Documentary 'Tabloid' Spotlights 'Sex & Chains' Kidnapper Joyce McKinney

Before there was Paris, Lindsay and Britney there was an American beauty queen named Joyce McKinney whose wild and weird ways led her to become the ultimate tabloid "it girl." It all started in the late 1970s when the former Miss Wyoming (who claimed to have an IQ of 168) moved to Utah, fell in love and became engaged to Kirk Anderson, a devoted Mormon. In 1977, he suddenly "vanished into thin air," prompting McKinney to hire private investigators, from Los Angeles bodybuilding hub Golds Gym, no less.  The twentysomething blonde learned Anderson had been deployed to a missionary in England, thus she and her team crossed the pond, where she allegedly abducted, imprisoned and chained her lover (complete with a phony gun and bottle of chloroform) to a bed in a cottage, attempting to seduce and rape him.

This juicy tale and others are revived in Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris's new documentary, "Tabloid," which captures McKinney's stranger-than-fiction adventures and unwilling rise to celebrity status. "The first time I approached Joyce, she wasn't interested [in doing a film]. Six or seven months later I came back and she was interested. And then she was one of the best interview subjects I've ever had," Morris told FOX411's Pop Tarts. "She was amazing – part performance, part interview, part theatrical event." “Tabloid" addresses McKinney's "manacled Mormon" as she paints a picture of a "powerful cult" that had "done something" to extract all life and personality from the man she loved. "They had me think they were a church, they made me think they were family-orientated and I was so happy to go to this place where I would have my pick of all-American people, husband material," McKinney said in the movie. "Kirk was sexually impotent because of this brain-washing. I knew there was only one way to get him out of that cult. He was not supposed to be turned on. He was not supposed to fall in love."

Continuing the eccentric style of the Morris documentary, former missionary Troy Williams also gives his thoughts on the faith. "We sing songs like 'I Hope They Call Me on a Mission.' You leave as a boy and come back as a man," explained Williams. "For Kirk when he reaches the age of 19, he's just fulfilling his religious responsibilities." Morris said his attempts to have the Mormon Church officially share their side of the story were rejected. "I tried to interview some elders of the church. We tried to interview Kirk Anderson, who Joyce has been following for many, many years," Morris said. "We couldn't get those interviews, so there you go."

The Church of the Latter Day Saints declined to comment for this story. But what caught Morris's attention even more than memories of the salacious McKinney sex saga decades ago, was her random reappearance in the media three years ago. In 2008, photographs of a heavy-set, middle-aged woman calling herself Bermann McKinney hit international headlines, poised along scientists in South Korea, as the proud owner of the first cloned pet dog. Reporters soon noted a similarity in features to Bermann and the "sex & chains" kidnapper of the 1970s, and although she initially denied the connection, the truth was soon unveiled. "The cloning story is what first attracted my interest. I read a newspaper article about the cloning of the dog, they mentioned at the bottom of the article that (Joyce) may have been involved in the 'sex and chains' story," Morris continued. "So it was a combination of dog cloning and 'sex in chains' that got me interested. A winning combination."

Not to mention beauty queen, bondage, bad behavior, escort ads and an infamous southern gal who found herself partying with everyone from John Travolta to the Bee Gees on the London social circuit. Yet what's possibly the most fascinating aspect of the film is the level to which each person's interpretation of the McKinney scandal differed. "It's amazing how many different ways people see the same story. Take any three or four people witnessing an event, and they will have three or four different descriptions of that event," Morris said. "The task of trying to ferret out, in this morass of conflicting stories, where the truth lies."

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