Netflix is the greatest thing since women. Sometimes it’s even better because Netflix never gets mad that you don’t want to take it to dinner and it won’t nag you to take out the garbage. It provides constant entertainment with the click of a mouse. How could you go wrong? And can you find me one person who hasn’t sat in their house for a week, in the dark, eating gallons of ice cream and watching every single episode of Melrose Place? I think not. Netflix is live streaming heroin, brutally addictive. But instead of always watching shitty hour long dramas or purposely looking for movies that were only given one star in the rating systems so you can see how bad they are, you should browse the extensive selection of documentaries on Netflix and not just the ones about prostitution you degenerate, although I’ve seen every one of those as well. All joking aside, here are 11 documentaries on Netflix that you have to check out.
Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance
This documentary focuses on the life of Carl Panzram, an American serial killer, psychopath, and all around sick bastard. He was known to commit arson, robbery, and for some reason, he loved sodomizing men. Panzram spent a good chunk of his life in prison which is where he wrote his autobiography, Killer: A Journal of Murder”, at the urging of one of the prison guards which I found strange. Panzaram was also alleged to have said, “In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry.” Yeah, there are no deep-seated issues going on there. Anyway, this documentary about this weirdo is really interesting because there’s no redemption, morality, or reasoning in it. It’s about a sick guy who did sick things, and didn’t give a crap. He went to jail, died, the end.
Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story
Ah, Bob Guccione, the creator of Penthouse magazine, the Pepsi of early porn magazines. Regardless of whether or not you agree with what the guy did for a living, he’s an intriguing character. You have an Italian kid from Jersey who feels this need to travel the world, live in England, and be artistic, which in case you didn’t know, aren’t typical needs of an Italian kid from Jersey. This documentary tells the tale about how Guccione went from starving artist to publishing billionaire and back to starving artist. One would think that the owner of Penthouse would have had a pretty crazy life and one would be right. This documentary gives all the little tidbits on his sex life, his ridiculous art collection, and how he was the first guy to show pubic hair in a magazine. It also goes into some detail about how the creation of Penthouse kind of led to a war with Hef. Overall a good film on an interesting and slightly odd cat.
The Brandon Teena Story
I watched this documentary after seeing Boys Don’t Cry starring Hillary Swank which is the movie about these true life events. I don’t know if it was because the movie was so spot on or the documentary was just good but I found this really interesting for some reason. Most of you have seen the movie so you know the general idea. There’s this girl who has a gender identity crisis and she poses as a man. She has girlfriends and the whole nine. Obviously, Nebraska is not the type of place that takes too kindly to this type of thing so unfortunately Brandon Teena was raped by two associates and later killed by them. The documentarians get a lot of face time with the two dirtbags who committed the crime (who show no remorse whatsoever for their crimes), talk a lot with ex-girlfriends of Brandon, and really delve deep into what exactly went down. As you’re watching you can’t help but feel like you’re really getting to know Brandon and what she was going through. This is an especially good one and deserves a thorough watching.
Blackfish
Blackfish got a lot of play in mainstream media which is uncommon for a documentary but when a killer whale murders a bunch of people while being forced to perform tricks and the brainless, greedy people in charge of this shitstorm don’t do anything people are eventually going to take an interest. Blackfish is the story of Tilikum, a killer whale who was captured in the wild, and brought to Sea World or some other similar place (Sidebar: I swear, for the life of me I just never understood the fascination with these places. Am I alone here?) and is forced to perform for years. Jump in the air, let me stand on your nose, drag me though the water, those are some of the neat tricks they forced this killer whale to do while a bunch of very easily entertained people eating ice cream cones watched. Here’s where it gets interesting, the whale starts killing people, as KILLER whales might do and the big wigs at Sea World let it continue to perform. This documentary gives you weird feelings because you’re sitting there like, “that damn whale, kill it” and then you’re like “wait it’s an animal, shouldn’t the morons put him back in the ocean?” Anyway, when whale trainers are being killed on a regular basis and the whale is still around, needless to say, it’s a problem and this film takes us through the whole journey. Just so you can really get an idea of what you’re going to see, one trainer is scalped but there isn’t a drop of blood to be found, which means her heart wasn’t pumping, which means she was killed by a whale scalping. Horrible, horrible stuff but interesting to say the least.
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
Before we start, yes this is the woman who Charlize Theron played in Monster. Moving on, this is a documentary about Aileen Wuornos, known as America’s first female serial killer. A traveling prostitute, Aileen killed eight men, potential clients. This documentary is a sequel to The Selling of a Serial Killer. To sum this whole story up Aileen Wuornos lived a life worthy of a movie before she killed the first man on her killing spree. She was homeless, raped on several occasions throughout her life, and just had an overall miserable existence. This documentary and its predecessor which is also worth a watch focuses on the extremely shady nature of this whole case. Was it shady in the sense that Aileen was an innocent woman being persecuted? No, she was guilty as the day is long. The shadiness came in when everybody from the cops, to the lawyers, to family members of Aileen were all on the take when it came to a Hollywood deal that grant them the rights to her story. It was a payday for everybody involved and the powers that be buried everything. After twelve years on death row, we see an already disturbed woman further fall into mental illness and paranoia, although not all of it completely unjustified as there were a number of people trying to benefit financially off of the story of her life and death. This is a truly fascinating documentary.
Talhotblond
This documentary is about what was called the “Internet Chatroom Murder”. A Buffalo man in his mid-forties, Tom Montgomery, posed as an 18 year old Marine in an internet gaming chatroom. He met a beautiful 18 year old girl by the name of Jessi. She sent him tons of pictures and they built a relationship, going as far as to say they were going to get married when Tom got back from an imaginary Marine mission in Iraq. Tom was a family man and participated actively in the lives of his daughters but was overall a strange guy. He was obsessed with what could have been and was a gun and Marine nut. He actually was a former Marine but never saw any combat. Eventually his wife found out and the cat was out of the bag. His cover was blown but Tom continued talking to the 18 year old bombshell as a 47 year old man. At the same time Jessi began talking with a 22 year old man named Brian Barret who not only knew Tom but worked at the same company and had met his family. She was a master manipulator and pitted the two men against each other. It’s hard to believe both men could be so taken with somebody they had never even met. Brian was much more aware of Jessie’s manipulative ways and didn’t take her nearly as seriously as Tom who was obsessed. Tom Montgomery got it into his head that Brian and his beloved Jessi, who had never met, were an item. Being the unhinged psychopath that he was he murdered Brian, a man barely in his twenties. What happened next is mind boggling and seems too strange to even be true but I’m going to let you see that for yourself. This documentary will likely make you limit your internet usage to reading this website and using Google.
In A Town This Size
In A Town this size is the story of Dr. Bill, a Bartlesville pediatrician, who was well respected in his community. He was friends with everybody in town, was often invited over for dinner, and was nearly always on the guest list for family events. There were often rumors about Dr. Bill as he was a single 36 year old man who was never seen with a woman. Many of the people in town assumed he might be a homosexual. Ok, no problem there right? It turns out this sick son of a bitch was far from being gay. He was a pedophile who was molesting a number of children in town while serving as their doctor and being friends with their parents. Imagaine that. A man is having dinner with a group of friends and has molested and will continue to molest their young children. As is often the case with things like this it went on for a very long time. Whether there was no concrete evidence, or the parents didn’t want to make accusations, or the kids just didn’t talk this sick pederast was able to continue his agenda for years. It’s hard to wrap your mind around such a situation and that’s what makes this a fascinating documentary.
The Woman Who Wasn’t There
Ever heard of Tania Head? Yeah, me either, until I watched this documentary. Tania was a native of Spain who had moved to New York City. Nobody knew of her until she began to join 9/11 support groups and telling her tale of horror. Not only was she in the building when the plane hit it but the impact sent her flying, nearly severing and badly burning her arm. On top of that her fiancée was killed in the tragedy. Tania not only became a member of these support groups but became almost an ambassador for them, holding high positions within the organizations and getting to meet the Mayor of NYC and other political figures. Small clues began to surface and Tania’s friends, most of whom were also survivors of 9/11, began to notice inconsistencies in things Tania said about her life. Slowly but surely, lies about Tania’s life began to surface. She wasn’t employed by the company she claimed to work for and a few of her friends after months of scouring found out that her fiancée did in fact exist but there was no mention of Tania being in his life at all. I won’t ruin the rest but given the title I’m sure you can figure out where this is headed. This is definitely worth a watch.
The World’s Fattest Man
The World’s Fattest Man documents the life of Paul Mason, a former postal worker from England who tipped the scales at a whopping 980 pounds. Paul was bed ridden and thanks to the healthcare system in England his house was outfitted with a special bed and he had nurses come in daily to help bathe and feed him. Obviously, Paul was not happy in his situation and was very depressed. Once, in order to have a hernia operation, the fire department had to rip a wall from the side of his house just to get him out. The film is very morose but there are a few light hearted moments such as when he is weighed and he is pleasantly surprised when his weight is less than 1000 pounds. It is determined that the only option for Paul is gastric bypass surgery. Any surgery on a person this size is very dangerous but one of the main challenges for Paul’s surgery was finding a bed that could support him. There were even concerns about the structural integrity of the floor in the operating room. Paul did end up getting the surgery performed successfully. For all the other details, give this a watch on Netflix, you’ll like it a lot.
Cowboy del Amor
Cowboy del Amor documents the life of Ivan “Cowboy Cupid” Thompson, a man who noticed that Mexican women were looking for American husbands and vice versa and made a business out of it. He charges guys $3000 to bring them down to Mexico and find them a wife. I give the guy credit. It’s not a scam, he really tries. What he does is bring the guy down, place ads in local papers, takes and makes phone calls, and does whatever he can to get a line-up of women for the man’s approval. He takes everything into consideration from height, weight, to whether or not the woman has ever been married. Thompson claims he can run this business because American women have become too difficult and drive men away and into the arms of somebody who will appreciate them, in this case, a Mexican woman. The documentary shows Thompson with his client Rick, who he does in fact find a woman whom he eventually marries. Thompson has enough experience being married to and divorced from both an American and a Mexican woman. By the end of the movie he’s complaining that the internet is sucking the life out of his business but he remains optimistic and stays on the prowl for a new Mexican wife of his own. Definitely a fun documentary, give it a watch.
The Good Son: The Life of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini
Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini is one of the most intriguing figures boxing has ever seen so it’s fitting that a documentary chronicling his rise and very justified decline be made. In the 1980’s Mancini was one of the biggest draws in boxing which was a big deal given that he was a lightweight. He was an excellent boxer, holding the lightweight title from 1982-1984 and was a gentleman outside of the ring. His talent and persona even landed him on the cover of Sports Illustrated. This documentary tells the story of his life from when he was a child growing up in Youngstown, Ohio. His very tight knit relationship with his family, especially his father, whom he was greatly influenced by, is a large part of this documentary as is the murder of his older brother who was murdered under very suspicious circumstances. One topic that is covered wonderfully in the film is Ray’s fight with Duk Koo Kim and how it affected his life. Kim died due to a blow he received from Mancini in the ring. This event greatly affected Mancini on a personal and professional level. He was utterly devastated and was never the same again. We get to see a touching meeting between Mancini and the son and fiancé of Kim which seems to bring Mancini some peace and closure. This documentary is a great watch even for those who aren’t into boxing as it touches on things we can all relate to such as family, forgiveness, and grief.
Article By: Jon DaBove
