Documentary Review: 'The Killing of America' is Shocking, Disturbing and Essential

The Killing of America

Directed by Sheldon Renan, Leonard Schader

Written by Leonard Schrader, Chieko Schrader

Starring American Violence

Release Date September 5th, 1981

Published February 3rd, 2025

The inspiration for this article is a video I tripped over while researching movies of the 1980s with a friend. We saw that in 1981 there was a documentary about America’s culture of violence and how violence had only begun to take such a hold in America in the wake of the J.F.K assassination. Interesting thesis, I wanted to know more about it. That’s when I learned that The Killing of America, a 1981 documentary created by filmmakers Sheldon Renan and Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader’s brother, was available to watch for free on YouTube.

The Killing of America is among the most mind-blowing, shocking, stirring and horrific documentaries to ever exist. The film is boldly uncensored and demonstrates its thesis statement regarding the growth of American gun culture and the culture of violent death that accompanied it, by using uncensored footage of people being killed, footage of morgues full of bodies in the midst of autopsy, and crime scene photos of a kind that haven’t been seen in American media in decades. But it’s so much more than just shock footage. The Killing of America features real instances of American violence that have been forgotten or censored out of existence.

A striking series of scenes takes us on the campus of Kent State University where we see uncensored photos of the carnage that occurred, the students assaulted and murdered by America’s own National Guard at the behest of a despotic and uncaring American President. From there, we go into the actual tower where Charles Whitman applied his sharpshooting skill to murder University of Texas students and other random passersby. Then we see photos of the aftermath, after police stormed the tower and killed Whitman.

The film does not relish or fetishize these shocking images, the voiceover by actor Chuck Riley could not be more detached from the very things he’s describing in detail. It’s certainly intended to shock but it’s also a strong reminder of the cold blooded reality of death. The documentary goes further by taking us to famous murder sites and trials. We see Ted Bundy on trial and see the Hollywood pastiche fully stripped away to reveal his monstrousness. We see gruesome photos of his victims, and we see the actual testimony of women who survived his attacks.

It’s horrific but, at the same time, it forces you into the reality of it all. Hollywood has made several exploitative Ted Bundy movies. They all seem to focus on how charming or handsome he was and what role that played in his ability to destroy his victims. The Killing of America shows us the real Bundy, a desperate, dead-eyed, narcissist, who believes his own hype. Seeing the cowardly Bundy asserting his innocence to reporters and seeing how charming he thinks he is, is far more effective than any Hollywood portrayal of Bundy.

Dean Corril is not as famous as Bundy, and has few Hollywood depictions of his crimes. Instead, he’s the boogeyman of many true crime videos and podcasts. But no YouTube true crime video or podcast can prepare you for seeing his teenage accomplice, David Brooks, in the immediate aftermath of having killed Corril and confessing to participating in his horrific crimes. Brooks’ quavering voice, and distraught figure leads police to where Corril buried the bodies of numerous teenage boys, including Corril’s own childhood best friend, and we watch as bodies and parts of bodies are lifted from the ground.

You can tell yourself that this is not necessary or that it exploits the victims, but it’s the closest we can ever come to the reality of the horror of it all. The real people who have become a list of names and dates on videos and podcasts, are often forgotten. Their fate is obscured by storytelling. There is no obscuring them from here. We may not recognize their bodies, but the harsh, jarring reality of their fate is more visceral and gut wrenching than any story about them could possibly be.

I’m not saying we need to go back to a time where we published crime scene photos in newspapers, but it is undeniable that we’ve lost something in the transition to a period where we censor reality and shield ourselves from the actual horrors that have occurred. I could not help but wonder if the Alex Jones’ of the world would be able to exploit school shootings if they actually had to see the bodies of the victims they so callously use as props in a disinformation war. Could the NRA hold a press conference if it was accompanied by photos of victims of gun violence?

Most strikingly, could our political class continue to offer thoughts and prayers while watching videos of innocent people being eviscerated by the bullets from the automatic weapons they refuse to regulate? In 1979, a 16 year old girl from San Diego was gifted a shotgun for her birthday. She proceeded to use the gun to take shots at school children walking to the school across the street from her home. She wounded more than a dozen kids and killed two men who rushed to shield the victims. Thoughts and prayers have never felt so hollow as when you see the aftermath of what this teenage girl did, all because she got a gun for her birthday.

The Killing of America is the ultimate anti-gun statement. If you can remain in favor of the unregulated proliferation of guns after seeing this documentary, I worry about what you might be capable of. The Killing of America demystifies violence, takes away its mythic power and distills it to a cold hard reality. Fewer guns mean fewer deaths. It’s just that simple. The free access to weapons of death is the cause of many, many deaths. The Killing of America rips open the lies that gun culture in America has been selling us for years, much like the way a bullet tears away flesh and explodes bone.

And The Killing of America is available, fully uncensored on YouTube. The same, deeply disingenuous American corporation that takes money out of the hands of creators for talking about murder or violence, is also a platform for one of the most remarkably violent, explicit, and, in my opinion, vital and necessary, documentaries ever made. That’s an almost too perfect microcosm of modern American hypocrisy in and of itself.

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