Customer Reviews

FATAL VISION

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Although director David Greene is known almost exclusively for his work in television, this movie is several notches above most TV fare. Running a full three hours and twenty minutes in two parts, Fatal Vision is just about as riveting as the book of the same name from which it was adapted. The screenplay by long time Hollywood pro John Gay amounts to an indictment of army Captain Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, but then again so did the book.

Gary Cole gives a convincing performance as the former Green Beret army officer who was accused, and then some nine years after the fact, convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife Collette and two young daughters. Karl Malden plays Freddy Kassab, Collette's father, with his usual skill, while Eva Marie Saint plays Kassab's wife.

Since it is still being debated to this day whether Jeffrey MacDonald really was guilty of this horrendous crime (as he continues to serve his prison sentence), perhaps we should appreciate this movie strictly as a study in sociopathology.

The story begins February 17, 1970 with MacDonald phoning the police to report that his wife and two daughters had been brutally murdered by a marauding gang of hippies who broke into his home shouting "Kill the pigs, acid is groovy." He claims he tried to fight them off and was injured and knocked unconscious.

In contrast, the story presented by the prosecution and detailed in McGinniss's book, portrays MacDonald as having, in a fit of temper injured or killed a member of his family, and then to cover up that crime killed all of them, and then fabricated a crime scene to support his story including the infliction of superficial wounds upon himself.

The question most people would like answered is WHY would a previously upstanding member of the community, a successful doctor as well as a decorated army Captain, go to such a horrendous extreme to cover up a crime no worse than manslaughter, if that?

The answer is in the character of Jeffrey MacDonald himself who is depicted as a psychopath possibly under the influence of amphetamines, a man so callous and unfeeling about the pain and suffering of anyone except himself, that he would murder his own family in an attempt to divert the blame from himself. This was the answer that McGinniss came up with after spending a lot of time with MacDonald and after initially believing him to be innocent. This is the answer that the jury believed, and this is the answer given in the character that Gary Cole so vividly portrays.

There are many kinds of truth--legal truth decided by a jury, scientific truth decided by experiment and confirmation, spiritual truth, etc. And there is cinematic artistic truth, decided by the viewer. I think the business-like direction from Greene and his adherence to McGinniss's "vision," along with the fine performance by Gary Cole make us aware of the reality that there are sociopaths among us who can charm and kill with equal ease.

Regardless of the true facts of the case (which we will never know for certain) it is this singular truth that makes this movie worth seeing.

The first point that needs to be made is WHERES THE DVD!!! This is another example of a fine movie being dismissed for who knows what reason. I'm sick of it. That being said, this is by far some of the finest acting by Karl Malden and Gary Cole. This is the story of army officer McDonald plight after being accused of killing his family in the late sixties. The look and feel of the era is captured perfectly along with the weird complexityof McDonald. Plays great from beginning to end. Did he or didn't he? Thought provoking and all around mysterious. Properly needs to be put on dvd, big time!

The Manson family murders that occurred in August of 1969 were bad enough, but now this murder provided no safe haven for Middle Class America to run to; the world was falling further and further apart. For Green Beret Doctor Jeffery McDonald it had as he lost his family his wife and 2 little girls to murder. The world mourned with this man, and then came the accusations, and the fact that McDonald himself finds that he's leading the top of the list. His father in law defends him all the way, but then McDonald's behavior, and attitudes begin to make him wonder could McDonald have killed his whole family, and he sets out to find the truth. McDonald still claims that a bunch of hippies killed his family because McDonald wouldn't give out drugs for them. My honest opinion is that McDonald may very well be completely innocent of this crime, but his psychological state makes me have doubts. First of all the appearance on the Dick Cavett show in which he slams the U.S. Army during the investigation, and causing the audience to laugh. Then the fact he alienated his in-laws, and finally moving away makes me feel that he just was moving on way too fast, and not showing any signs of trying to find who killed his family. His psychological state is also showing that McDonald is a paranoid man who loves himself, and anything pertaining to him. I know that if anyone didn't like, or agree with him he's a controlling sort, and will snap at you. I know the one scene where they argued about a piece of evidence McDonald screamed "Warheidi's a Nazi". I feel that he may have been raised that way by his mother. I Can't look at it any other way. McDonald was found guilty, and will not be elligabe for parole for awhile. I found this to be a impressive movies.

This is a really great movie about the tragic MacDonald murders. It's really amazing that Jeff MacDonald had a wonderful family, but because of his own selfish, sick ambitions, he wiped out his wife and two girls. And to add insult, he got away with it for 9 YEARS!!! If it wasn't for Freddy Kasab's tireless crusade for justice, MacDonald would still be a free man. Definitely buy the movie, it'll tell the story!

This true story was brilliantly done. Karl Malden and Gary Cole were at their best. It's a hard movie to come by and took me a very long time to find it - should anyone see it for sale, I recommend you contact the seller and ask if it's a 2-part movie and if they tell you it's on one tape, you are only getting part 1 of 2 or part 2 of 2. This happened to me twice and the third time I asked the seller before ordering.

In February 1970, Captain Jeffrey MacDonald (Gary Cole), his pregnant wife, and two daughters were allegedly attacked by a group of murderous hippies leaving MacDonald the only survivor with relatively minor wounds. Although Fort Bragg MP's responding to his calls for help spotted some hippies on the street that matched his description, he became the prime suspect. After an inept army investigation and a staunch defense by his father-in-law Freddy Kassab (Karl Malden) the army declined to pursue him further. MacDonald moved to Long Beach, California, and started a respectable career as an ER doctor.

But after reading the army hearing transcripts and seeing MacDonald on "The Dick Cavett Show" - with MacDonald laughing and enjoying himself - Kassab was born again. The transcripts were riddled with inconsistencies and bold-faced lies. He began to hound prosecution of MacDonald just as much as he earlier had defended him. It took years, but in 1979 MacDonald was convicted and is still incarcerated, and although eligible for parole since 1991, he refuses to apply as he would consider that an admission of guilt.

Today MacDonald still protests his innocence, and with the advent of DNA testing, he's hoping for a second look at his case. With some of the prosecution team indicted later for misconduct (though not in his trial) and some new evidence surfacing, he might get a chance. A sad footnote: Judith Barsi, who played one of MacDonald's daughters allegedly murdered by him, was in real life murdered by her father in 1988.

What a great mini series, I had read the book of Fatal Vision and wanted to see the mini series, I was not
dissapointed. It kept to the style of the book and showed us in depth and in person what a monster Jeffrey McDonald was.

Fatal Vision was one of the many mini-series adapting Joe McGinnis books like Fatal Vision about Jeffrey Macdonald and his family's brutal murder. They cast Gary Cole who can hold his own against Academy Award winners, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint who play his in-laws. He still pleads innocence despite the fact that he's convicted of murdering his pregnant wife, Colette, and two young daughters in one of the military's darkest hours. He survived with superficial wounds claiming hippies like the Manson family in North Carolina. Well, the in-laws are the first that don't buy Jeffrey's story and begin to piece together the fact that he might have committed such unspeakable acts. The murders were clearly brutal judging by the crimes itself. The girls weren't shot but stabbed to death for no reason and the same for Colette. What might have been? Jeffrey had a beautiful family and then one day, they were all gone. It might be hard to believe a doctor didn't fight off the so-called hippies who were killing his family. There was no motives for outsiders to come and kill his family because they were on an American military base of Fort Bragg. That would be the dumbest criminal ever not to get caught on Fort Bragg. That's the last place, criminals would go to committ such a heinous crime unless they could get away with it. How can people on a military base not notice strangers? etc. So it comes down to Jeffrey Macdonald's word, if you believe it. After the murders, Jeffrey doesn't seem to dwell in sorry as you might expect him to appear. People believe him. It's not until his father-in-law starts beginning to investigate the crime. Jeffrey was a Jekyll and Hyde character according to this mini-series. The book by the same name is equally chilling, informative, and well-written. I just wish that they made movies like this nowadays.

I don't usually go for mysteries, but this one will captivate you until the very last second! THEN you want to scream, " Gotcha! You $#%@ ! " It was incredible detective work to determine how each were killed, since they were a one-in-a-million family; each having a different blood type. At the time this happened, I only lived about 2 miles away, on Ft. Bragg. There were other bits of information in the local paper, that weren't brought out in the movie, that only added to the definitive guilt of this monster. Hopefully he will never spend another free moment. Joe McGinnis was originally supposed to write this story to help Macdonald, but became convinced of his guilt as well and wrote accordingly. Phenomenal performance by Karl Malden.

The movie is well done, and depicts the events as outlined in the McGinnis book. Even more fascinating is the fact that McGinnis later admitted that he made up much of his story (something about the story being more important that the truth), and that prosecutors not only withheld information, but actually falsefied evidence. Yet ask most people about the MacDonald case and they will site the movie (perhaps the book) as their source. Wow!