Dark Minds

Great insight to unsolved murders in my hometown.. I would think the editors or producers would have caught such a simple mistake. There is a connection to our civic theater with these murders but yet the episode is called " The Phantom of the CIVIL Theater "

From the early days of FORENSIC FILES and THE NEW DETECTIVES,to the not so true reenactments of shows like BEHIND CASTLE WALLS, I m a big fan of Crime TV.

As I recall the first of these (well done) reenactment crime shows was the popular series DEADLY WOMEN,featuring commentary from former FBI Profiler,CANDICE DeLONG. This is the show that introduced me to crime writer M.WILLIAM PHELPS. As time went by, the fore mentioned commentators began to seem as if they believed themselves true experts in all things criminal. DARK MINDS pushes this ego fest a step further by pitting two crime writers together to state the obvious about matters of public record whether it is relevant or not, much like the B celebrity cast of Smoking Gun's World's Dumbest. PHELPS and KELLY boring opinions at each other, and look at a speaker on the table with disgust, as if to say "i hate that we have to consult this evil serial killer." Well, I could be wrong, but "Raven's" accent sounds a lot like John Kelly's, and that would explain why a serial killer locked in the safety of a maximum security prison feels the need to disguise his voice. It Just plays out like fiction.

Phelps is great as the host of a show investigating unsolved crimes. He explores many different scenarios and suspects and sometimes he gets really close to very probable person of interest. You really need to watch this show with the fact these crimes are unsolved in mind. Many comments and reviews express discounted at the lack of a cookie cutter ending to the whodunit. The host is clearly very emotionally invested in solving these crimes and he has brought attention to cases that would probably be sitting in a cold case file untouched and forgotten about. 10 out of 10 if your a true crime buff this is a great addition to your collection.

True crime falls into two basic categories: the somber, detailed, respectful type that places its emphasis on the events and the victims - and the loud, percussive, sensationalist type that focuses on the presenter. Dark Minds falls hard into the latter pigeonhole. There are quite a few churned out programs featuring preening forensic types who love the camera more than the lab, but none of these people are as disrespectful or narcissistic as M. William Phelps, who chews up the scenery at every opportunity, whether on camera or in voice over.

This program is presented as if it's hard-boiled fiction, the cod suspense a terrible mask, as if there might be a chance the victims weren't really brutally murdered in real life. In the wake of recent masterpieces like The Jinx, Making a Murderer and the first two seasons of A Crime to Remember, Dark Minds serves as an example to potential film makers of what not to do when approaching such material.