THOMASVILLE — Actor Scott Wilson watched intently as “In Cold Blood” was shown Thursday night in his hometown.

It was as though he were an every-day movie-goer viewing the 1967 film for the first time.

The setting was the Showboat Theater at South Eden Plantation. The event was the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release.

Before the viewing began, Scott told the small audience the film would not make them feel “warm and cozy.”

“In Cold Blood” is a true-crime drama from Truman Capote’s book of the same name. The film was adapted for film and directed by Richard Brooks.

It is the story of two men set on stealing $10,000 from a safe in the Herbert William Clutter home outside Holcomb, Kansas.

Clutter was a prominent, successful farmer, who had neither a home safe nor $10,000 at his residence.

Dick Hickock, portrayed by Wilson, and Perry Smith, played by Robert Blake, were bent on stealing the money from the Clutter home. Their bad information came from a former prison cellmate, who once worked on the Clutter farm. They got away with $40.

Wilson, a 1960 Thomasville High School graduate, sat in the darkened theater, never taking his eyes off the screen, as the true 1959 horror story unfolded. With the exception of sounds from the screen, the theater was dead quiet.

The black-and-white film is macabre and real. Murder scenes were filmed on location at the Clutter home.

Wilson watched intently as the murderers’ lives unfolded during switches from the culprits’ present-day crime spree to their earlier years and less-than-perfect parents, providing the audience with details of tragic childhoods and a look at what made them they way they were.

Their parents were portrayed as rough characters, ne’er-do-wells with loose or no morals, violent and perhaps the absolute poorest examples of what a parent should be.

Back to present day, Hickok and Smith fled here and there in a beat-up 1949 Pontiac Chieftain. They later stole a newer Pontiac, a convertible, the vehicle they were traveling in when the law caught up with them in Las Vegas.

In one scene Hickock (Wilson) is driving the Pontiac sedan while he and Smith gobble snack food. Wilson’s character emits a loud, deep belch. The audience chuckled. So did Wilson. It is a rare moment of humor in a disturbing — but true — film.

After the murders and an escape to Mexico, Smith tells Hickock about his latest get-rich-quick scheme, referring to a Humphrey Bogart movie as the impetus for his wild idea. Hickock sets him straight in no uncertain terms — not the first time the cruel Hickok brings the sensitive dreamer back to the reality that they have just slaughtered an innocent, highly respected family of four.

The film takes viewers through the trial — the jury was out 40 minutes — and the five years the murderous pair are housed in cells next to each other on death row as appeals are exhausted.

Then last scenes are of the Hickock’s and Smith’s final minutes before they go to the gallows in April 1965.

Wilson’s Hickock goes first, seemingly ready to face the inevitable music. The hangman, who will receive $300 for each of the two executions, does what people in his line of work do when it is time to die in a stark, dark, shadow-filled building at a Kansas prison.

It is raining when Smith’s time arrives a short time later. He is looking out a window into the rainy night. A light on prison grounds slightly illuminates his face. Rain rolling down a window pane is reflected as tears trickle down his face. No tricky camera with the reflection. It just happened.

As he is taken to the gallows, Blake said he would like to apologize — “but who to?”

Wilson, a tall, thin man with snow-white hair pulled into a pony tail, is as opposite from the Dick Hickock character as the wildest imagination can conjure. He is soft-spoken, kind and a brilliant artist concerned about the good of mankind.

After the viewing, Wilson told the audience that the first time he saw “In Cold Blood,” “I went to the bathroom and threw up. That was my reaction to it.”

Capote, he said, could not have been truer to what happened that November 1959 night in rural Kansas, when a man, his wife, his daughter and his son were tied up and slaughtered like hogs. The hapless victims were shot. Mr. Clutter’s throat also was slashed.

Wilson has attended showings of the movie as a rehab film at prisons. He is popular with inmates.

The 75-year-old actor said he has a good feeling about being involved in something that left a mark on society. The film is on the National Register and will last forever, Wilson added.

He wishes he had never made the movie, that the gruesome story was not there to write about and film and that crime had never happened.

After graduating from high school in Thomasville, Wilson made his way to Tinseltown, not knowing whether he could make a living acting, but he would be doing what he wanted to do.

“I still love doing it, and I still want to be as good at it as I can,” Wilson said after the viewing.

Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 1820.