Lone Star Hate - Full Documentary

The banality of evil is one of the subjects of this Channel 4 documentary on the gruesome 1993 gay-bashing murder of Nicholas West in conservative Tyler, Texas. The story unfolds in graphic detail, through forensic photographs, visits to the crime scene, courtroom and police interrogation transcripts, death-row interviews with the killers, and conversations with West's friends in the gay community. Director Paul Yule turns an unflinching outsider's eye on some absurdly grotesque features of Bible Belt culture, noting the ways it fosters a climate of anti-gay violence. Yule depicts with equal clarity, however, the sense of common decency and respect for the law that compelled public servants in this profoundly conservative city to seek justice on behalf of the victim of a heinous hate crime.