shockey said:
seen it a couple of times now in the showtime loop. don't remember hearing a peep about this amazing 2007 flick starring the always-wonderful catherine keener and incredible ellen page.
am i incredibly late to this dance? have others seen it and been left as disturbed as i was? ???
I haven't seen the movie, and I'm not sure I can sit through it. For those who don't know, it's based on a gruesome case in Indianapolis in the mid-1960s, where a creepy lady got all these kids to torture one girl to death. Fascinating story, but not someone you'd necessarily want to watch. Here is the back story:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/young/likens/2.html
I went to high school with the movie's director, Tommy O'Haver. When we were juniors in high school, Gertrude Baniszewski, the creepy lady at the center of this, was granted parole. I remember Tom (he was just Tom then) being fascinated with the case, although a lot of us who weren't around for the original trial were.
Maybe Tommy can do An American Crime II, based on Tony Kiritsis, who attached a shotgun to the neck of his mortgage broker and paraded him around downtown Indianapolis on live TV in 1977. Certainly, there's a tale that would resonate these days. That Kiritsis was found not guilty by reason of insanity is one of the reasons why laws across the country changed from the prosecution having to prove the defendant was sane to the defense having to prove its client was not.
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~nstanton/Kiritsis.html
This photo of the incident by a UPI freelancer won a Pulitzer: