There are some extremely stupid people in the world, and it looks like every one of them has reviewed this movie.Joyce McKinney is not a nut, she is not crazy, and she did absolutely nothing wrong in trying to liberate the man she loved from a dehumanizing cult that had (and still has) him in its clutches. Her mistake was in thinking he was worth saving, but love often isn't rational.She is a very colorful person, but that's good, not bad. The world needs more colorful people and a LOT fewer mindless clones (they're the ones who think she's crazy).The life she led in LA before the incident in England had absolutely nothing to do with that incident, and she had done nothing illegal in LA either. But the slimy British gutter press smelled blood, and they went tearing into her for all the blood they could spill.They're disgusting. That they are STILL gloating over their assassination of her character 35 years later - one of the slimiest even having the gall to call HER a vampire, while smiling the creepiest vampire smile I ever saw - is testament to their total depravity.I greatly admire McKinney for having survived what they did to her with most of her charm and sense of humor intact. She's a survivor, and she hasn't faded away among the millions of Stepford Wives like a good little girl. She's still her colorful, charming, open, vulnerable and feisty self after all she's been through, and I greatly admire her for it. SHE gets seven stars.I would give Errol Morris one star for showing the British press scum as the gutless, amoral, grinning creeps they are - but he gladly plants himself with them in the "Joyce is barking mad" camp (it sells tickets and wins awards), so he gets nothing from me but the contempt he and all those "press" sharks deserve.

It's thoroughly enjoyable, it's funny, it induces gasps and a couple of burst-out-loud guffaws, it's mildly shocking (or may induce apoplexy if one lives in puritanical solitude), it's definitely eye-opening and undeniably enthralling, but the overall madness of the subject is tinted with sadness and a little horror of the human, rather than the Richard Laymon fantasy, variety.So what is it about? It's a story of love, kidnapping, sex, dogs, fake guns and Mormons through the eyes of the tabloids and the players involved, the principal player being Joyce McKinney, a woman who enjoys her own brand of reality.In 1977, Mckinney hit the British headlines when she allegedly kidnapped a Mormon priest in England, chained him to a bed in a Cornish cottage and raped him repeatedly over the next three days. Her story is rather different and involves liberating her brainwashed fiancée from the clutches of the evil Mormons and helping him through his guilt with cinnamon backrubs and passionate lovemaking. There's sufficient ambiguity to suggest that neither story is entirely true but after about thirty minutes, I knew what I hoped the truth was.And then came The Daily Mirror's 'revelations' about McKinney's history… Oscar winning director, Errol Morris, delivers a documentary filled with bizarre revelations, a quagmire of lies and half-truths and a sprinkling of harsh realities to amuse and bemuse. As the story unfolds he stitches scenes together with crudely animated montages using photos and news clippings to emphasize the ludicrous nature of the saga. And just when you think you've got a handle on it, up pops another nugget of lunacy.Tabloid digs deep to expose a corner of the mesmerising world inhabited by a woman described by contributor Peter Tory as "barking mad." Go on, you know you want to.For more reviews, subscribe to my blog: www.thesquiss.co.uk

Errol Morris hits a home run with "Tabloid," letting the main subject, Joyce McKinney, pontificate for long stretches at a time; and Ms. McKinney never disappoints. This is a sad and compelling news story from 1977, well known in Britain as "The Manacled Mormon" case. An American Mormon missionary claimed to be abducted and raped by Ms. McKinney and what follows is a tragic but often funny documentary that is truly stranger than fiction. I can't find better adjectives(used by someone interviewed) than barking mad to describe this delusional, obsessed, and sorry figure.The missing element is Kirk Anderson, the alleged victim and abductee, as he refused to be interviewed. Director Morris has a field day with Mormon beliefs, from magic underwear to planets ruled by deceased true believers. The Salt Lake City elders will not be pleased with this film. I highly recommend it to everyone else.

Errol Morris's documentaries fall into two camps: a serious one ("Fog of War") and one of portraits of eccentric individuals dominated by their obsessions who often don't realise they've transgressed the invisible boundaries of what constitutes acceptable behaviour. "Tabloid" falls into the second category. The focus of Morris's scrutiny this time is Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen who in 1977 became obsessed with a young man she met in Utah; the man, Kirk Anderson, began training as a missionary with the Church of Latter-Day Saints of Jesus Christ to escape her attentions and the Church sent him to England. McKinney pursued and kidnapped Anderson with the help of two men and imprisoned him in a cottage in southwestern England. The incident aroused (ahem) much interest throughout the UK with its combination of conservative religion and its strict morality as regards sexual relations, kidnapping and sexual bondage. McKinney was arrested and charged but managed to jump bail and escape back to the US. Although she and one of her accomplices were later arrested by the FBI, the English courts did not request her extradition and sentenced her to jail for a year. Two tabloid UK newspapers competed for sales with opposed views of McKinney's antics and background based on information and material obtained in often shady ways.McKinney is an entertaining and garrulous interviewee, bright and open to a fault. Her apparently guileless manner may well hide a calculating and shrewd mind intent on getting what she wants no matter what it takes or what obstacles are in her way. Morris' Interrotron technique of interviewing subjects, in which McKinney looks into the camera which projects her face's image onto a two-way mirror positioned in front of the lens of the camera facing Morris, and vice versa for Morris, ensures that viewers are hit with the full force of McKinney's bubbling and sometimes overpowering personality but it also means that Morris himself ends up too close to his subject to be able to show a more objective view of her personality and character and the wider meaning of the 1977 kidnapping and the UK tabloid press's involvement. Morris appears willing to be swept along by McKinney's version of what happened and her insistence that Anderson was being brainwashed by a cult but the veteran interviewer never presses or challenges her opinion and prejudices.Morris also interviews a former Mormon missionary who perhaps is the most objective and sane person in the whole film, and two journalists from the rival tabloids that salivated over McKinney and Anderson, each recounting the newspapers' wildly differing versions of the incident and of McKinney's character and defending their stories and research. Viewers see some of the conflicting opinions and views of two people in the British media towards the story: one is amused, the other is cynical and predatory. Unfortunately the two most significant male characters in the whole saga, Kirk Anderson and Keith Joseph May, are absent from the documentary: Anderson refused to be interviewed and May had already died, so any pretence at "balance" is precluded.The film's presentation milks the whole incident for laughs with insertions of tabloid-style title cards that introduce the interviewees and give something of the flavour of the news coverage of the time. Cartoons and cartoon montages help give a light-hearted and racy feel to the film. Towards the end, after the abduction and its consequences become history, the film slows down with the coverage of an unrelated incident that also attracted news attention: in 2008, when her pet dog died, McKinney had it cloned into a litter of puppies by researchers in South Korea.Though the film is entertaining and sympathetic towards its subject, it missed an opportunity to examine McKinney's upbringing in some detail, in particular the expectations and stereotypes she grew up with and absorbed which fed her beliefs about romantic love and marriage and encouraged her obsession with Anderson. In the end, these notions undid McKinney and derailed her life: she resolved never to love another man and became reclusive. That an obviously intelligent and resourceful woman with great drive and energy who lived for romance, marriage and a brood of many children gave up her dream completely is a tragedy that the film glosses over. Morris's attempt at investigating the media hysteria and celebrity worship surrounding McKinney's abduction of Anderson amounts to very little and says nothing about the kind of media culture that existed in the UK then and the social values that supported it. The best that "Tabloid" does is to show that the truth about the incident remains elusive and that people's memories of it can be wildly different for many reasons, of which self-preservation is the primary one.