The Killing of America (1982)

That was an excellent one.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The Killing of America (1981) *** (out of 4) This documentary highlights the violent culture that has overtaken America. Throughout the running time we see a number of stories dealing with mass murderers, sexual assaults, sniper attacks and various other crimes. Narrator Chuck Riley talks about everything from political assassinations (the Kennedy's) to Jonestown to the Manson murders. Throughout the film we see how America is slowly becoming undone due to violence.THE KILLING OF America was released in American theaters for a couple weeks before it pretty much disappeared from this country. The film was made for the Japan market where it was a huge hit and it was also released there in a much longer version with even more stories. As it stands, the film remains a fairly well-made look at a violent culture and unlike the FACES OF DEATH series, this film here takes real footage to show what violence is doing.This film certainly has a message to get across. A lot of the blame is put on the fact that it's very easy to get a gun and we see what happens when madmen get their hands on an easy weapon. There's some interview footage with some of the mass murderers that are show (including Robert Kennedy's murderer) and we also see some trial footage to Ted Bundy. The John Lennon murder is looked at as are the stories of John Wayne Gacy, John Hinckley and Jim Jones among others.The FACES OF DEATH series was pure exploitation to the cheapest level. I wouldn't call this film exploitation since it's main goal was to obviously scare people into hoping for better laws to protect people. The film manages to be entertaining as long as you can put up with the violence of the story.

The latter half of the 20th century was rife with societal and political turmoil in the United States of America, and this resulted in a wave of violent crime that continued to the end of the century. There are many contributing factors attributed to this spike in violence, including mass proliferation of guns and drugs, overcrowded prisons, immoral foreign wars, crooked politicians, and poor economic conditions, but The Killing of America focuses mainly on how ingrained violence is in American society, and how we consider violence a part of our cultural identity.The Killing of America tackles this subject with uncompromising reality, using rare and often shocking archival footage to shock the viewer into submission. However, the film never comes off as an exploitation film. Although the footage is often brutal, it is used with journalistic integrity.The documentary focuses on a host of violent events in recent history such as assassinations, hostage situations, robberies, spree killings, and serial killings. Many of the subjects the film covers are famous, such as the Kennedy assassinations, while others are more obscure, especially for people like me who weren't alive to experience the events as they happened. Many of the situations are shocking, and a lot of the footage included in the movie is so effective that it may change your perception of what it means to be a violent criminal.We see killers of all kinds, from all walks of life in America. We understand after viewing that violence can happen anywhere, at anytime, to anyone, by anyone. It paints a picture of a society in deep turmoil based on race, class, politics, and sometimes for no reason at all. Its almost as if the country is constantly at war with itself, with absolutely no sense of togetherness as a nation.The Killing of America is one of the most shocking and effective documentaries I've ever seen. it is continually engaging and throughout its running time never loses steam. Its use of archival footage and music is some of the best I've ever seen in a documentary. It is a raw piece of filmmaking that exposes the true face of American society. I highly recommend this film to any fans of good documentaries or anyone with an interest in American society.

Violence is the theme of "The Killing Of America", a visually graphic compendium of murder in the U.S.A. "Guns and more guns" intones the narrator, as shots are fired, victims fall, chaos ensues, and the killer's face appears on screen ... over and over and over, one crime after another. Watching this film you'd think that there's a killer hiding behind every bush.Beginning with the JFK assassination and progressing to the early eighties, the film compresses some twenty years of violence into ninety minutes, giving a somewhat distorted cultural impression. How does the murder rate during those twenty years compare to prior decades? The film doesn't tell us. How does that period compare to more recent times? The film can't tell us. So that one problem with "The Killing Of America" is that it is time-bound, stuck in a particular era, without reference to the past or future.One might also ask ... how does American gun violence compare to other countries? The film compares the U.S. to Japan and England, which have ultra-low murder rates. Beyond that, the film doesn't say. Recent statistics show that in comparison to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has a higher murder rate than any country except Russia. But when compared to non-industrial countries, like Honduras, Venezuela, and the Ivory Coast, violence in America is quite low. So a second problem with the film's message is lack of adequate geographic perspective.There's also a problem with the film's structure. Although there's a general chronological progression of events, I cannot justify the film's sequential positioning of different types of gun violence, for example, a political assassination followed by some local neighborhood murder, followed by an expose on a highly publicized serial killer. Such sequencing is haphazard and arbitrary. Apart from the obvious violence, what is the unifying theme in this jumble of cases?The visuals in the copy I watched are poor with lots of out-of-focus scenes, though that can partly be explained by impromptu photography. Overall images trend a little too dark. Sound quality also is poor in spots. Most background music is a bit too frenzied and too loud. John Lennon's song "Imagine" provides a welcome reprieve at the end.There is no question that the level of violence in the U.S. was then, and still is, too high. "The Killing Of America" does indeed provide factual information, with very good video footage of local murders and highly publicized national cases. But the political bias toward gun control is blatant. And the overall production suffers from morbid exploitative visuals at the expense of calm, rational analysis.

I have the Japanese video. The narration was all in Japanese while all the footage was subtitled. Good thing because I heard the English narrator drove people crazy with his long pauses.America from 1960-1980. Showing everything from police standoffs to assassinations to serial killer trials. Nothing is left out. You suddenly realize a lot more was filmed than they would let you see on the news.The street scenes of L.A. were interesting but the morgue & autopsy scenes were a bit much.Personal favorite scenes? James Hoskins in Cinncinati and Anthony Kiritsis in Indiannapolis. Kiritsis definitely has a commanding presence.