John Waters narrates Of Dolls and Murder, an upcoming documentary about the Nutshell Studios of Unexplained Death, which consists of crime scenes recreated in dollhouses to help police solve murders.
The film follows how these intricate dioramas are still used to train homicide detectives, despite all the technological advances in death investigation. The dioramas also provided inspiration for The Miniature Killer, a recurring villain in season seven of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The villain's modus operandi is to leave behind accurate dioramas of her crime scenes. [Wikipedia]
Check out the trailer for this fascinating and visually stunning little feature:
One Boing Boing commenter sheds some light on the dollhouse designer's genius:
The backstory behind the Nutshell Studies is fascinating. The creator, Frances Glessner Lee, was a woman from a wealthy family who had basically never been allowed to do anything much of her life. When she inherited the family fortune late in her life, she set to work doing what she'd always wanted to do – and what she'd always wanted to do turned out to be making meticulously-detailed models of crime scenes. [Boing Boing]
She's also responsible for the first legal medicine center at Harvard, which she didn't even create until she was at least in her 50's. There's still hope for everyone to realize their dreams, no matter how strange they may seem to others…