In Cold Blood (1967)
Review and summary of In Cold Blood (1967), directed by Richard Brooks
The first time I ever read In Cold Blood, or had even heard of the writer Truman Capote, was in AP English 11. I was fifteen years old and our assigned reading for the month was In Cold Blood, the semi-fictional account of the Clutter murders in Holcomb, Kansas.
As someone interested in crime, it was the first time I encountered a very real series of events in a novel like that, as well as Capote’s sympathies towards the two killers. I had no idea a movie version of the book existed until 2021, roughly six or seven years later, when I gained a Criterion account and saw this movie in the true crime movie section they had curated.
And wow, what a chilling movie. As someone who had read the book before watching the movie, and having remembered it clearly despite reading it years ago, I knew what was coming.
The movie doesn’t deviate much from the book and real historical events, so you’re going to know what to expect going into this if you have a vague background. I kind of wish that I hadn’t read that book before watching the movie, because the build-up is absolutely perfect in the movie, one that would’ve hit even harder if you had never read it.
On with the review!
Content
As mentioned before, this movie is based on the Truman Capote book of the same name, which describes the two murderers behind the Clutter family murders in Holcomb, Kansas. One morning the entire Clutter family was found brutally murdered in their home, which came to a shock to the community because Herb, the patriarch of the family, was well-beloved by the community.
But before we get to that point in the movie, we are introduced to Perry Smith and "Dick" Hickock, two guys who had just gotten out of jail. They were cellmates with another guy who had worked for Herb as a farmhand, who then told these two that in Herb’s house, he kept a safe with $10,000 USD. This indeed wasn’t true, as the entire community knew that Herb only paid with checks for everything and never carried cash.
Perry and Dick meet up in Kansas, where they then get the plan to rob Herb Clutter. The intent originally wasn’t to murder him, but as the film goes on, we learn the real reasons why the Clutters were murdered.
We aren’t shown the murder immediately; instead, we find out the family has been murdered early as family or friends come to the Clutter home and find them all dead, then we cut to Perry and Dick elsewhere in a car. What’s unique about this movie is that we find out at almost the very end how exactly these events unfold, giving us time to become attached to our characters and then realize how horrible they were when they murdered the family.
We transition back and forth via flashbacks, and the film itself is shot in black and white. I like the black and white here—often in crime movies (when in color), I find myself getting too stimulated by the visuals of gory murder and whatnot on the screen.
When you remove all the color from a scene in a crime, you focus in on the story a lot more than you would’ve with color. I found the structure, blocking, and shots to be absolutely wonderful, as it flowed superbly. The music also added to the ambiance in a way that was quite immersive to the story. We cut back between Perry/Dick and the cops, which added a bit of flavor, since we can follow the steps in finding the killers.
What I had liked about the original novel was that it gave stories to the murderers, dug into their psychology and backgrounds in a way that we often don’t get from sensational news stories. This is both a pro and a con, as it humanizes them and the horrible acts that they did, but this theme continues in the movie. We get an anti-death penalty plea towards the end of the film, as Smith is lead to the galley. There’s also a character added that inserts the specifically vocalization about crime: the reporter.
The film really captures about how lost in life these guys were. There’s no reason to justify there actions, and it isn’t justified here, but without crime they basically don’t exist. It’s like when a child is unable to get attention they lash out and throw temper tantrums just to be seen. It’s like how it’s said in the film—on their own these two are quite useless and can’t get anything done.
But together they were a force of evil, one that could kill multiple people in one night. Smith seems innocent on the surface, but once he’s triggered, he goes on a murderous spree, while Dick plans this all out and is actually unable to kill anyone.
It’s the context, though, that makes this film spectacular. Released around the same time as Bonnie and Clyde, it is reminiscent of the time before Hollywood had the Hays Code imposing regulations on what could and couldn’t be shown on screen. American and global audience were not used to the level of graphic violence that was shown on the screen.
And you know what the Hays Code banned? Sympathetic depictions of immoral characters—just like Dick and Perry. Naturally, there was a backlash against In Cold Blood and Bonnie and Clyde, but they mark an interesting shift in American cinematic history, one that led to the industry we know today.
Overall Thoughts
It’s a good movie, a classic crime movie. It’s a character study at the end of the day, because of how we dig deeper into the lives of Perry and Dick, and how they managed to become the people they were.
The Clutter family, though, would’ve faded to relative obscurity without this novel and movie. And that’s the biggest shame to me about all of this—that the murderers are the ones immortalized for their lives, but then the victims are forgotten and are left to only be a backdrop in this murder.
It’s a perfect storm of events at the end of the day, ones that lead to a gripping film you can’t look away from.
