AllMovie

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris spins a remarkable true-life story of love, sex, obsession, abduction, religion, and scandal. Joyce McKinney was a beauty pageant winner in her teens who moved from the Midwest to Utah and fell in love with Kirk Anderson, a handsome man who also happened to be a Mormon. Like many Mormons, Anderson was called upon by the Church of Latter-Day Saints to go on a mission to spread the word about his faith; Anderson was sent to England, and McKinney was heartbroken about losing her man. So McKinney took matters into her own hands -- she flew to England, snatched Anderson from an LDS meeting house in London, and spirited him away to a remote cabin where, after chaining him to a bed, she attempted to seduce him away from the church. McKinney saw this as an act of love and rescue, while Anderson's lawyers described it as kidnapping and rape, and when the matter went before the British courts, the tabloid media in the U.K. ran wild with the story. In Tabloid, Morris allows McKinney to tell her side of this truly remarkable story, as well as sharing some incredible tales of her life before and after what became known as "The Case of the Manacled Mormon." Tabloid received its world premiere at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival.