Product Details

• Actors: Froggatt, Harris, Peak
• Directors: Chris Menaul
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: MPI Home Video
• DVD Release Date: April 29, 2008
• Run Time: 140 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0012IWNT0
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,781 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "See No Evil: The Story of The Moors Murders" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 29-APR-2008
Media Type: DVD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Docudrama, June 30, 2008

By 

Kurt Keefner "Happy to be Alive" (Outside Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: See No Evil: The Story of The Moors Murders (DVD)

Don't get the wrong idea about this 2' 20" British production: it's not the pornography of cruelty. It only shows one murder, fleetingly, in silhouette and of a 17-year old, not a child. It only shows that death because that was the only one anyone other than the murderers saw (and because it would be obscene to show the rape and murder of a child). This movie depicts the infamous Brady and Hindley as others saw them, primarily Hindley's sister and brother-in-law, and a police detective. We do not see the killers private lives and actions. It's third-person limited narrative.

This may sound like a limitation, but it's actually an effective way of communicating what these two monsters were like. It's very interesting to see the four young people as a social circle, drinking and smoking cigarettes out on the moors (on the gravesites, unbeknownst to two of them), talking about family and job prospects, cooing over the baby, etc. The first chapter is mostly about how Brady tries to lure Hindley's brother-in-law David Smith into his little circle of evil. Brady kills someone in front of Smith, thinking Smith will join in the fun. Smith cooperates in the clean-up enough to get out of the flat alive and turns Brady and Hindley in. The second chapter is about the investigation, trial and aftermath, as Brady and Hindley try to implicate Smith and Smith's community blames him for the deaths of the children.

Overall, it's a fascinating look at a time (1960s) and a place (impoverished Northern England), all seemingly well-recreated. The social dynamics are fascinating. Watching Brady with his fascination for Sade makes you realized that all those academics who flirt with Sade are kind of perverted. A very interesting movie for grown-ups, not a sick flick for adolescents.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unspeakable evil, unbearable sadness, June 13, 2010

By 

Stephen Midgley (Tarbrax, West Calder, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: See No Evil: The Story of The Moors Murders (DVD)

This is a powerful and affecting TV drama about the discovery of the notorious series of child killings, committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in the Manchester area of England in the early 1960s, known as the Moors Murders. It is well researched, superbly written and acted, and filmed in convincing period style and locations.

As some reviewers have pointed out, the story is told not by directly following the lives of the evil pair or their victims, but rather it unfolds mainly through the eyes of Hindley's young sister and brother-in-law, Maureen and David Smith. Some of the other reviewers see this as a weakness in the movie, but I agree with reviewer Kurt Keefner that, seen from the viewpoint of two ordinary people who unwittingly became involved, it is actually a highly effective way of telling the story. In any case, I doubt that many directors would be prepared to depict on screen the sexual abuse, torture, murder and burial of several children, or that many of us would want to watch the result. This is a fact-based TV drama and the activities of the murderers themselves were not and never can be accurately documented, whereas there is ample information available about the police investigation into the murders and from the Smiths themselves, the latter now superbly told in book form in David Smith's own story "Witness", co-authored by Carol Ann Lee.

And so this TV movie tells the story of how these appalling crimes were discovered, initially by David and Maureen Smith who turned in the killers to the police in spite of the great risk to themselves. By doing so they ensured that no more children and young people would be brutally murdered and yet, as we see, they were initially suspected of complicity in the crimes, unfairly maligned by some elements of the press and public, and the subsequent effects on their own lives were devastating. Here, the young couple are powerfully portrayed by Michael McNulty and Joanne Froggatt. As for the killers themselves, Sean Harris, in the role of Ian Brady, is deeply unsettling from the very start even when he is being civil, and he brilliantly conveys the murderer's cold sadism, twisted intelligence and delusions of grandeur. This is a masterful, menacing and convincing portrayal of pathological evil. As his partner in crime Myra Hindley, Maxine Peake is not at first sight as overtly unpleasant a character as we might expect, but nevertheless her portrayal of Hindley as Brady's willing and calculating accomplice is extremely convincing.

And then there are the police. George Costigan is superb as the resourceful and determined DCI Joe Mounsey, who with his equally able team stays on the case of the missing children long after his superiors have lost interest. His role is well contrasted with some of his colleagues, with frank portrayals of those who were busy accusing the wrong people or at best dragging their feet, unable to make connections or simply not all that bothered about children going missing.

As mentioned above, the murders themselves are not shown on screen with the exception of the last, that of Edward Evans, seen briefly through the horrified eyes of David Smith. Nevertheless the build-up of misery as events unfold is heart-wrenching. Proper attention is given to each of the five known murder victims and their families, and we are reminded very effectively of the shattering consequences of Brady and Hindley's unspeakable activities upon the lives of so many people.

This drama makes for rivetting viewing, but be warned - like the real events that it portrays, this is a profoundly upsetting story. So unless you are as tough as nails or as cold-hearted as Ian Brady, you'll probably need a box of hankies beside you as you watch. But that is as it should be, so all credit to the makers of this compelling and unbearably sad production.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mis-titled, ill-conceived, unsatisfying, October 1, 2010

By 

Tracy Hodson "Awi Usdi" (Down by the Sea, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: See No Evil: The Story of The Moors Murders (DVD)

If you buy this hoping to see a thoughtful consideration of the Ian Brady-Myra Hindley "Moors Murders" case, you will be very disappointed. In this TV movie, the story of the case is told entirely from the point of view of Myra's sister, Maureen, and therefore reveals little of the case itself, which might not be a problem if this were how the movie is being marketed. Given the claim that it's about the Moors Murders, watching it becomes an exercise in frustration and bewilderment as the wait for some real information about the crimes and the killers grows longer. Most of the first part is about how Brady and Hindley tried to involve brother-in-law David Smith into robbing banks with them, and while it culminates in the final murder by the pair, it's seen only at the end when Smith enters their home, and rather than following the murderers at this point, the movie follows David as he tells his hysterical wife what has happened and she shrieks about how impossible it is that Myra should be involved. As this movie is the only one about this notorious twosome, it feels like a cheat to discover that we're really watching the story of how Maureen's life was thrown into turmoil by her sister's crimes--that may be a story, but it seems the least important or interesting story to tell, given the others available. There certainly has been enough written about the case to have made a serious attempt to get into the substance of it, but the chance is wasted.

Maxine Peaks gives a serrated performance that brings Hindley intensely to life (an achievement given the little time she's onscreen), and Sean Harris is convincingly sociopathic as Brady. Joanne Froggart's Maureen is by turns tepid and shrill, and never interesting enough to make up for the lack of screen time given to these two; it's hard to care about the threat to her marriage when murdered childrens' bodies are being searched for. What few details are dramatized are more or less accurate, but unless one is knowledgeable about the case to begin with, knows the victims' names and what was done to them, what happened after the case was solved (and, it must be said, can easily understand strong North of England accents), this half-hearted movie will only irritate. Even the inclusion of scenes with investigator DCI Joe Mounsey passionately trying to solve the case are confusing (how does he leap from the axe-murder of Edward Evans to deducing that Brady must be involved in the disappearances of several children?), and brief, fragmented scenes of the trial don't help illuminate the situation. Events speed by with no sense of the actual passage of time and are so sketchily drawn that, after watching "See No Evil," viewers will know only as much as they did before watching it.

Emlyn Williams' book "Beyond Belief" has been mentioned here as a source for learning "what really happened," but it's important to know that much of what Williams posited as "true" has been entirely overthrown in the years since the book was published.