[WEST OF MEMPHIS opens in Cleveland Friday March 8th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]
Review by Pamela Zoslov
It's sobering to think of how many
people, in the short history of the United States, have been jailed,
stoned or burned because someone imagined them guilty of witchcraft
or Satanism.This peculiar form of judicial persecution isn't confined
to 17th-century Salem; it recurs with alarming regularity, with the
1980s hysteria over ritual sex abuse (imaginary, it turns out) in day
care centers that led to people being sentenced to life in prison
based on wild tales coaxed out of small children, and in the
celebrated case of the West Memphis Three, a trio of teenagers from
the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas who were convicted of the
1993 murders of three 8-year-old boys found hog-tied, mutilated and
drowned in a creek. The murders, which shocked the community, were
quickly attributed to "cult" practices, because the boys'
bodies were found naked with signs of sexual mutilation.
