The Killing of America (1981)

The Killing of America focuses on what the director feels is the decline of the United States. It features interviews from Ed Dorris, a retired sergeant of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, as well as Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi. The documentary also shows several interviews with convicted killers such as Sirhan Sirhan as well as footage of murders and news broadcasts. It connects the beginning of America's woes with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and posits that hope of recovery was snuffed out when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 (the film features footage from the Zapruder film and news footage from the night that Robert Kennedy was killed). According to the film the 1960s saw the rise of "sniper" mass murderers who were often white, well adjusted people that killed people seemingly at random (exemplified in the film by the murders of Charles Whitman). The 1970s saw the rise of what the film calls "sex killers", serial killers such as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy who also raped and sexually abused their victims.

The last part of the film goes over the murder of John Lennon and ends with footage from a Central Park vigil for the slain musician. The narrators' last lines are: "Two people were shot at this Central Park vigil. While you watched this movie, five more of us were murdered, one was the random killing of a stranger."