In Cold Blood
Overview
IN COLD BLOOD is Richard Brooks' stylish and powerful 1967 drama adapted from Truman Capote's novel about a shocking real-life murder case. This daring cinematic portrait employs flashbacks to fully examine what drives an individual to commit thoughtless and brutal crimes, while using a highly innovative jazz score by Quincy Jones to capture the moody atmosphere. Capote's own role as researcher-narrator of the young criminals' intense friendship, fantasies, and troubled lives is effectively brought to the screen in this striking, groundbreaking drama. Two aimless drifters, Perry Smith (Robert Blake) and Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson), target the home of Kansas businessman Herbert Clutter. After breaking into the house, they find no money, and Smith and Hickock brutally kill the entire Clutter family. They escape the scene of the crime and head for Mexico, but they eventually go back to the States, ultimately returning to Kansas. After being chased for almost a year, the troubled drifters are captured and sentenced to death.
Awards:
Main Cast & Crew:
Richard Brooks - Director
Robert Blake
Scott Wilson
John Forsythe
Paul Stewart
Gerald S. O'Loughlin
Jeff Corey
John Gallaudet
James Flavin
Charles McGraw
Jim Lantz
Details
- Format: DVD
- Color Format: B&W
- UPC: 715515160711
- Genre: MYSTERY / SUSPENSE / THRILLER
- Rating: R (MPAA)
- Release Date: November 2015
Movie Reviews
Notes:
Theatrical release: December 14, 1967.
Richard Brooks was determined to bring a realistic feeling to the screen, so he filmed in the actual locations of the murder and surrounding town--including in the Clutter house, where the murders took place, and the actual courtroom. Nancy Clutter's horse, Babe, was even used in a few scenes, and the hangman in the movie is the actual hangman who executed the real Hickock and Smith.
Brooks also fought against Hollywood conventions and studio Columbia Pictures in order to film in black and white and to cast relative unknowns Robert Blake and Scott Wilson in the lead roles.
Filming through a window, cinematographer Conrad Hall encountered a startling accidental effect of water running down the window, giving actor Robert Blake the appearance of tears his character would never shed. This accident created what would become one of the film's most memorable and devastating shots.
Reviews:
"...Put Blake on the fast-track....Chilling, inevitable..." -- Rating: A- - 11/08/1996 Entertainment Weekly, p.78
"...Robert Blake and Scott Wilson remain memorable..." - 09/26/2003 USA Today, p.10E
"...Superbly shot in black-and-white..." - 11/01/2003 Total Film, p.126
"[I]t’s unlike anything else coming out of Hollywood at the time -- at once a throwback to the best American movies of the 1950s and on the cutting edge of what was happening and what was about to happen in world cinema." - 11/18/2015 A.V. Club
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