The Killing of America
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Killing of America (1982) is an American documentary film tracing the origins of gratuitous violence in the United States. Directed by Sheldon Renan and narrated by Chuck Riley, the film was written by Leonard Schrader and his wife Chieko Schrader, with music by W. Michael Lewis and Mark Lindsay.
It featured notorious multiple killers such as Tony Kiritsis, Ted Bundy, Mark Essex, David Berkowitz, Kenneth Bianchi, Mark Essex, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Herbert Mullin, Brenda Spencer and Charles Whitman. It also features serial killers John Wayne Gacy and the duo Elmer Wayne Henley and Dean Corll.
It also features the killing of both Kennedy's and Martin Luther King.
Synopsis
The Killing of America focuses on what the director feels is the decline of the United States. It features interviews from Ed Dorris, a retired sergeant of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, as well as Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi. The documentary also shows several interviews with convicted killers such as Sirhan Sirhan as well as footage of murders and news broadcasts. It connects the beginning of America's woes with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and posits that hope of recovery was snuffed out when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 (the film features footage from the Zapruder film and news footage from the night that Robert Kennedy was killed). According to the film the 1960s saw the rise of "sniper" mass murderers who were often white, well-adjusted people that killed people seemingly at random (exemplified in the film by the murders of Charles Whitman). The 1970s saw the rise of what the film calls "sex killers", serial killers such as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy who also raped and sexually abused their victims. A section of the film also analyses the Cleveland Elementary School shooting in 1979, in which a 16-year-old teenager opened fire on a group of children and staff from her window opposite an elementary school in San Diego, injuring 9 people and killing the school's principal and a janitor.
The last part of the film goes over the murder of John Lennon and ends with footage from a Central Park vigil for the slain musician. The narrators' last lines are: "Two people were shot at this Central Park vigil. While you watched this movie, five more of us were murdered; one was the random killing of a stranger."
Cast
- Chuck Riley as Narrator
- Ed Dorris
- Thomas Noguchi
- Sirhan Sirhan
- Elmer Wayne Henley
- Edmund Kemper
- James Hoskins
See also
