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An American Crime

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In the summer of 1965, two young girls, Sylvia Likens, age 16 and her little sister Jennie, crippled with polio, were left by their itinerant parents in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a divorced mother of seven, in a blue-collar neighborhood in Indiana, who agreed to care for them for $20 a week while their parents traveled the carnival circuit. Three months later, Sylvia was dead, and Gertrude Baniszewski was standing trial for first-degree murder, accused of having engineered Sylvia's death by torture.

The film, "An American Crime", shown on the Showtime cable channel, follows Sylvia's last three months fairly closely. Gertrude Baniszewski, who may or may not have been playing with a full deck to begin with, progressed from slaps and spankings when the support checks arrived late, to more grotesque punishments after Sylvia "lied" about Baniszewski's oldest daughter Paula being pregnant (Paula actually was pregnant by a married man), culminating in Sylvia being locked in the basement and systematically tortured not only by Gertrude Baniszewksi and six of her seven children (the baby was too young to participate), but also by several neighborhood children who stopped by from time to time after school to join in the fun. Even worse, Gertrude forced Jennie Likens to take part in abusing her sister, threatening to do the same thing to her if she didn't. By the time Sylvia mercifully died of shock and abuse, there was hardly a square inch on her body that had not been cut, scalded, beaten, burned with cigarettes, or subjected to whatever torments the Baniszewskis could dream up, including scratching the words onto her abdomen with red-hot needles in letters two inches high "I'M A PROSTITUTE AND PROUD OF IT". The movie notes that although Gertrude Baniszewski started this particular act, she was too squeamish to finish it, so she got one of the neighborhood boys, Ricky Hobbs, to do it for her.

The film tells the story in a straightforward manner without any attempt to help us understand why these horrific events took place, and the director has come under some criticism for this. Perhaps there was no attempt to explain why Sylvia had to go through such hell during the last three tormented months of her life because there is no explanation. One can sympathize with Gertrude Baniszewski up to a point; she was abandoned by her husband to bring seven children up alone with no child support; she was pregnant thirteen times resulting in seven children and six stillbirths or miscarriages; and her boyfriend was abusive to her; but millions of other women have gone through much worse than Gertrude Baniszewski has, and none, to my knowledge, has systematically tortured another human being to death. Was her circumstances to blame for her actions? I don't think so. Was her mental state to blame? Or was the bad hand she was dealt by life responsible? Again, how do you explain that millions of people have had it much worse than Gertrude Baniszewski without resorting to the level of depraved savagery with which she treated Sylvia Likens? Did she just see in Sylvia something she had hated all her life and was determined to destroy? We don't know, and wisely, the director doesn't assign this as a reason for Baniszewski's actions. The film also raises the question, which was never answered in the real case, of why the neighborhood children turned into willing, even eager, participants. What kind of enviromnent spawns children like this?

The acting in the film is uniformly good across the board, with Ellen Page turning in a sensitive and well-nuanced performance as Sylvia and Catherine Keener giving a chilling portrayal of Gertrude Baniszewski. I didn't feel the movie was being made for its shock value, although what happened to Sylvia was shocking enough, nor do I fault the director for not indulging in specious "explanations" for the inexplicable. The film does raise a much larger question: was Gertrude Baniszewski mentally ill or was she just plain evil? Is evil a form of mental illness or an entity in itself? One can argue that question endlessly and get nowhere. We're left with a lot of unanswered questions, and perhaps this is what unsettles so many people who watch this movie. Some things don't have any explanation, or at least an explanation we want to accept. Sometimes even the perpetrators are left at a loss. "Sylvia wanted something," Gertrude Baniszewski said during her trial for which she was ultimately convicted of murder and spent twenty years in jail before being paroled in 1985, "but I could never find out what it was." Perhaps Sylvia just wanted to be treated like another human being.

Judy Lind

AN AMERICAN CRIME is a problematic little reenactment of a real criminal case of child abuse dating back to 1965. The story is horrifying and while the film places the facts in our faces, the impact of the film is out of focus. This is due to the script that elects to glaze over the motivational aspects of a brutal crime in favor of attempting to investigate fully the mindset of both the perpetrator and the victims. Were it not for some sterling performances by Catherine Keener and Ellen Page this film might be easily dismissed: the strength of these actresses to overcome a weak script and manage to involve us is much to their credit as artists.

Indiana, 1965, and Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener) is a 'borderline' single mother of several children who is asked to take care of Sylvia (Ellen Page) and Jennie Likens (Hayley McFarland) while the girls parents remain on the road as carnies, promising to send checks to help support their farmed out children. Gertrude is a woman of loose morals who adds babies to her large family during liaisons with young men like the itinerant Dennis (James Franco). Gertrude takes in laundry to support her household and requires her young children to work toward the same goal. A friction develops between Sylvia and Jenny and the children by Gertrude's illicit adventures as well as covert sexual similarities surfacing in her children and at 'family meetings' Gertrude doles out punishment for Sylvia - punishment including cigarette burns, coke bottle insertions, branding etc. - all of which are undeserved and eventually lead to Sylvia's imprisonment in the basement where Gertrude and her children and their friends daily torture Sylvia. Eventually Sylvia dies and Gertrude and family are brought to court for charges of first-degree murder and variations thereof. The court proceedings (under the leadership of lawyer Leroy K. New played by Bradley Whitford) provide the story drivers as each allegation is then acted out by flashbacks until the verdicts are reached.

Catherine Keener is superb as the deranged, maladaptive Gertrude and Ellen Page adds yet another feather to her cap in a role that in another actor's hands could have been over the top. Writer/director Tommy O'Haver (the script was written with the aid of Irene Turner) does manage to show us the facts of this atrocity yet fails to go inside the characters to give us the psychobiographies this film has the potential for illuminating. It may well repel some viewers, but it does bring to the forefront a crime that is all too common in this country. Grady Harp, May 08

I saw this film on Showtime this week, and was blown away by it. I've seen hundreds of movies in my life, and this is only one of two films (the other being, "The Exorcist") where I actually had to turn my head from the screen. The abuse poor Sylvia took is so graphically and often illustrated that it brought me to tears, which is not easy to do. Catherine Keener is amazing, playing a totally unsympathetic role. Ellen Page is wonderful as always, and easily passes for a young teenager. Interestingly, this film makes a curious companion with "Hard Candy," where Ellen Page is the "abuser."

I recommend this film immensively, but be prepared for it to stay with you a long time. I know it did with me.

**Spoiler ALert**

When I was a kid, my parents had a book called "Encyclopedia of Crime" or some similar title. It was filled with a variety of gangsters, mass murderers ( I don't think "serial killer" had entered the lexicon yet) and other assorted creeps. One perosn in the book that really stuck out and spooked me wasn't Manson or Richard Speck but Indianapolis' own Gertrude Baniszewski, convicted of the true life horrible torture killing of 16 year old Sylvia Likens. The details of she and her charges horrible crimes against young Sylvia were sickening enough, but her old black and white photo in in the book I saw showed the face of true evil, almost a modern day witch- someone of whom "bogeyman" tales are probably still told.

"An American Crime" relives the horrible true crimes committed by Baniszewski in late Summer and early Fall of 1965. A demented, drug addicted single mom with too many mouths to feed takes in two neighborhood girls for a weekly payment from their travelling carney parents. After a misunderstood "insult" against her promiscuous daughter, Baniszewski lashes out sadisticly against the older foster child Sylvia. The true account of the case is stomach turning in the totrure and cruelty that Sylvia experienced. At the hands of one maniac, Sylvia's treatment is criminal and barbaric, but as this cruelty came from the hand of not only Baniszewski but her sons, daughters and other neighborhood kids is unfathomable. I imagine psychologists today could still write volumes on the group think sadism and the adult approval that had one maniac leading about a half dozen others.

There's no pretty ending here. Nothing seems to be learned, people go to jail, some for probably way too short a time.Little is settled or speculated upon motive wise by the script. The pretty Christine Keener is ratted up convincingly and looks the role of the truly haggard real life Mrs. Baniszewski well, but perhaps plays her a little more humanly than I could see the real life psycho to be. Keener has a warm smile and a voice sometimes too soft for the Baniszewski I imagined, but in all does a fine job. Likewise fine acting by Scout Taylor-Hawkins as tbe elder Baniszewski daughter, Evan Peters as the weak minded neighbor Ricky and Ellen Page as the so unfortunate Likens girl.

It's a grotesque real life case that happened before America became so jaded- before Color TV, cable TV, TruTV or Nancy Grace nightly brought such pathologic behavior into our living rooms on a nightly basis.

When I reviewed The Girl Next Door, which is also based on the case of Sylvia Likens, I could hardly put my thoughts into words. I sat in front of my computer screen for hours knowing that I needed to write something, but unable to find the words, which is somewhat frustrating for a writer. No such problem exists with this film, An American Crime.

An American Crime is more true to the actual events then The Girl Next Door, although it skips over a lot of the abuse and doesn't really give a clear picture of what this young girl was forced to endure during those few months in late 1965. Sylvia Likens, fondly nicknamed "Cookie" by her father, and her sister Jenny were two bright, energetic, and endearing teenagers. When their parents decide to go on the road with a carnival they are left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a single mother with seven children who is constantly sick and battling with depression.

The real life story of Sylvia is one that will forever haunt me. When police found her body on October 26, she had been burned with cigarettes and matches over a hundred times, beaten on a daily basis by a host of neighborhood kids from 11 to 18 years of age, starved, forced to eat her own feces, and a host of other atrocities that I cannot repeat here. But by far the worst torment she endured was a brand across her chest made with a hot piece of metal that said "I am a prostitute and proud of it." Sylvia, only sixteen at the time of these tortures, was killed in one of the most horrendous fashions imaginable.

So, which film, An American Crime or The Girl Next Door, is truly the better film?

When it comes to staying true to the original story An American Crime comes out on top. None of the tortures depicted in this film are fictional, they all happened, none of the characters made up, and only a few events fictionalized to make the story seem more dramatic. The problem I had with this film, however, is that it's really tame compared to The Girl Next Door and the actual events. Sure, everything here actually happened, but there are a host of other atrocities that are either skipped over or mentioned only in passing. Some of Sylvia's tormenters are given a free pass in this film, their own actions glazed over giving them a by that they clearly did not deserve. Paula was not the reluctant friends she is portrayed as in the film; she was one of the ringleaders of the abuse and often bragged about how badly she would beat Sylvia .

In the film there is a specific scene when, at a church picnic, she was asked by an adult how she broker her wrist, to which Paula replied, "I lost my temper with Sylvia, she's been doing some terrible things and I've had to be strict with her."

In real life a neighbor had come over to the Baniszewski house to pick up some laundry. When she noticed Sylvia in the corner badly beat up and bruised, she asked Paula about it. Paula only smiled and bragged that she'd given Sylvia those bruises, "hit her so hard I broke my wrist." The neighbor, of course, never reported this comment. Sylvia was dead a month later.

I thought, before reviewing the case for myself, that this film was exaggerated. It is not, in fact its incredibly tame considering the source material. If you think the film is gut retching, I dare you to actually review the case. Just the bare facts were enough to bring me to tears. This movie doesn't even scratch the surface of these people's crimes and the pain Sylvia must have endured.

But the worst complaint I have about this films is not its overly tame nature, it's the horrendous script and reliance on cheap Hollywood tricks that were, frankly, unneeded and violated the integrity of the film. This movie has nothing if it lacks realism, but inserted to the film throughout are many Hollywood tricks created to make the film seem more "dramatic" and "faster paced." Trust me; there is no need for any of that if you stick to the source material. The music is the first thing I noticed. It's loud, obnoxious, and distracting. There was simply no need for it a lot of the time. The films content can stand on its own two legs without us needing to hear overly dramatic music glaring in our ears.

Spaoiler.
Also, the whole "dead girl narrating her own death" subplot really undermines the realism of this film. She's dead; she can't narrate her story, and having her drift around as a ghost witnessing her own death and visiting those who killed her in prison didn't work for this films favor either. But the one part that infuriated me the most was the fake escape scene where Sylvia actually escapes convinces one of her tormenters to take her to her parents, and returns only to find that she never escaped at all, she died and is now wandering around like a ghost. In reality, Sylvia when she learned that Gertrude was planning on dumping her in nearby woods, did try to escape. She was caught, beaten until she passed out, and thrown back into the basement where shortly thereafter she died. The whole scene tanked the films credibility, in my opinion. Instead of staying true to the story and showing the death of Sylvia as it ACTULLY happened, they use smoke and mirrors to try to make the actual death even sadder. But they forgot one thing, YOU CAN'T MAKE IT ANY SADDER THEN IT REALLY WAS! The real life case is probably the most heartbreaking story ever told, why rely on these smoke and mirror tactics? The mind boggles.

A film like this needs realism and great acting. It struck out on the realism, but hit a home run with the acting. Since seeing Juno I have been a fan of Ellen Page, who plays Sylvia in this film. Page is, in my opinion, the BEST young actress in the business today, bar none. Every role she touches turns to gold, and her portrayal of Sylvia is far superior to Blythe Auffarth's (Meg in The Girl Next Door) portrayal of the same character. Sylvia is played perfectly by Page, who expresses the emotions and pain that Sylvia went through in horrific detail. Although the actual torture scenes were tame in comparison to The Girl Next Door and the actual events, Page made them almost unbearable all the same. At one point I actually had to stop watching the film. Page was obviously the better actress, but another reason this portrayal of Sylvia is superior to The Girl Next Door is because Page looks much younger then did Auffarth. Although she's playing a sixteen year old girl, she looks like she's thirteen. She's also a lot more passive then Auffarth's character, and takes the tortures and punishments with hardly a word of defiance or pleading.

In addition to the stunning job Page did, her co star, Catherine Keener Gertrude Baniszewski was also a home run. She wasn't simply crazy and moralistic like Ruth was in TGND, she was a struggling single mother of seven who took her anger and frustration over not being able to care or her children out on an innocent girl. She's more human, which makes her character all the more terrifying. She's not insane in the same way Ruth is (although she is still insane, just not in the same way), she isn't just punishing bad behavior as she sees it, she actually believe she's protecting her kids from the "bad influence" Sylvia has on them, although Sylvia never (the film and real life) actually committed any of the sins they claimed she did. Everything she does she does to protect her kids, but as we see in the end, she was really only protecting herself.

So I'm going to have to recommend The Girl Next Door over this film. Although TGND does add a few things to the story that weren't true, messes around with the characters, and has its own problem with an overly Hollywoodized ending, it is still the better of the two films and is nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece. Put Page and Catherine Keener in that film and we'd have one of the best films of all time. An American Crime just doesn't hold the same power, and commits far too many mistakes of its own.

Replay value; low.

This film is so disgusting, so horridly grotesque and inhumane, that you won't be able to pull yourself away; like rubbernecking at a really bad car wreck.

Based on the true story of Sylvia Likens (played here by Ellen Page, Juno) and her terminal abuse at the hands of the mentally deranged Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener, Capote), the film pulls no punches, giving us all the terrible sequences that led up to Sylvia's death at the age of thirteen.

More disturbing (to me, at least) was the fact that Sylvia's parents dropped her (and her sister) off with a woman they knew very, very little about. But leaving Sylvia and her sister Jennifer (Hayley McFarland, 24) with a mentally ill woman (that they didn't know was mentally ill) probably isn't that much of a shock considering it was a time when America was still battling with its ideals (the 60s). Going beyond horrifying is the fact that neighbors heard the screams of Sylvia but did nothing about it. And young kids in the neighborhood partook in the abuse of Sylvia and no one, not one single person, thought to contact the authorities. The horrors of watching Sylvia's physical decline paled in comparison to the horrors of what didn't get done.

Catherine Keener was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her creepy performance, and well deserved are those accolades. Her transference of all that was wrong in her life onto Sylvia is completely believable, making her role as Gertrude exceptionally frightening.

A word of caution: this film is NOT for the light of heart. It is brutal, unflinching storytelling about a time when America had to identify problems it wanted to keep hidden, and this film shows that in all of its goose-bumping, gory, glory. If you can't handle seeing truly disturbing images of child abuse and neglect, then stay away. But if you can handle that, and are a steward of gritty film-making, this one won't disappoint.

This is one "based-on-a-true-story" movie that really matters, that is more than just a loose exploitation of some tragedy. I don't know why this movie slipped through the cracks at the box office. All its stars turn in brilliant, incisive acting jobs - including Ellen Page, the young star of "Juno." This movie deserved to reach a wider audience.

It shows how child abuse can escalate from scathing insult to the extremes of physical cruelty. It is psychologically accurate in that it additionally shows how such abuse can sometimes be focused on just one child in a family, while other family members go relatively unscathed or else actually get enlisted to promote the cruelty.

This movie doesn't attempt to fully explain how such pathology develops in a family. However it does illustrate some conditions that are frequently found where these sick dynamics develop. The victim here, along with her sister, had been temporarily adopted, so she was not the biological offspring of the abusive woman and was tacitly perceived as being a burdensome "outsider" from the start. Then the abusive caretaker had a lot of diffuse hostility and resentment that she needed to focus. The one slightly more free-spirited adopted sibling got the full heated rage of this hostility focused on her to the point that it erupted into flame.

Other family members and friends each had complex motives for eventually conspiring with the abuse. These others were of course afraid of the abusing woman. They wanted to please her and felt relieved when they saw her rage being vented on someone else. However these other individuals also had their own floating hostilities that they wanted to anchor somewhere, on someone. All of this seemed calculated to build to a horrifying pack attack.

Without loading too much freight on this one movie, it might be viewed in a larger context. You might actually find it more helpful in leading you to understand how holocausts evolve than a lot of the scholarly works written on the subject of genocide. It suggests how holocausts can be the result of a lot of vague grievance that gets manipulated into focus on one particular person or group.

This is a difficult movie to watch, but very worthwhile.

Very well done account of one of the most depraved and heinous crimes in American history: the 1965 torture slaying of Sylvia Likens, an innocent young girl boarding with her sister in the home of one Gertrude Baniszewski in Wichita, Kansas.

As a boy of twelve, I remember reading the original story of this shocking murder in Time magazine back when it occurred.

The horror of the events leading to Sylvia's death rocked my world back then, and the intervening decades have done nothing to soften the impact of this dreadful tale even today.

Of course, this being a Hollywood movie, everyone -- and everything -- seem to look a little better than their real-life counterparts.

Katherine Keener is certainly a more attractive woman than the real Gertrude, a lumpen brute if ever there was one, and Ellen Page is cuter than the real Sylvia.

If the movie has a failing, it is that the facts of the actual case are so incredible it is hard for the viewer to believe these things really occurred as they are shown here.

The sad truth is, there were even worse cruelties inflicted upon poor Sylvia than the ones shown here, including scalding hot baths, salt being rubbed into her open wounds, and other torments I'd rather not go into.

People interested in learning the complete facts of the case are advised to read the book, "House of Evil" by John Dean (no, it's another John Dean, not Nixon's old pal), which tells the full excruciating account.

Still "An American Crime" is a very well acted, written, and directed attempt to depict the events and give some meaning to what happened.

I have more than 3,000 live-action movies dealing with children and teens. Fortunately, only a handful deal with such serious child abuse. The only one that equals 'An American Crime' is the French Canadian movie entitled 'Aurore' - ( see the Amazon listing at: http://www.amazon.com/Aurore-Original-French-Version-Subtitles/dp/B000CEOMV2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1229583719&sr=1-1 It is probably easier to find the movie on Amazon.ca.) In both cases, the child subject is killed by an evil 'caregiver' woman.

Many others have commented on this movie, so I can probably add little in that respect. One aspect of the movie others have mentioned that I agree with is that it is extremely weak in relation to any aspect other than just what happened. This is sharply in contrast with 'Aurore.' The Canadian movie tells the story of a girl who was abused and killed by a stepmother; but it doesn't stop there. It was because of Aurore Gagnon's death in 1920 that the whole network of Child Protective Services was set up in Canada. [There was a 1951 version of 'Aurore' - and the actress who played the mother in that movie was so hated by the public she could not find work in the movies again.] In 'An American Crime' we are never told if Sylvia's abuse resulted in anything good. In fact, Sylvia's narration tells the viewers that she still hasn't found the meaning in what happened to her.

Also, both movies deal with the community involvement, or maybe I should say lack of involvement in stopping the abuse. Indeed, Sylvia's case could be considered to be even more evil than Aurore's case because some of the neighborhood kids actually took part in Sylvia's abuse. In both movies, the church pastor was an integral part of the story. We never are told why Sylvia's Baptist pastor did so little. In Aurore's case, her Catholic priest was an intellectual, a book scholar and professor, who was sent to pastor a rural parish for which he was sorely ill suited. Still, neighbors and others in the community were aware that (at least) something horrible was happening and they did nothing; it was 'mind your own business' gone amuck.

I believe that everyone born is given an assignment by God to accomplish with their life, and when that assignment has been accomplished, He takes them 'home' to Heaven. Sylvia might not see the meaning in her abuse and death, but I have a feeling that everyone who sees this movie (or 'Aurore') and who has a heart for children will not stand idly by if they ever even suspect that a child is being abused. If that is the case, then Sylvia's life and suffering was not in vain. Six-year-old Adam Walsh was murdered, and that propelled his father, John, to host 'America's Most Wanted,' a show that has saved many kidnapped children and also put hundreds of criminals behind bars. I would guess that little Adam is in Heaven looking down in amazement at how much his death has done to make life better for many others. I think Sylvia would probably have the same 'Heavenly experience' as Adam.

June 21, 2009 - I just watched the movie 'The Girl Next Door,' which is supposedly about this same case. That movie possibly gives a more graphic description about what happened to Sylvia - at least that is what I've read. However, the rest of the facts of the case are so skewed I wouldn't be surprised if the abuse was also mostly fiction as well. At any rate, if you watch 'The Girl Next Door,' then you must watch this one to get a true perspective of the case. If you are more interested it the facts, then skip 'The Girl Next Door' and watch this one only. [My impression of 'The Girl Next Door' was that it was done on such a low budget that they had to play fast and lose with the facts. The most blatant to me was where the police storm in at just the right moment, that they take the younger sister away and just leave Meg (the Sylvia character) to die on a mattress as David tries to comfort her.] In my opinion, 'An American Crime' is a far superior movie to 'The Girl Next Door.'

This was a truly disturbing film based on a true life story.

One of the most disturbing aspects of it is how the children are taught to disrespect another's life, and how easily children's amorality can lead them to do such horrible things, not to mention the horrible things done by the adult, Gertrude Baniszewski, who has Sylvia in her care.

It's nearly unbelievable if it weren't true. I'm reminded of the book "Lord of the Flies".

The very end offers a dream sequence that gives us hope and surprises us, but then leaves us in anguish once we realize what has transpired. Mercifully we are not shown Sylvia's death. One has the impression that much worse things were done to Sylvia than we are even shown in the film.

Ellen Page (Sylvia) and Catherine Keener (Gertrude) give amazing performances.

It is a story like this that makes us realize that it isn't just the ones who commit the crimes that are the criminals, but also those that look on and do nothing.