Since it reduces its complex subject to a matter of a handful of easily lampooned buffoons, the film may garner some business as a novelty or midnight movie item, but anyone looking for a serious treatment on the growth of native, hardcore fascist racism, or on the type of people attracted to such a movement, will be sorely disappointed or even angered.
The bulk of the film is set during a couple of days in the late 1980s at the Cohoctah, Mich., country retreat of the Rev. Bob Miles, a former Ku Klux Klan official. Filmmakers Anne Bohlen and Kevin Rafferty, along with journalist James Ridgeway and, briefly, Michael Moore (in his pre-''Roger & Me'' days), were given free run of the place, where they filmed various veteran and neophyte racists, Nazis, Klansmen (and women), Christian Identity fanatics and supporters of the Posse Comitatus from the United States and Canada giving folksy variants on their poisonous philosophy in both speeches and interviews.
In general, the interviews and speech snippets, particularly in the first half, are designed to emphasize the oddball nature of whatever speaker, a tactic that deliberately ends up making the subjects look like a bunch of goofballs.
The isolation of the group and its lack of connection with ordinary political discourse combine with the sniggering to produce a picture of an ineffectual bunch of nuts, this at a time when such people were rapidly swelling their ranks with disaffected, violent youth (there are no skinheads at all in the film).
There are a couple of exceptions. One woman, never identified, calmly explains how she became racist through reading, not experience, and that it is a simple way of life for her. The revelation that her husband was wanted by the FBI for a number of violent crimes, including the murder of Denver talk show host Alan Berg, comes as a jolt. And Allen Poe, a cold-eyed and calmly furious minister, is outright scary when relating his teachings of hate and revenge. But these are exceptions.
More in keeping with the film's general tone is '60s archive footage of murdered Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, irrelevantly padding out the second half. Beyond serving as a counterpoint to retreat guests' remembrances of him, the flashbacks also mock the working-class milieu in which Rockwell lived and recruited.
Last-ditch efforts near film's end to inject a note or two of seriousness simply do not jibe with the preceding snickering.
BLOOD IN THE FACE
First Run Features
Producer-directors Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, James Ridgeway
Editor Kevin Rafferty
Production manager Anne Bohlen
Conceived by James Ridgeway
Camera Kevin Rafferty, Sandi Sissel
Interviewers: James Ridgeway, Anee Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, Michael Moore
Color/black and white
Running time -- 85 minutes
No MPAA rating
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
The bulk of the film is set during a couple of days in the late 1980s at the Cohoctah, Mich., country retreat of the Rev. Bob Miles, a former Ku Klux Klan official. Filmmakers Anne Bohlen and Kevin Rafferty, along with journalist James Ridgeway and, briefly, Michael Moore (in his pre-''Roger & Me'' days), were given free run of the place, where they filmed various veteran and neophyte racists, Nazis, Klansmen (and women), Christian Identity fanatics and supporters of the Posse Comitatus from the United States and Canada giving folksy variants on their poisonous philosophy in both speeches and interviews.
In general, the interviews and speech snippets, particularly in the first half, are designed to emphasize the oddball nature of whatever speaker, a tactic that deliberately ends up making the subjects look like a bunch of goofballs.
The isolation of the group and its lack of connection with ordinary political discourse combine with the sniggering to produce a picture of an ineffectual bunch of nuts, this at a time when such people were rapidly swelling their ranks with disaffected, violent youth (there are no skinheads at all in the film).
There are a couple of exceptions. One woman, never identified, calmly explains how she became racist through reading, not experience, and that it is a simple way of life for her. The revelation that her husband was wanted by the FBI for a number of violent crimes, including the murder of Denver talk show host Alan Berg, comes as a jolt. And Allen Poe, a cold-eyed and calmly furious minister, is outright scary when relating his teachings of hate and revenge. But these are exceptions.
More in keeping with the film's general tone is '60s archive footage of murdered Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, irrelevantly padding out the second half. Beyond serving as a counterpoint to retreat guests' remembrances of him, the flashbacks also mock the working-class milieu in which Rockwell lived and recruited.
Last-ditch efforts near film's end to inject a note or two of seriousness simply do not jibe with the preceding snickering.
BLOOD IN THE FACE
First Run Features
Producer-directors Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, James Ridgeway
Editor Kevin Rafferty
Production manager Anne Bohlen
Conceived by James Ridgeway
Camera Kevin Rafferty, Sandi Sissel
Interviewers: James Ridgeway, Anee Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, Michael Moore
Color/black and white
Running time -- 85 minutes
No MPAA rating
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
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