A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.
IMDb RATING
7.0/10
7K
YOUR RATING
- Awards
- 4 wins & 9 nominations
Videos3
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Storyline
Tabloid stories centered on the activities of Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen with a self-reported IQ of 168, over her life are presented. Beyond her beauty pageant days, McKinney first hit the tabloid pages in Britain in what was largely coined "The Case of the Manacled Mormon". As reported by McKinney in interviews, she, a southern Christian originally from North Carolina, got involved with a group of Mormons in her pursuit of true love, without knowing they were Mormons or anything about Mormonism. She fell in love with one of those Mormons, Kirk Anderson, the two who were to be married. After he disappeared without saying anything to her, she, with the help of a private investigator and some male friends and new acquaintances, tracked him down in England where he was being brainwashed by Mormon elders, that brainwashing which included the notion of sex with and marriage to her, a non-Mormon, as taboo. He left with her voluntarily, she who took him away to a secluded cottage to do whatever required to get him back to the non-brainwashed Kirk she knew, which included chaining him down to a bed and having sex with him several times over the course of a few days. She was eventually charged with kidnapping among other charges, the case against her led by the Mormon church. Tabloid reporters were also involved, not so much to uncover the truth, but dig into other aspects of her life, including activities which allowed her to fund this mission of finding and retrieving Kirk, this information which in turn affected the case and its reporting. Beyond this case, McKinney, several years later, again hit the tabloids with regard to a story about her dog, Booger, which in turn renewed interest in the manacled Mormon case. In the end, McKinney vows to tell the complete side of her story through a book, which has become more difficult for her to write out of circumstance as time has gone on. —Huggo
- Genres
- Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)
- Rated R for sexual content and nudity
- Parents guide
Did you know
- TriviaFilmmaker Errol Morris was sued by Joyce McKinney, the central figure of the documentary for allegedly tricking her into appearing in the film.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Ebert Presents: At the Movies: Episode #1.26 (2011)
Top review
Joyce is a breed of crazy you have to witness for yourself
Some stories are so preposterous and delightfully astonishing that they have to be exposed to the masses. Such is the true tale of Joyce McKinney, the former beauty queen who hired a pilot to fly her and an accomplice, Keith May, to England to rescue her boyfriend, Kirk Anderson, from the clutches of the Mormon church. After bringing him to a rented cottage in Devon, where the refrigerator was stocked full of his favorite foods, she bound and seduced him. What ensued was three days of sex, food, and fun, to be forever known as "The Case of the Manacled Mormon".
It sounds like every man's fantasy - a beautiful pageant princess waiting on you hand and foot, satisfying your every whim and fancy. However, Kirk, after reading about his own abduction in the newspaper, fled from his captors and alleged to the police a much different account of what happened. The all-American, charismatic blonde was arrested for kidnapping and raping the Mormon missionary and thrown in the slammer to await trial. The British tabloids had a field day with the bizarre incident.
The Daily Express printed Joyce's side of the story while their rival, The Daily Mirror, delved deep into Joyce's past and uncovered lurid details of her moonlighting as an S&M model and dominatrix for hire, painting her as a manipulative Jezebel that cast a spell over all of the men she met. The accusation did ring true. She often referred to Keith May as her slave and she had another admirer willing to do anything she asked. Even Peter Tory, a reporter for The Daily Express, seems to have fallen for Joyce's delusion that she was simply a girl so profoundly in love with her boyfriend, she risked life and limb in order to save and deprogram him from a cult of polygamists.
Unfortunately, Kirk Anderson declined to participate in Morris's documentary and Keith May passed away in 2004, but there is enough material to fill his absence, like Joyce's decision to travel to Seoul, South Korea to have her beloved rescue dog, Booger, cloned.
The interviews with Joyce, Jackson Shaw (the pilot), Troy Williams (a former Mormon missionary), Peter Tory, Kent Gavin (photographer for The Daily Mirror), and Dr. Hong flow smoothly, with barely any interruption by Mr. Morris. The montage of animated newspaper clippings was a visual treat and the background music fit brilliantly, which normally goes unnoticed in a documentary. The star of the show is Joyce with her animated voice and emphasized gestures. She's a breed of crazy that is sometimes unsettling, sometimes funny, and always entertaining.
It sounds like every man's fantasy - a beautiful pageant princess waiting on you hand and foot, satisfying your every whim and fancy. However, Kirk, after reading about his own abduction in the newspaper, fled from his captors and alleged to the police a much different account of what happened. The all-American, charismatic blonde was arrested for kidnapping and raping the Mormon missionary and thrown in the slammer to await trial. The British tabloids had a field day with the bizarre incident.
The Daily Express printed Joyce's side of the story while their rival, The Daily Mirror, delved deep into Joyce's past and uncovered lurid details of her moonlighting as an S&M model and dominatrix for hire, painting her as a manipulative Jezebel that cast a spell over all of the men she met. The accusation did ring true. She often referred to Keith May as her slave and she had another admirer willing to do anything she asked. Even Peter Tory, a reporter for The Daily Express, seems to have fallen for Joyce's delusion that she was simply a girl so profoundly in love with her boyfriend, she risked life and limb in order to save and deprogram him from a cult of polygamists.
Unfortunately, Kirk Anderson declined to participate in Morris's documentary and Keith May passed away in 2004, but there is enough material to fill his absence, like Joyce's decision to travel to Seoul, South Korea to have her beloved rescue dog, Booger, cloned.
The interviews with Joyce, Jackson Shaw (the pilot), Troy Williams (a former Mormon missionary), Peter Tory, Kent Gavin (photographer for The Daily Mirror), and Dr. Hong flow smoothly, with barely any interruption by Mr. Morris. The montage of animated newspaper clippings was a visual treat and the background music fit brilliantly, which normally goes unnoticed in a documentary. The star of the show is Joyce with her animated voice and emphasized gestures. She's a breed of crazy that is sometimes unsettling, sometimes funny, and always entertaining.
helpful•296
- scarletheels
- Dec 12, 2011
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Storyville: Tabloid: Sex in Chains
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $696,921
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $91,201
- Jul 17, 2011
- Gross worldwide
- $731,925
- Runtime1 hour 27 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
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