them in a stolen car. But it eventually comes out, after merciless grilling by Kansas law enforcement officials, that these two men committed that heinous crime in Holcomb. Tried and convicted on four counts of murder, they stew in jail over a five-year period of appeals and denials until both are hanged to death on April 14, 1965.

Blake and Smith are absolutely chilling as the two dispassionate killers who show no remorse for what they've done but are concerned about getting caught. John Forsythe also does a good turn as Alvin Dewey, the chief detective investigating the crime, as does Gerald S. O'Laughlin as his assistant. In a tactic that is both faithful to Capote's book and a good artistic gambit all around, Brooks does not show the murders at the beginning; instead, he shows the two killers pulling up to the Clutter house as the last light goes out, then cuts to the next morning and the horrifying discovery of the bodies. Only during the ride back to Kansas, when Blake is questioned by Forsythe and narrates the story, do we see the true horror of what happened that night. We don't see that much blood being spilled in these scenes, but we don't need to. The shotgun blasts and the horrified look on the Clutters' faces as they know they are about to die are more than disturbing enough, so there is no need to resort to explicitly bloody slasher-film violence.

Brooks wisely filmed IN COLD BLOOD in stark black-and-white, and the results are excellent thanks to Conrad Hall's expertise. The chilling jazz score by Quincy Jones is the capper. The end result is one of the most unsettling films of any kind ever made, devastating in its own low-key fashion. It is a 134-minute study of a crime that shook an entire state and indeed an entire nation, and should be seen, though viewer discretion is advised; the 'R' rating is there for a reason.

It is pretty difficult to add to all the great attributes of this film already posted by other users. I will say that I feel more attention and sympathy should have been paid to the victims. Another thing, I never heard language like this in a 1967 film.

Many films are derived from novels and, in the normal way, it is unhelpful to compare the movie with the book, for the obvious reason that they are distinct art-forms, constrained by different technical limitations. However, this one really does have to be understood in the context of the book which engendered it.

Capote's book is a factual account of a multiple murder in a small Kansas town. Two young drifters plan a robbery which misfires and ends in violence. The book traces the course of the patient investigation which eventually brings the killers to justice. Because the book is a species of journalism, uncompromisingly anchored in fact, the film cannot help but follow suit, with the added burden that it must faithfully represent on the screen real persons, places and events.

The mean lives of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith are documented in stark monochrome. Panavision is used to powerful effect to show the wide, flat spaces of Kansas. Quincy Jones's atmospheric jazz score adds salt to the bleak images. The austerity of blue collar life in the Mid West of the 1950's is splendidly evoked as our two delinquents move through a rolling montage of Travelodges and diners, launderettes and interstates.

This is a film of straight lines. The flat, relentless landscape of Kansas generates horizons that are ruler-straight. Roads stretch into the distance without the hint of a curve. Slat blinds cast harsh bars of light across room interiors. The penitentiary scene is a symphony of geometric lines. Hickock and Smith have had their characters forged by incarceration, and we see that their 'outside' lives are, in a real sense, another form of imprisonment. The lines which enclose them denote the hopelessness of their existence.

The starkness is reinforced by neat, economical editing. The throwing of a light switch in the Hickock farmhouse carries us to the Clutter home, where a light is being turned on, and the words 'any crowded street' whisk us into just such a street. A cigarette butt is discarded, and its ugly cylinder becomes an electromagnet searching for the murder weapon. The Clutters' cleaner realises that a radio has been stolen, and we see the radio playing at Dick's bedside.

Once under arrest, Dick makes a powerful speech about tattoos. The detectives are trying to provoke him by sneering at his 'body art' and he points out that we all carry tattoos of some kind. Our dress, speech and attitudes mark us indelibly and fix us in our time and place.

Herb Clutter and his family lead a spartan home life. The farmhouse is spare and unadorned, but its order and solidity make a sharp contrast with the chaos and squalor of the rented rooms where Dick and Perry hole up. Dick 'hangs paper' (passes dud cheques) in respectable Kansas stores, amassing clothes and electrical goods on a spree which exploits the trust between vendor and consumer and uses it as a weapon - Dick and Perry's revenge upon 'decent' America.

Once the arrests have been made and a trial scheduled, the film switches to a voice-over narration. No doubt this was done in order to shorten the custody passage (this is extensive in the book, but does not lend itself readily to film treatment), but it jars. Up to this point, Hickock and Smith have told their story through action. Narration is second-best.

However, the film is a highly-reliable rendition of the book, and contains some impressive touches. Mail bags come somersaulting from the hurtling express-train like so much tumbleweed. The rapid crossfire of the detectives' press conference conveys a lot of important information to the viewer in an economical way. A detective talks us through a psychological profile of the as yet unknown killers, and it is very persuasive. While our two heroes are lying low in Mexico, a beautiful mariachi song accompanies a bedroom scene, the music evoking a sense of loss and regret, and leading naturally to Perry's flashback memories of his mother's degradation.

To ask if the film is as good as the book is meaningless, but it is certainly a highly-commendable reworking of the book in visual terms. The interplay between the two delinquents is first-class, the easy charm of Dick giving way at critical moments to naked fear of the inscrutable dreamer Perry.

Remarkable, disturbing film about the true-life, senseless, brutal murder of a small-town family, along with the aftermath, and examination of the lives of the killers, Dick Hickok and Perry Smith.

No matter how much time goes by, or how dated this film may look, it still resonates the utter incomprehensibility of criminal acts such as this.

This really traces multiple tragedies: The tragedy, brutality and senselessness of the murder of the Clutter family, a decent farm family in small-town Holcomb, Kansas; and the wasted, brutal and sad lives of Hickok and Smith.

An interesting point is made in the film: that neither of these two immature, scared, petty criminals would have ever contemplated going through with something like this alone. But, together, they created a dangerous, murderous collective personality; one that fed the needs and pathology of each of them. They push each other along a road of "proving" something to each other. That they were man enough to do it, to carry it out; neither wants to be seen as too cowardly to complete their big "score"; an unfortunate and dangerous residue of the desolate lives they led. These were two grown-up children, who live in a criminal's world of not backing down from dares; who constantly need to prove manhood and toughness. in this instance, these needs carried right through to the murder of the Clutters.

The film contains a somewhat sentimentalized look at the Clutter family, but the point is made. These were respected, law-abiding, small-town people, who didn't deserve this terrifying fate. The movie also gives us a sense of the young lives of Hickok and Smith. Perry Smith, whose early life was filled with security and love, but watched in horror as alcohol took his family down a tragic path. Hickok, poor and left pretty much to his own devices, not able to see how he fit in, using his intelligence and charm to con everyone he came into contact with.

An interesting, and maybe the first, look at capital punishment, and what ends we hope to achieve. Is this nothing more than revenge killing for a murder that rocked a nation at a time when we had not yet had to fully face that there might be such predators among us, or does putting these guys at the end of a rope truly provide a deterent to the childish and brutal posturing of men like these? Is it possible to deter men who live lives of deceit, operating under the radar, believing they fool everyone they come into contact with? To be deterred, you must believe it's possible you will be caught. Is it possible to deter these men who believe they are too clever to be caught?; who have committed hundreds of petty crimes, and got away with them? This was supposed to be a "cinch", "no witnesses".

When caught, Hickok finds he can't charm and con the agents the way he had department store clerks. Smith, who believes he deserves such a fate anyway, who seemed to be the only one who truly grasped the gravity of what they had done, willingly tells the story when he learns that Hickok has cowardly caved in. Hickok blinked first. A silly game of chicken between two immature, emotionally damaged, dangerous men.

Fascinating psychological thriller, telling a story of a horrendous crime in this nation's history. Stunning portrayals by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson. These roles made their careers.