“Truman Capote's book reconstructed the murder of the Clutter family (father, mother and two children) by Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. They stole 43 dollars and five years later were hanged.... (Director Richard) Brooks has used actual locations and sometimes the people involved in the original story. It is one of the most unusual works of postwar cinema.... Brooks has been relentlessly authentic and disheartening in his concern for the young murderers and the ‘justice' they received. It is a brutally worrying film.” (Brian Baxter, National Film Theatre, London). “All (Brooks') films suggest an unextinguished social conscience, a moral rigor struggling for expression, but it is In Cold Blood alone, with its documentary harshness, crisp winter photography (...by the remarkable Conrad Hall) and tight performances from Robert Blake and Scott Wilson as the mass-murderers...that shows a Brooks one remembers from The Blackboard Jungle.” (John Baxter, Hollywood in the Sixties).