Tabloid

 

Story:

Tabloid (2010) chronicles the 1970s British tabloid pandemonium that erupted after former Ms. Wyoming Joyce McKinney was arrested for accusations she kidnapped and raped a young Mormon missionary.

Review:

The morning Mormon missionary Kirk Anderson went missing from the steps of England’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1977, little changed in Britain. That is, until Anderson resurfaced with charges that his girlfriend, former Ms. Wyoming Joyce McKinney had chloroformed him, brought him to a cottage in the middle of nowhere, shackled him to a bed and forced him to have sex with her for three days. For many a-man, Anderson’s grievance about his beauty queen captor seemed a fantasy – and the same applied for the British tabloids, which fetishized the beauty queen fetishist, obsessing over producing the most provocative coverage of McKinney and the “Case of the Manacled Mormon.”

Now, over thirty years later, as McKinney reappears in the spotlight – an aged and isolated woman – for cloning her dog, veteran documentarian Errol Morris (The Fog of War) revisits the bizarre case of tabloid warfare and the theatrical all-American kidnapper.  

Morris remains unseen and lets the pulpy subject matter dictate style. The movie mixes Morris’ trademark noir with dark humor and provides the smutty-sensation of viewing an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries.” Dramatic interviews with key witnesses and the once beauty queen detail the bizarre events, illustrated with a barrage of newspaper headlines and archival footage.

The film’s facts are fantastical and captivating, but what makes this worthwhile film worth your while is the same intriguing character that bewitched Britain and sent The Daily Mirror and The Daily Express into battle in the 70s. McKinney’s recounting of the action anchors the documentary; she, a bizarre declining figure, as dedicated to her side of the story as ever.

Is McKinney a femme fatale or innocent oddity? The answer is unclear, and at this stage, unimportant. The pulpy film riddled with kidnapping, rape, Mormonism, cults, dog cloning, shackles and S&M stands alone, as odd and captivating as the events that inspired it.

Reviewed by Rachel Barth for Documentary Film Online on January 30, 2012

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