Truth is scarier than fiction in TV doc

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This article was published 11/09/2010 (5865 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IF you’re looking for something scary — horrifying, even — to anchor your Saturday-night TV viewing, The Pig Farm might be your destination.

But be warned — it’s a grisly, gruesome story that will continue to haunt you long after its closing credits roll.

Oh, and it’s a true story. A documentary.

The Pig Farm, which airs tonight at 9 on CTV, is a feature-length examination of the case of Robert (Willy) Pickton, the minimally educated Vancouver-area farmer who was revealed to be this country’s worst serial killer. Taking a largely chronological approach in its treatment of the Pickton story, the film combines archival news footage, interviews with retired police officers who worked on the case, comments from friends and associates who either visited or lived at Pickton’s farm, and audio recordings of Pickton himself to create a portrait of a deeply disturbed but effective and elusive killer.

The Pig Farm‘s producers, Lazlo Barna and Steven Silver, have also made the choice to include several dramatic re-creations in the film, employing actors to portray Pickton and others in a variety of situations; whether they add substance to the narrative is open to discussion, but there’s no question that they are a jarring aspect of the film.

The well-documented facts of the case speak for themselves, but what makes The Pig Farm so compelling and so difficult to watch are the perspectives of former Vancouver police detectives and RCMP officers who recall an ever-compounding sense of frustration at being unable to secure the evidence that would have allowed them to stop Pickton’s killing spree months or even years before he was finally arrested.

Interviews with Pickton’s former “friends” — drug addicts, mostly, to whom the misfit farmer offered shelter and cash in exchange for a perverted form of loyalty — reveal that many knew or suspected what was happening on Pickton’s property but refused to give police information that would have justified the issuance of warrants to search the farm.

One account is particularly chilling, from a woman who actually saw the body of a murdered prostitute but denied the story when interviewed by police, choosing instead to use what she witnessed to blackmail Pickton in order to finance her crack habit.

The key question that lingers at the film’s end is whether Pickton acted alone, or was assisted by some of the defiant down-and-outers interviewed in the film.

It is, from every perspective, a horror story of the highest magnitude.

— — —

Getting Lost: If there’s a spot on the TV-drama landscape where scary, sexy and silly collide, it would surely be in the new Showcase series Lost Girl.

The Canadian-made thriller, which premières Sunday at 11 p.m., seeks to capitalize on all the fuss and bother being generated by HBO’s True Blood and the Twilight movies.

Its focus, though, is not on bloodsuckers; instead, Lost Girl concerns itself with a drop-dead gorgeous drifter named Bo (Anna Silk) who is a succubus — a deadly seductress who feeds on the sexual energy of others, using a mere touch or kiss to drain the life out of her victims.

The problem is, Bo was abandoned long ago by her mother and has never been able to understand why she’s compelled to do what she does. That changes in the series première, when one of her “kills” catches the attention of members of the “Fae” community, who exist on the fringes of human society and are scared that Bo’s careless feeding might attract attention and expose them.

They capture Bo and tell her she must choose which branch of the Fae — light or dark — she chooses to join. Bo’s choice will, of course, set the tone for the series’ storylines going forward.

Those who choose to sample this supernatural bit of piffle will be struck more by the flimsiness of the script than the scariness of the yarn.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

TV PREVIEW

The Pig Farm

Tonight at 9

CTV

Lost Girl

Starring Anna Silk

Sunday at 11 p.m.

Showcase