Lone Star Hate

Produced by Jonathan Stack (The Farm: Life Inside Angola Prison [VL-3/99]), this disturbing documentary examines the murder of Nicholas West by a gay-bashing trio in conservative Tyler, Texas in 1993. As director Paul Yule's film opens, Don Aldrich and Henry Dunn sit on Death Row for the murder, while 17-year-old David McMillan is preparing to stand trial. Aldrich, Dunn and McMillan were all part of a gang which regularly picked up, robbed and beat gay men. In Dunn's words, the West shooting simply "got out of hand." In addition to the killers, the film interviews local authorities, friends and family of Aldrich and Dunn and religious leaders in the closely knit community. But what begins as a forgone drama about a heinous hate crime in a small town takes on several shades of complexity before it's over: regardless of the conservative bent of Tyler, Aldrich and Dunn are sentenced to die; Aldrich, who is white, admits to being a bi-sexual--a fact confirmed by a disinterested interviewee--while Dunn, who is black, reputedly had a childhood friend who was gay; and so on. While the viewer is always aware that the interviewees are dancing around the facts (Aldrich, at one point, is caught in a blatant lie on camera), there are moments of chilling truth: the light in Dunn's eyes when the subject of guns is broached, the religious conviction of McMillan--even as he stands trial for his life--that homosexuality is as punishable a sin as any other, and the half-smirk on Aldrich's face while he relives the night of West's death. This haunting look at "guns, gays and God" is a powerful piece of reporting marred only by repetitive re-enactments and an overly edgy musical score. Especially in light of the similar 1998 ghastly gay-bashing murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, this timely documentary is recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)