Murder in Mississippi

I read the other review and I guess I just see this film a bit differently--though at least when it comes to the production values, we do agree. This film, to put it charitably, is about as amateurish a film as you can find in many ways. The camera-work is extremely poor and it is true that the black characters are so black in the film it's hard to distinguish their faces at times. The actors are clearly not professionals and while some do a good job, others are just awful--such as the old lady on the porch who is being quizzed on the Constitution. In some scenes, film clips are re-used due to a brain-addled editor! Plus, sometimes actors clearly flub their lines or talk over the other actors. Heck, Ed Wood could have done a better job when it came to the production values!

But, at the same time, I really did admire this film. It is one of the very first to really deal with race in the United States--and I am NOT talking about a sanitized film about race like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". It dares to fictionalize the murder of several civil rights workers in Mississippi--a recent crime that still hadn't been solved as of 1965. Yes, too much time is spent focusing on the woman who may or may not get raped, but for the time, it was a very dangerous thing to make a film this blunt and unflinching in addressing bigotry in all its ugliness.

So, yes, the film DOES suck technically. But, it is still a very important, very interesting and brave little super-low budget film--and well worth seeing despite its deficiencies.