The People vs. Paul Crump

In 1962, a young aspiring filmmaker named William Friedkin made an hour-long film on the controversy surrounding Death Row inmate Paul Crump. Intended for a local TV channel (which never aired it), The People vs. Paul Crump had some festival screenings and was released on VHS, but has mostly remained unseen, making this restored DVD release welcome. Friedkin's film comes down heavily on the side of Crump, who said that he was framed for being part of a 1953 robbery that ended in murder. Despite a lack of physical evidence connecting him to the fatal crime, Crump was the only one of five charged to receive the death sentence. Crump's legal team fought 15 execution dates over a nine-year period, and Crump's warden even came to his defense, noting that he was a fully rehabilitated inmate. Friedkin blurs the lines of nonfiction filmmaking by using dramatic re-enactments of the robbery and conducting staged interviews, and the film itself is framed in a somewhat artsy visual style that may seem at odds with its sobering subject (but is definitely illustrative of its time). Extras include a booklet that details Crump's tragic fate: his sentence was commuted from death to “199 years without parole” and he achieved some degree of notoriety for writing the novel Burn, Killer, Burn while incarcerated, but the brutal prison treatment broke his body and mind—ultimately paroled after 39 years in prison, Crump died in 2002 from lung cancer. An interesting curio that helped launch Friedkin's Oscar-winning career, this rare film is recommended. (P. Hall)