Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[Mayerling]

In honor of the Australian and South African members of this website:

Breaker Morant

Jeff

[GUT]

In honor of the Australian and South African members of this website:

Breaker Morant

Jeff

Good old Harry.

You know the scene at the end where they reach out and hold hands, the actors did that, it wasn't scripted, some years after the movie was made it was discovered that Breaker and Handcock hd actually done just that.

[GUT]

Funny that most people wouldn't even know Zpeter Handcock's name.

[Mayerling]

Given that Britain has "rehabilitated" people who were executed under dubious or questionable circumstances sometimes, like Timothy Evans, I find it curious that Morant and his fellow executed mate were never considered for that - it certainly would have given some solace over outraged feelings in Australia.

Of course one might look at this country's back yard and suggest some hanged folks who we sympathize with or wonder about the depth of their actual guilty:

Major John Andre (everyone from Washington down regretted this execution - they wanted General Clinton to hand Benedict Arnold back, and Clinton couldn't do it.

Mary Surratt - probably she had some knowledge (how much is a question) of Booth's conspiracy - but did she really deserve to be hanged?

Captain Henry Wirz, CSS - the commandant of the Andersonville prison camp, was hanged in November 1865. In fact, like the Lincoln Conspirators, his execution was actually photographed. Certainly the deaths of hundreds of Yankee prisoners under bad conditions showed a shabbiness of spirit, but was Wirz actually a victim of a losing side who needed necessary food and clothing supplies for it's remaining armies? And how does one explain similarly bad conditions and deaths at Northern military prisons, like the one at Elmira in New York? We had plenty of supplies. So what happened to us?


Jeff

[Pcdunn]

Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" is at least a legal thriller, if not too much into the trial itself.

I have seen a little of the TV series "Silk" which was interesting. Rather like our legal nighttime soap, "L.A. Law".

The second series of "Broadchurch" has good trial scenes.

Dear "Rumpole of the Bailey" was always fun.

For (unintentionally) camp, see the original "Perry Mason" episodes.

[Mayerling]

If you will put down television series like "Rumpole" you might consider

Boston Legal

Law and Order

Perry Mason (certainly a must, if a bit too formulaic)

The Defenders (the 1960s series with E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed. It was briefly revived in the early 1990s.

Trials of O'Brien (before he was Los Angeles' best and most annoying Lieutenant of Police as "Columbo", Peter Falk was in this interesting series as a trial lawyer in New York City in the 1960s. In one episode he solves a perfect crime by figuring out why the suspect with the alibi got quarters only for his change - a rarity in the 1960s).

Sam Benedict (Edmund O'Brien was an attorney in this series again in the early 1960s)

Judd For the Defense (Carl Betz played in this series set in the west, mostly in Texas, as a flamboyant but excellent lawyer based on several like the young F. Lee Bailey).

Dundee and the Culhane (a combination of western with a law theme: Dundee is an British attorney (assisted by the young man Mr. Culhane) in defending people on trial in different parts of the west. The series was a summer replacement show in either 1965 or 1966 and starred (as Dundee, of course) Sir John Mills. It never found the audience it may have really deserved.

Seinfeld (not just for it's ridiculous conclusion, but the running minor character of Jackie Johns (I think the last name may be wrong) who was based on Johnny Cochran in light of his successful acquittal in the Simpson Case. Jackie would appear four or five times, bedeviled by his client Kramer, who frequently gave him an excellent opportunity in some case and would then destroy it by some thoughtless act the attorney would never have countenanced).

Jeff

[lynn cates]

Qb 7

Hello Jeff. What of QB 7? Sir Anthony Hopkins is brilliant in that one--especially when he breaks down in the dock.

Cheers.
LC

[Robert]

In the UK, there was a series called Kavanagh QC starring John Thaw ('Inspector Morse').

Back in the 60s there was one called Boyd QC.

[GUT]

Hello Jeff. What of QB 7? Sir Anthony Hopkins is brilliant in that one--especially when he breaks down in the dock.

Cheers.
LC

QB VII was great.

[lynn cates]

great film

Hello GUT. Thanks.

Yes. It's also a great film--albeit far too long--for perusal in an ethics class: for obvious reasons.

Cheers.
LC

[Mayerling]

Hi LC and GUT,

I saw part of the film UB 7 years ago, but I did not see it to the conclusion. I guess I did not like the "experiments" discussed as being performed by Hopkins in the camps. They were similar to what Monty Cliff has to discuss in "Judgment at Nuremburg".

There was a "fictional" might-have-been 19th Century television movie in the 1970s, "The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer", in which the Indians decide to show their contempt for Custer by not killing or maiming him, but leaving him dazed on the Little Bighorn surrounded by his massacred command. Returned to the care of his wife Libbie, he has to go through a public court martial at "Governor's Island" in New York Harbor, under the eye of the head of the Department of the East, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock. I don't remember the whole cast, but Custer is defended by Brian Keith, and General in Chief William Sherman is played by J.C. Cannon. William Daniels portrays a barely sober and steady Major Marcus Reno.

Jeff

[Robert]

This is from a film called The Love Match :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeR78KFYjYo

[curious4]

Whisky Galore?

C4

[Steadmund Brand]

As horror movie director Wes Craven just passed made me think of a new list,

Wes will probably be best remembered for A Nightmare on Elm Street, however I will always think of him as the writer and director of what may be the most disturbing horror film I ever watched, 1972's the Last House on the Left.. so let's put together a list of the most disturbing films you ever saw... doesn't have to be horror. But something that really hit you while watching or after viewing..I’ll start with a short list that I'm sure we will all be able to add too

1- The Last House of the Left- 1972--very hard to watch...was a take on Bergman’s classic the Virgin Spring... which is almost worthy of making this list as well.

2-Johnny Got His Gun- 1971- this film I watched once, and cannot bring myself to watch it again....yet I thought it was fantastic.. there is a great Radio Play made long before the film written by Arch Obler.

3- Titicut Follies- 1967- Documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman ( I believe his 1st) in and about the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane.

4-Night And Fog- 1955- French documentary, it may be only 30 minutes long...but it is 30 minutes you will NEVER FORGET!!

5-Salo- the film Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed for making...this may be the only film that can cause PTSD (that's not a joke, there have been people who claim to have it from watching this film), It is a film that can attack your subconscious days after first seeing it...this was to be the first in Pasolini's trilogy of death ( he had completed the Trilogy of Life :The Decameron, the Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights) As disturbing a film as this is, there is no denying Pasolini's talent as a film maker.. this is the ultimate proof that art doesn't have to be pleasing!!!!


Steadmund Brand

[sdreid]

My top "slasher" films roughly in order of release:

1-Psycho-1960
2-Peeping Tom-1960
3-Homicidal-1961
4-Last House on the Left-1972
5-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-1974
6-Black Christmas-1974
7-Halloween-1978
8-Friday the 13th-1980
9-The Demon-1981
10-Scream-1996