| Cruel Doubt | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Yves Simoneau |
| Produced by | Susan Baerwald |
| Written by | Joe McGinniss (Book) John Gay (teleplay) |
| Starring | Blythe Danner Matt McGrath Denis Arndt Adam Baldwin Gwyneth Paltrow |
| Music by | George S. Clinton |
| Cinematography | Elliot Davis |
| Editing by | Rick Fields Michael Ornstein |
| Distributed by | NBC |
| Release date(s) | May 17, 1992 |
| Running time | 187 min. |
| Country | |
| Language | English |
Cruel Doubt is a 1992 television movie starring Blythe Danner and Matt McGrath. The film was first broadcast as a two-part miniseries on NBC in the United States and CTV in Canada on May 17 and May 19, 1992.
The movie is based on the true crime book Cruel Doubt by Joe McGinniss, which documents the 1988 murder of Lieth Von Stein by his stepson, Chris Pritchard and two friends, James Upchurch and Gerald Neal Henderson.[1]
Although the film brought much attention to the murder of Von Stein, devotees of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons have criticized it for unfairly placing blame of the murders upon the game.[2] The three perpetrating friends were supposedly fanatics. The film featured the actual Dungeons & Dragons 1st-edition rulebook but with a piece of artwork visibly pasted into the pages of the book (depicting an orc with a dagger and backpack similar to the ones in the murder depicted), implying that it had caused the murders. Since the rulebook was already a million bestseller, it was unclear why the producers of the miniseries felt they could lie about such a well-known book on screen. [3]