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Since three men broke out of the world’s toughest penitentiary, HISTORY uncovers new leads and exclusive family secrets that may solve this country’s most notorious cold case.
Most if not all of us, know about the story of the three men who escaped from Alcatraz prison in 1962. The story goes that John Anglin, Clarence Anglin, and Frank Lee Morris devised a plan to escape Alcatraz and succeeded in getting off the island only to drown in the frigid waters surrounding the prison. “Alcatraz: Search for the Truth” puts that theory on its head.
In a well pieced-together documentary, the film takes us along on the journey with a retired United States Marshall, two nephews of the Anglin brothers, and a few other characters to try and prove whether the Anglin brothers really died on that fateful night.
Staged production is a common theme in the reality TV realm and while not common in documentaries, staging a scene for dramatic effect can and will give the desired effect that the company wants and this documentary is no different. While it is appreciated that you want to tell a story using another story, it leads to weak shooting and dialogue between the parties. Such is an instance when the nephews meet with the leader of the investigation to talk about what it would take for the United States Marshall service to exhume the body of their father in order to obtain a DNA sample. The dialogue was short and emotionally vacant seeing as the two parties had butted heads countless times in the past 50 years. What had been described as a sort of blood feud had been staged to the extent of a happy and eventless meeting that reiterated that there was suspected proof that had previously been uncovered during earlier scenes.
With that being said, the documentary provides a plethora of information that will lead to a not so divided audience with its outcome. It is a documentary that will have you on the edge of your seat, filled with tension as they present the possibilities of survival or the likelihood of death while also filling you with information that really hasn’t been highlighted. We are told that the two men held prison jobs in order to secure items like human hair to attach to their masks or that they painted, in order to secure a color that matched their skin tone, also for the masks. What it also did was put a spotlight on the brothers instead of focusing on Frank Lee Morris which is the person with the most celebrity out of the group for his high IQ. The Anglin brothers however, were formidable on their own as the viewer will come to find out. They not only had a knack for survival but one for comedy as well, as the main piece of evidence in the documentary is a picture of the two together that they allowed to be taken and sent home. They knew it would be seen by the authorities at some point and in that it was a “we’re here and you can’t touch us” sort of statement.
This isn’t just an historical account of what could be, it is also a crime-oriented thriller and you usually don’t get that in a documentary. It’s definitely worth a watch and is far from a conspiracy theory. The documentary is very much rooted in fact and brings new light to a forgotten tale. Is it all myth? You decide.
Special Presentation Monday October 12th at 9/8c on the HISTORY Channel
