Documentality: Chowchilla

Chowchilla 7/10

So L. and I watch this documentary on HBO that was originally done on CNN called Chowchilla. This was insane. I had never heard about this case before where a bus full of 26 students and the bus driver were kidnapped. So these kids riding the bus just living their best weird ass Central California life when these guys wearing stockings over their face and holding guns stop the bus. Now the bus driver let them on and all I could think about was that if this ever happened on the public transit that I ride. The bus driver would immediately let anybody on seeing as how they let on screaming, yelling homeless people daily. So these kids get taken for a ride and then they're moved into this underground bunker type thing and next thing you know they hear dirt being shoveled on top of them. These kids started having hallucinations and pretty much losing their minds as you would expect. The bus driver tries to rescue them by lifting this lid and he can't do it but one of the boys is able to. This boy is a true hero this story but what sucks is that the bus driver got all of the credit. Even on this bus driver's Tombstone when he died years later they put that he was a hero.

The Review: The Black Phone

The Black Phone 8/10

A while ago I watched this movie with H&B. This movie was way better than I thought it would be because the trailer for it did not make it look all that interesting. I also like the writer of the original short story that this was based off of but they have a tendency to screw up his writing when it comes to TV series and such. This is about this little boy named Finney who gets bullied because he aura screams victim. And this is 1970 style bullying so it's pretty much close to murder whenever these kids get beat up. While this is going on there's also a bunch of kids being kidnapped and murdered and they call him The Grabber. One day Finney's little sister starts having these visions about the kidnapper and their father gets pissed off because their mother used to have psychic visions and she killed herself. So his solution to her have any psychic visions and them having a dead mama is to be physically abusive to them.

Documentality: Curry and Cyanide

Curry And Cyanide 8/10

Another documentary we watched was called Curry and Cyanide. It's the tale of this lady named Jolly Joseph who and India killed six people. You can guess how she did it. Her first victim was her mother-in-law who she gave a glass of water too with some cyanide in it. Next was her father-in-law followed shortly by her own husband. By the time she was done she had killed one more person, a child, and the mother of that child so she could be with the husband. This was insane to hear about but the crazy thing is when I watch some of these documentaries and I look at the years that this stuff was occurring it's just like “oh yeah life was real strange around that time.” Like, if anything insane happened between 2019 and 2021 chances are I missed out on it. The thing about this lady that bugs me so much other than the fact that she was a murderer was that she would straight up be at these people's funerals standing over their caskets knowing good and damn well that she hadn't murdered them. She would have gotten caught sooner if they had done autopsies on some of these bodies and understood the fact that women could kill. I also like that they had real people involved in this case interviewed. There weren't strange reenactments really of things happening and they spoke to people involved in having her caught including her sister-in-law and one of her two children. This is on Netflix and is a really quick watch.

Click here for previous Documentality.

Documentality: Stolen Youth Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence

Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence 8/10

A lot of times when I watch documentaries about mind control or cult or anything like that I think to myself “that could never be me.” A lot of times it's because everybody looks filthy and I like taking showers or they have to get weird haircuts and outfits and things like that. In this documentary Stolen Youth this could not have been me because even though I have not gone to college I could not imagine me and seven other roommates suddenly having a new roommate in the form of somebody's ex-con daddy. This is about this group of students at Sarah Lawrence College and one of the girls is like “Hey, my dad's getting out of prison you mind if he chills on the couch here?” And they all agreed that its cool! Thankfully, like with every documentary about a cult or anything like this I always look for Black people and there are none in this one.

Documentality: Hell Camp

Hell Camp 7/10

A few weeks ago L. and I watched this documentary called Hell Camp on Netflix. This was nuts. Its about a “camp” where your parents pay a lot of money for you to be kidnapped from your home, taking to Utah, and forced to hike hundreds of miles in the desert. Okay, but really it's for out of control teens and this program set up by this guy named Steve is supposed to whip you into shape. It did eventually get shut down and by shut down I mean moved to a new location until a 16 year old girl actually died. So what happens is you are a teen in the 80s or 90s and smoking weed and drinking and just being a general nuisance. Your parents are sitting at home watching Donahue and they see this guy Steve show up and talks about how you should be dealing with your out of control teenagers. Mind you we later find out that his son is also out of control and ends up at one of these places along with his another child of Steve's who ends up with drug issues as well. So they take you out of your house, throw you on the plane, drop you off in this desert, and the next thing you know Macho Man Randy Savage is screaming in your face.

Documentality: Natalia Speaks

Natalia Speaks 4/10

I have to stay for the record that L. and I did watch the first Natalia Grace (which I would have given a 9/10 just for pure nonsense factor) documentary. For some reason I did not write about it and assumed that I had. The basic premise is that this couple name the Barnett's adopted this little girl named Natalia who was from a Ukrainian orphanage. Over time they started saying that she had mental problems and that she was violent and would do things like stand at the edge of their bed holding a knife and attacking other children. Next thing you know they got this girl in a mental hospital and then moved her own her own to this two-story house and then they also moved her to this place that looks like the type of area you would go to do drugs and die. So the entire time the family is saying this is an adult woman pretending to be a little girl because they said she got her period and had pubic hair and the way she talked seemed to adult for a child. That's the basic story going into this chaos.