Have You Seen Andy?

How can a child just disappear? Recently caught this documentary streaming and was so shocked and saddened by this case. If you like true crime, this is a film for you.

As for the documentary itself, it suffers a bit from age. I think the events could have been put in chronological order for those of us completely unfamiliar with the case. Which, unfortunately, is most of the US. The recordings of a convicted pedophile will haunt me forever. As for the police investigation, I would like to know more.

Regardless, I think we need a documentary about this case and the child sex ring that was prevalent in Massachusetts at this time. Something bad was going on in Massachusetts and we need someone that isn't involved in the case to shed some light as to what was going on in this area. Hopefully, someone with a bigger budget can investigate and we might have a fascinating documentary.

"Have You Seen Andy?" (2007 release; 79 min.) is a documentary about the mysterious disappearance in August, 1976 of Andy Puglisi, a 10 yr. old boy in Lawrence, MA. As the movie opens, Andy's mom is talking about the day Andy went missing, seemingly vanishing into this air without any trace. Hundreds and hundreds of people from the community went looking for Andy, but the search was called off after 6 days... At this point we are 10 min. into the film.

Couple of comments: the movie is a project of love from writer-director-producer Melanie Perkins, who was a friend of Andy's and who cannot let the story go. In the end, she restarts from scratch, coming back to Lawrence to turn over every single piece of paper ever produced and tracking down some of the key people involved in the 1976 investigation. The one element that dates the movie is that it is not showing in the 16:9 screen ratio that we are used to in today's TV landscape (the film shows almost in a 1:1 screen ratio).

"Have You Seen Andy?" premiered on HBO in 2007 (and not 2003, as incorrectly stated on IMDb) and with the magic of today's technology, I recently watched this at HBO On Demand. If you like true crime documentaries, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

Melanie did an amazing job. I grew up in Lawrence at that time as welll. Very disturbing that they never brought charges against Wayne Chapman. I didn't realize how many pediphiles were in Lawrence. But i do remember the red lights district .