That was stupid - stealin' a lousy pack of razor blades! To prove what? (Perry) It's the national pasttime... (Dick)

Holcomb, Kan., Nov. 15 [1959] (UPI) -- A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged ... There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.

This 300-word article interested Capote enough for him to travel to Kansas to investigate the murders. This also got me interested in the film and history of this true event. At one point, this film and book were one of my favorite films. It still is a top favorite of mine because of the true story and the story about the two killers. The classic black and white of the film gives a better detail and the wonderful Conrad Hall chromatography adds a great and unique balance of this riveting tale. It is a film that also shaped the decade of the sixties for film.



Perry Smith and Dick Hickock concoct a plan to invade the home of the Clutter family, as Mr. Clutter supposedly keeps a large supply of cash on-hand in a safe. While the two criminals felt that their plan for the robbery was sound, it quickly unravels, resulting in the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Clutter, as well as two of their teenage children. The bodies of the Clutter family are discovered the next day, and a police investigation is immediately launched.

As the investigation builds, the two wanted men continue to elude law enforcement but are eventually arrested. The police interrogate the two men and confront them with evidence, such as a bloody footprint matching the boots worn by one of the men ("You boys signed your own work!"), but are slowed by Smith's refusal to provide answers. The police claim that another mistake made by the men is that they left a witness. Finally, Hickock confesses and states that he does not want to be executed for the crime.

This film was seen once by myself on TV and from that point on I fell in love with the way the film was done. It was a film that turn my head to understand how film was made too. I saw that same documentary that I saw Days of Heaven, and knew right away that this is what I wanted to do. This film struck me in an odd way. I saw the film and read the book and was really taken by the historical study of this story. It was odd but this film turned out to be one of my favorites for a long time. It still is a film I can watch over and over again and also easily put it in my top twenty films.

I think what also caught my eye with this film was the way the film was made. It could have never been made now (there was a made for TV version) and it could not be a film that was made in color too. It was a film that took a great gamble and put two somewhat unknowns in it and really gave me and the people the sense of these two killers. Nowadays, this film would be talked about and the story line would have been so over played that it's real themes would be lost. Brooks handles a flawless production, mixing gritty docudrama with Hollywood style. The movie is just on the edge of the Hollywood revolution: there's some nudity and a surprising amount of cussing, but the violence remains mostly off-screen.

In Cold Blood pulls a neat trick in humanizing the killers without making them particularly sympathetic. Our protagonists are the anti-Leopold and Loeb: too stupid to know what they're doing, their "perfect crime" goes horribly wrong from the word go, degenerating into senseless killing and immediate regret. These losers don't even have the wit to escape, fleeing to Mexico then drifting back to the scene of the crime. The moments of humanity they get - Perry's warped fantasies and flashbacks, Dewey's interviews with their parents, the amusing scene where Hickock and Smith help a vagrant kid collect soda bottles - only accentuate their crime's nastiness. Individually they'd be cagey but harmless hoods, but together they're the perfect storm of neurotic destruction.

The movie is a classic and strong suggestion is that you watch it. It is a tough movie to watch because you see these two killers exposed so well that you kinda mumble under your breath at all the times they make a mistake. There are reasons I love film and this is a wonderful page two story that stuck with Truman Capote and myself for many years. It is a classic and I think you might enjoy this. Enjoy and watch with intent and I am sure you will catch all the film stuff I love in this one film! Enjoy!!

"Who says I can't? I'm only doing my job." "Some people are bullfighters, some people are politicians. I'm a photographer."

The plot is a day in the life of a fashion photographer (David Hemmings). It begins after spending the night at a doss house where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos. He is late for a photo shoot with Veruschka at his studio, which in turn makes him late for a shoot with other models later in the morning. He grows bored and walks off, leaving the models and production staff in the lurch. As he leaves the studio, two teenage girls, aspiring models (Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills, ask to speak with him, but the photographer drives off to look at an antiques shop. Wandering into Maryon Park , he takes photos of two lovers. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) is furious at being photographed. The photographer is startled when she stalks him back to his studio, asking for the film. This makes him want the film even more, so he hands her another roll instead. His many blowups (enlargements) of the black and white film have rough film grain but seem to show a body in the grass and a killer lurking in the trees with a gun. The photographer is frightened by a knock on the door, but it is the two girls again, with whom he has a romp in his studio and falls asleep. Awakening, he finds they hope he will photograph them but he tells the girls to leave, saying, "Tomorrow! Come back tomorrow!"

As evening falls, the photographer goes back to the park and finds a body, but he has not brought his camera and is scared off by a twig breaking, as if being stepped on. The photographer returns to his studio to find that all the negatives and prints are gone except for one very grainy blowup showing the body. At a drug-drenched party in a house on the Thames near central London, he finds both Veruschka (who tells him she is in Paris) and his agent (Peter Bowles)whom he wants to bring to the park as a witness. However, the photographer cannot put across what he has photographed. Waking up in the house at sunrise, he goes back to the park alone, but the body is gone.



Befuddled, he watches a mimed tennis match, is drawn into it, picks up the imaginary ball and throws it back to the two players. While he watches the mime, the sound of the ball being played is heard. As the photographer watches this alone on the lawn he walks into the distance, leaving only the grass as the film ends.

When I discovered classic films I was watching them contently. I would even go out of my way to ask people who has the pay cable stations like HBO, Cinemax, The Movie Channel and others to tape me a movie I wanted to see. These movies were always on and back when I saw them they were basically uncut and very little commercials. Not like today where you can watch a film and there is five minutes of commercials and when you get back to the film the area where you knew where it continued was cut and they moved to another scene entirely. It is one reason now I don't watch films on TV because of that fact.



Then something happened to out cable. It was a stumble that to this day makes me watch films more and more. The creation of TCM. The TCM channel or Turner Classic Movies showed films without commercials. It was great I got to see films that I never saw before and films I loved without seeing a break in the action. One night they were celebrating Italian Cinema they showed a Sergio Leone film and also they showed another classic The Leopard which was pretty rare looking back because that was a hard film to track down. Just before my father went to bed, they previewed what was coming up next. He saw with me what they were showing. It was the movie called Blow Up. He told me that he saw this when he was in the service and loved it. He also told me to throw a tape in the VCR and he would watch it at a later date. He suggested that I watch it too. He said it's a classic film. I stood up till it was over at 1am to understand how right he was.

Blow Up is a great film for people who want to appreciate and understand classic world cinema. The film was defiantly unconventional for it's time and it was also a pretty daring. Also my dad told me that the part with The Yardbirds is classic cinema. You will have to see the scene to understand it. It made my day when I saw that scene. The movie is not a Hollywood film, it's a film that opened my eyes to the love of foreign film. This is the film people mention when they list foreign films. I know I put it up there in my favorite of that genre.



I suggest you see Blow Up it will give you a whole new outlook on how and why films are made. This move so far has not been remade and I really don't think they could. It is a film that make you think and also fall in love with the sixties like I love the sixties. It is a true classic and for that I totally suggest you watch this as well. A great film, a great time period and most of all a great watch and study. Enjoy!!