AllMovie

In 1979, French director Francois Reichenbach was in Houston to film a documentary on crime in the city when a policeman was murdered in a shootout and Reichenbach dropped his original documentary plan to follow the murder case instead. The killer, Charlie Bass, got away to his grandmother's house in Tennesee, and once he was captured there, Reichenbach came in to start filming the circumstances of his arrest and eventual extradition. Bass was brought to trial in Texas and sentenced to death. During the events leading up to the trial and its aftermath, Reichenbach interviewed Bass himself and others connected with the case, deciding to omit editorial comments on the interviews. That may have been a mistake, since his subjects are not able to sustain much interest on their own.