Badmovies.org Forum

OK could we talk about movies where Holly tried to get real?  Movies based on reality. Or at least claiming to be.

I'll open up with a couple hits and a couple huge misses.

'In cold blood' was a reality movie that hit it outta the park in common vernacular. Based on Truman capote's very well researched novel it was by most accounts a very true to life account of the clutter family massacre.  For the time a shockingly hard and brutal movie it fan hold it's own against many movies today in terms of harsh tone and emotional impact.

'Compulsion',  based on the infamous Leopold and Loed murder changed the names but largely got the story right.  Despite Orson wells' formidable presence it's not in the same league as In cold blood but hold  its own as a good reality based movie.


Now a couple fails.

Birdman of Alcatraz. This movie claimed to be based on reality but was in reality pure fiction. Robert Stroud was a horrible monstrous creature that had absolutely nothing in common with Burt Lancaster's character.

Murder in the first.  Claimed to ve a true story of how conditions in Alcatraz prison were so brutal and inhumane they drove a man insane.  While this happened in reality and a convict at Alcatraz was acquitted of murder charges based on the brutality of the prison,  policies and guards driving him. Insane,  the truth is the character in the movie was an innocent saintly man while the real person the. Movie was based on was a vicious criminal who earned his trip to Alcatraz,  even if not the horrible abuse he suffered there.  If the movie had stuck to reality abd made it clear it is possible to wrong and abuse even a violent murderer it would have made a better point.