Sandra Harris Writes

NIGHT STALKER: THE HUNT FOR A SERIAL KILLER. (2021) DIRECTED BY TILLER RUSSELL. STARRING GIL CARRILLO AND FRANK SALERNO AS THEMSELVES. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © This Netflix true crime documentary is a really sinister and disturbing watch. In the 1980s, a series of horrific crimes- aggravated burglary, child molestation, child abduction and murders- in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas of the United States had the residents of those two cities on high alert. The thing is, though, that almost all of the crimes were different to the ones that preceded them, and it took a while for detectives on the case to link them together. Normally, a criminal keeps to the same MO or modus operandi and doesn’t deviate from it too much. For example, a man who shoots people from a safe distance, e.g., David Berkowitz in the ‘Son of Sam’ murders, doesn’t normally decide to suddenly stop doing this and start strangling his victims instead, which would entail up-close and personal contac...

  THE SONS OF SAM: A DESCENT INTO DARKNESS. (2021) A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY DIRECTED BY JOSHUA ZEMAN. STARRING PAUL GIAMATTI AS THE VOICE OF MAURY TERRY. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I’m trying not to get too excited about this four-episode Netflix crime doc, as, after all, real people were brutally murdered by the man who is its subject, but it certainly makes for gripping bloody television. So much so that I forgot, while I was watching it, to put the dinner on, and, worse, nearly forgot about the STRICTLY COME DANCING results show, lol, and that never happens.  Whatever about dinner, you do not forget about STRICTLY in this house! The documentary concerns the so-called ‘Son of Sam’ murders, which took place in New York City from July 1976 to July 1977. They held the city to ransom for that whole long horrible year, during which NYC felt to some people like a powder keg waiting to blow. The murders were committed by a gunman, dubbed the ‘Son of Sam’ because of tauntin...

  A SUITABLE GIRL. (2017) A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY FILM DIRECTED BY SARITA KHURANA AND SMRITI MUNDHRA. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I found this Netflix documentary on arranged marriages in modern-day India to be absolutely fascinating, even though there were definitely bits that made me angry and bits that shocked me. My kids and I watched it over Sunday evening dinner with our eyes bugging out at times, it must be said, at the occasionally disturbing content. It follows three young women living in Mumbai and Delhi as they negotiate the tricky world of finding a husband in India in the technological age. Some elements of the process have changed with time; other things remain the same. The women are all in their twenties, likeable, attractive and described as educated, financially stable and middle class. There’s a lot of pressure put on Indian women to get married once they reach a certain point in their lives. Usually, once they finish university or college, they’re fair game...

  AMANDA KNOX. (2016) A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY BY ROD BLACKHURST AND BRIAN MCGINN. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © The murder of Meredith Kercher happened in 2007. The sensational and extensive news coverage largely passed me by at the time because I was a new mammy of a baby boy with special needs, otherwise I probably would have been all over that like everyone else. Murder, sex, intrigue, mystery, blood- what’s not to get excited about, as English journalist Nick Pisa who covered the case says in the film, though personally I think this guy was a little too over-enthusiastic about getting his juicy sex-murder headlines. The press jumped on this case like a swarm of hungry wolves. The headlines became more and more lurid, with the journalists leaping on wild murmurings about devil worshipping, cult murder and kinky sex. According to this documentary, the truth is a lot less fantastical and, sadly, more mundane, if you can use the word ‘mundane’ in connection with the death of a lovely, v...