Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

If you wondered what Trey Parker was talking about when he shouted "Free the West Memphis Three!" at the recent MTV Movie Awards, two HBO documentaries, now being released to theaters for a limited time, will fill you in. In the town of West Memphis, Arkansas, three young boys are found brutally murdered, one with his penis and scrotum completely amputated. The killings are described as "ritual style," and the blame is quickly placed on the shoulders of local goth/metalhead Damien Wayne Echols (whose chosen first name didn't help his case any), his best friend Jason Baldwin, and their running buddy Jessie Miskelly, a mentally handicapped young man who confessed following a 12-hour interrogation. Unlike similar in documentaries (The Jaundiced Eye, for example), the filmmakers -- codirectors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky -- don't stack the deck on either side of the case. It's obvious that the townspeople are prejudiced against metalheads and those who wear black, and that Miskelly's confession is full of holes. On the other hand, Echols seems disingenuous when he claims he named himself Damien after a Catholic priest he admired, and he clearly has more interest in the occult than he is willing to admit. On the basis of reasonable doubt, however, an unbiased jury would be hard pushed to prove guilt. But the story continues in the sequel...

Revelations: Paradise Lost 2

The sequel to Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, filmed four years after all three suspects were convicted (with Echols receiving a death sentence), is somewhat less successful than the first, not just because it necessarily must lean heavily on clips from the first movie but also because the first film had become so prominent that Berlinger and Sinofsky weren't allowed to film many crucial details, such as Echols' appeal trial. Additionally, our protagonists this time are a bunch of annoyingly perky PC-types from L.A. who were inspired by the first film to start a Web site to help out. For the most part, however, Revelations focuses on John Mark Byers, stepfather to one of the murdered boys, who is a repeat criminal, on multiple drugs, and suffering from a brain tumor. There's ample evidence to suggest that he may have been involved in the murders, but again, thankfully, the film offers sufficient conflicting evidence to cause doubt. If Byers were a fictional character, he'd be comical, but he comes off like an aspiring pro-wrestler who can't break character, turning to the camera on a regular basis to threaten his enemies with violence and hellfire. Both films also feature the music of notorious control-freaks Metallica on the soundtrack, standing up for metal fans everywhere in the days before they pimped their tunes to MI:2 and started going after their online fans. And Berlinger is moving on up: Next on his schedule is a fake documentary about horrific deaths, namely the Blair Witch sequel, which, coincidentally or not, bears the same name as a book used as evidence against Echols -- the Book of Shadows.