Plot

Based on Truman Capote's true-crime classic and nominated for two Primetime Emmys, "In Cold Blood" follows a pair of ex-cons (Anthony Edwards and Eric Roberts) who brutally murdered a respected Midwestern rancher and his family.

At the end of the 1950s, in a more innocent America, the brutal, meaningless slaying of a Midwestern family horrified the nation. This film is based on Truman Capote's hauntingly detailed, psychologically penetrating nonfiction novel. While in prison, 28-year-old Dick Hickock hears a cell-mate's story about $10,000 in cash kept in a home safe by a prosperous rancher. When he's paroled, Dick persuades ex-con Perry Smith, 31, to join him in going after the stash. On a November night in 1959, Dick and Perry break into the Holcomb, Kansas house of Herb Clutter. Enraged at finding no safe, they wake the sleeping family and brutally kill them all. The bodies are found by two friends who come by before Sunday church. The murders shock the small Great Plains town, where doors are routinely left unlocked. Detective Alvin Dewey of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation heads the case, but there are no clues, no apparent motive and no suspects.—Echo Bridge Home Entertainment

Just one thing: Dick and Perry went to the Clutters' house with the premeditated intention of killing everyone in the house, because they wanted to leave no witnesses. Since there was no safe, rage, frustration, and machismo did spur them to kill the family for no reason at all, since they could have just left and hightailed it out of Kansas. Too bad they didn't, isn't it?—suzanne oneill