Thursday, June 06, 2024

Wednesday And Multiple Murder in Kansas

Changed the beds, washed the sheets, and remade. After my oatmeal  citrus and coffee, which I've had for breakfast seven days a week for years now (I like to try new things, but not at seven am), I tidied up a bit. then made my lunch, packed it, and walked over the footbridge to Wal-Mart on a quest for shoelaces.

I sometimes wonder if the world has gone nuttier than usual. Here's the situation: I have two pair of what we used to call "sneakers" or "tennis shoes" that are so old I don't remember if they're Nikes or what. I know they cost a bundle when new and they are the most comfortable food coverings I've every owned. However, the laces get shabby and recently, I've tried to buy new and have been confronted with the fact that nobody has shoelaces.  At Target, I bought the only one they had left and yesterday, at Wal-Mart, I could find none. I finally asked someone and he guided to me to a locked--yes, locked--display case where they were hanging. I had to get a clerk to open it and finally got my three-dollar shoelaces. What a world! Ate my lunch at the pleasant, sort-of mini-park, between office buildings on Ralston Avenue, and enjoyed it. 

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Bused home and got the urge to watch Cold Blooded on T.V. There's a story behind this and here it is: I happen to know a lot about the Clutter murders. They took place sixty-five years ago in the little town of Holcomb, Kansas when a pillar of the community, prosperous farmer Herb Clutter, his wife, Bonnie, and their two younger children, high school students Kenyon and Nancy, were murdered by Richard Hickock and Perry Smith.* The perpetrators had met in prison and had been told--erroneously--by a fellow inmate thst Mr. Clutter had large sums of money at his home. Truman Capote wrote a book about it, In Cold Blood, which was a sensation when it came out in 1965. 

I've always had a fascination with murder and I was enthralled by the book.  The movie that followed was excellent, too. A short time ago, I watched the movie Capote, and that reignited my interest. Got the book out of the library and am in the middle of it again; it reminds me what an excellent writer Capote was. That led me to the recent movie, Cold Blooded on Netflix. The movie made from it with the same title was excellent, too. So-o-o, when I saw that Netflix was showing the version made five years ago, Cold-Blooded, I was curious and started watching...

AAGH!  I have a multitude of annoyed objections to this thing, a major one being the miscasting of the killers. Both are first, much too old and second, bear no resemblance to the actual perps. Robert Blake was perfectly cast in the 1967 movie (ironically, in real life, he was on trial for the murder of his wife a few years late). In this version, the characters come across as stereotypes (from Kansas? Okay, let's make 'em all rubes). The exception was the actor playing Herb Clutter, who did a credible job, although he was written as pretty one-dimensional, too. I won't enumerate the other problems I saw with the movie, but suffice it to say, I quit watching.

* There were two older daughters, one in nursing school, the other married and living in Illinois, so they escaped the carnage.  

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