In 1959, the Clutter Family was murdered in Holcomb, Kansas.

Herbert Clutter was a farmer and was considered to be prosperous by the standards of small-town Holcomb.  Neither he nor his wife nor his teenage son and daughter were known to have any enemies.  The brutality of their deaths took not just the town but the entire state by surprise.  People like the Clutters were not supposed to be brutally murdered.  They certainly weren’t supposed to be brutally murdered in a tight-knit community like Holcomb or in a state like Kansas.

The Clutters

The author Truman Capote traveled to Holcomb with his friend Harper Lee, looking to write a story about how the heartland was dealing with such a brutal crime.  Six weeks after the murders, while Capote and Lee were still conducting their interviews, two small-time criminals named Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested for the crime.  Capote’s proposed article about Holcomb instead became the basis for his best-known book, In Cold Blood.  Capote followed the case from the initial investigation to the eventual execution of both Hickok and Smith.  He examined the backgrounds of the two criminals, especially Perry Smith’s.  (Indeed, there were some who felt that Capote saw something of himself in the mentally-fragile Smith.)  In Cold Blood was Capote’s most successful book and it also launched the entire “true crime” genre.  It also may have been Capote’s downfall as Capote reportedly spent the rest of his life haunted by the feeling that he would never top the book and that he had potentially exploited Perry Smith while writing it.  In Cold Blood may be critical of the death penalty but, if Smith and Hickok hadn’t gone to the gallows, Capote would never have had an ending for the book.

(The writing of In Cold Blood and Capote’s subsequent struggles are dramatized in the excellent Capote.)

When it was published in 1965, In Cold Blood shot up the best seller lists.  A film version was an inevitability.  Otto Preminger —  who had already made films out of Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Advice and Consent, and The Cardinal — was eager to turn the book into a film and one can imagine him churning out some epic version with his usual all-star cast.  (Sal Mineo as Perry Smith?  Peter Lawford as Dick Hickok?  With Preminger, anything was possible.)  However, Capote sold the rights to Richard Brooks, an independent-minded director who was also an old friend.  Brooks decided to duplicate Capote’s “non-fiction novel” approach by actually shooting his film in Holcomb and having several residents of the town play themselves.  He also rejected Columbia’s suggestion that Smith and Hickok should be played by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.  Instead, he cast former child actor Robert Blake as Perry Smith and an up-and-coming character actor named Scott Wilson as Dick Hickok.  The only “star” who appeared in the film was television actor John Forsythe, who played the Kansas detective who was placed in charge of the investigation.

The story plays out in deliberately harsh black-and-white.  (Legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall made his debut with this film.)  The opening contrasts scenes of Smith and Hickok, both recently released from prison, meeting up in Kansas with scenes of the Clutter family innocently going about their day.  Perry Smith is neurotic and quick to anger, a wannabe tough guy who wears a leather jacket and whose greasy hair makes him look less like a cunning criminal and more like an understudy in a regional production of West Side Story.  Dick Hickok is friendly and slick, a compulsive shoplifter who claims that his smile can get him out of anything.  In jail, Hickok heard a story that suggested that Mr. Clutter kept a lot of money hidden away in a safe on his farm.  Hickok’s plan is to tie up and rob a family of strangers, with the assumption being that, by the time the Clutters get loose and call the police, he and Smith will already be far out of town.  Neither he nor Smith seem like natural-born murderers.  Smith seems to be too sensitive.  Hickok seems like the epitome of someone who brags but doesn’t follow through.  And yet, the morning after the robbery, four of the Clutters are discovered murdered in their own home.

The film delves quite a bit into Perry Smith’s background.  Throughout the film, he has flashbacks to his abusive father and his promiscuous mother.  When Alvin Dewey (played by John Forsythe) investigates Smith’s family, the recurring theme is that Perry never really had much of a chance to become anything more than a criminal.  We learn less about Dick Hickok’s background, beyond the fact that he was a popular high school jock who turned mean after a car accident.  And yet, despite the fact that the film is clearly more interested in Perry Smith than Dick Hickok, it’s Scott Wilson who dominates the film.  It’s not that Robert Blake gives a bad performance.  It’s just that Perry is such a neurotic mess and Blake gives a performance that is so method-y that occasionally, you’re reminded that you’re just watching a movie.  Scott Wilson, on the other hand, gives a very natural performance as Dick Hickok.  There’s nothing particularly showy about his performance and that makes Hickok all the more disturbing as a criminal and a potential murderer.  If you’ve spent any time in the country, you’ve met someone like Dick Hickok.  He’s the friendly guy who always knows that right thing to say but there’s something just a little bit off about him.  He’s likable without being trustworthy.

A few years ago, when I saw that In Cold Blood was going to be airing on TCM, I told my aunt that I was going to watch the film.  She replied that I shouldn’t.  She saw the film when it was originally released and she described it as being incredibly disturbing.  Despite her warning, I watched the film and I have to admit that she was right.  Even though it’s nearly 60 years old and not particularly explicit when compared to the true crime films of today, In Cold Blood is still a disturbing viewing experience.  Towards the end of the film, we finally see the murders in flashback and the image of Smith and Hickok emerging from the darkness of the farmhouse will haunt you.  There’s not a lot of blood.  The camera often cuts away whenever the actual murders occur (we hear more gunshots than we see) but the Clutters themselves are sympathetic and innocent victims and their deaths definitely hurt.  Indeed, considering that the film falls on the more liberal side of the question of root causes, In Cold Blood deserves a lot of credit for not shying away from the brutality of the crimes.  After spending 90 minutes emphasizing Perry Smith’s terrible childhood, it was important to remind the audiences of what he and Dick Hickok actually did.

The murder scene is so nightmarish that it actually makes it a bit difficult to buy into the film’s anti-death penalty argument.  The film may end with Smith remorseful and a reporter (Paul Stewart) talking about how revenge is never the answer but the film’s liberal talking points feel hollow after witnessing the murder of four innocent people.  (Ironically, it turned out there was no safe so those four people died so Smith and Hickok could steal about forty dollars.)  A few years ago, I probably would have been very moved by the film’s anti-death penalty message.  While I’m still opposed to the death penalty because I think there’s too much of a risk of a wrongly convicted person being executed, I’m long past having much personal sympathy for the Perry Smiths of the world.

Overall, In Cold Blood remains a powerful and disturbing movie. It was a film that was nominated for several Oscars, though it missed out on Best Picture due to 20th Century Fox’s huge campaign for Dr. Dolittle.  Neither Blake nor Wilson were nominated, which is evidence that they were perhaps too convincing as Smith and Hickok for the Academy’s taste.  While Robert Blake would go on to have the more storied career, Scott Wilson was a dependable character actor up until his death in 2018.  A whole new generation of fans knew him not as Dick Hickok but instead as The Walking Dead‘s beloved Herschel Greene.

One final note: Both the book and the film present the murders as being an aberration, something that neither Smith nor Hickok originally planned.  In 2013, new evidence was released that revealed the Smith and Hickok were the number one suspects in the murder of Christine and Cliff Walker and their two children, a crime that occurred in Florida shortly after they fled Kansas.  The two of them were questioned at the time and given a polygraph test, which they both passed.  The bodies of Smith and Hickok were exhumed for DNA testing,  The tests came back inconclusive.