In comparison with the other nations of the developed world, the United States of America is by far the most violent, notching up far more deaths due to murder than it ever has in any of the wars it has been involved with: you might say the ongoing issue of homicide across the country is akin to a never-ending civil war. This documentary will attempt to trace the source of this thirst for violence and its place as a perceived solution to the perpetrator's problems, which it links back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the beginning of the modern obsession with such savagery, showing the famous footage captured by Abraham Zapruder on the day of the crime that shocked the world...
The Killing of America was, for quite a while, possibly the most bootlegged legitimate documentary of all time, thanks to it largely being made for the Japanese market, though it was released spottily in other territories as well, including a brief sighting in the United States where it held the most interest, understandably. Rumours went around about the film that it had been held back because it depicted such sickening violence that it had been banned from mass consumption, though others who had actually seen it were of the opinion that it had been curiously prophetic in how crime was shown on television, so that may not have been the reason. It was more likely that it was the soundtrack that held it back in spite of growing demand, however.
Put a popular song or two in your movie and it's a guarantee that some rights issues would arise, especially if those songs cost a pretty penny to licence, and many a vintage movie or television show would find themselves at the wrong end of that sort of legal matter. On the other hand, this and not the musical accompaniment to the then-recent death of John Lennon did contribute to the documentary's mystique, that whole idea it was too strong to be distributed, and the grainy quality of those bootlegs combined with its self-serious voiceover did offer it a standing above those other mondo movies that had been inflicted on the world of trash since Mondo Cane in the mid-sixties, where more often than not their reportage would be staged for extra sensationalism - for this reason The Killing of America was seen as the Faces of Death series for the more intellectual viewer.
It had been the brainchild of Leonard Schrader, brother of the more famous Paul Schrader, who wanted to make a sincere exploration of his homeland's obsession with brutality in lawbreaking, often as an end in itself, such as the serial killers and spree murderers the accounts continually returned to. He got to know the credited director Sheldon Renan who had become renowned for securing clips and material for documentaries and they set to work in assembling their narrative, but they wanted more than a simple collection of odds and ends too strong for the television news, and added in original footage as well. This included interviews with a detective, the Los Angeles coroner at the time, and most notoriously the psychopathic murderer Ed Kemper, who was articulate enough until you noted the matter of fact manner in which he spoke about what he had done to be locked up for life.
You would also notice recurring aspects: the mass killers are often referred to as having above average IQs (not that you would notice when you hear them speak), the incidence of killing for kicks was going up in numbers (we are shown the CCTV-caught, pointless murder of a grocery store clerk twice, for emphasis), and that more and more citizens were turning to using guns to make their voices heard when they felt there was no other way for people to listen to them. We see news footage of hostage situations with gun-wielding desperate men who have immediately lost any chance anyone will take their problems on board the second they picked up their weaponry, yet somehow this fails to prevent them, it keeps happening. Yes, you did see clips and photographs of criminals and victims alike being killed, but the motive was not a shockumentary drive to titillate the less laudable part of the brain that loves a good tale of real life horror, more to sober the viewer up, make them realise there was a huge dilemma here. It didn't gloat, it just depicted, and if there was an air of pomposity about it, then you could forgive it that, especially when you saw how little had changed since this had been made.
[Severin's Blu-ray has a director commentary and interview featurette with Renan, and an opportunity to watch the longer, Japanese version of the film. It is completely uncut (including the music, Lennon fans).]
