Steve D
I don't think it even knows what it wants its message to be.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
08/08/23
Full Review
delysid d
i found this film to be more or less boring. i much prefered the intruder with william shatner which was the same thing but better
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
04/10/18
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Audience Member
I really don't know why The Klansman isn't more widely recognized. It is an action film with just enough social commentary. It kind of gets me that movies like Inglorious Basterds and American History X get academy award talk while balls-filled movies like The Klansman are forgotten. It starts slow, survives decent sound with adequate acting, great locations and striking costumes. Then it ends with SPOILER ALERT: Lee Marvin, O.J. Simpson and others in a post-sunset fully automatic shootout with the local Klavern.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The civil rights movement is spreading, including Atoka County, Alabama and a lot of the white residents don't like it and are prepared to commit felonious assault, rape, or murder to get their point across. In the middle of this powder keg are two men on either side of a very dangerous line -- County Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb (Lee Marvin) and Mayor Hardy (David Huddleston). Each man is playing both ends against the middle in the impending race war -- Bascomb wants to keep the peace as best he can, blocking the local klavern of the Ku Klux Klan from their worst excesses and making sure that the Klan's business and the county's business remain separate; Hardy, who also owns the lumber company that employs most of the county and the bank on which most of the residents depend, wants a good environment for business, which includes keeping enough poor blacks around to do the most menial work for the miserable pay he's willing to fork over; this, in turn, requires that they be too scared to ask for too much, including better treatment, but not so scared that they leave the county altogether, which would wipe out his business. Between them is Breck Stancill (Richard Burton), an eighth-generation resident with lots of land but little money and even fewer friends; a wounded war veteran and loner, he still resents the lynching of his grandfather and no longer respects what the white south purports to stand for -- he's even allowed dispossessed blacks to live for free on his property, angering the poor whites around him even more. Bascomb would like Stancill to be a little less high profile, while Hardy would like him to sell out and disappear, and wouldn't mind it if the local Klan helped that process along by trying to kill him. Bascomb's balancing act fails because of two events -- Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) is raped one night, apparently by a black man, which precipitates the murder of a black teenager and her being violently ostracized by the white community; and a civil rights rally is planned for the town, bringing in lots of "outside agitators" and getting the local klavern eager to act against them. The prime mover in all of this is Big Track's deputy, Butt Cut Bates (Cameron Mitchell), a hardcore klansman who won't be reined in by Hardy and who is not above raping a black woman prisoner (Lola Falana) that he's arrested illegally, or trying to kill Stancill; directly opposed to him is Garth (O.J. Simpson), a young black man who witnessed a Klan murder and, in response, gets a rifle and starts meting out justice on his own. Before it's over, a major part of the county is at war and the bodies are falling everywhere...
"The Klansman" was made for tv as far as I have understood and it had its fair share of problems. Co-writer Samuel Fuller submitted a screenplay that was almost completely different from what was filmed. Among other things, the Lee Marvin character was not a sheriff, but a KKK leader whose racist viewpoint is completely changed around. However, Paramount got nervous about the provocative nature of the screenplay and ordered it rewritten, infuriating Fuller (who left the project because of this) and Marvin (who wanted out but had already signed a contract.) Richard Burton and Lee Marvin were both drinking heavily during filming. At one point Burton confided to Marvin that he would like to play a cop in a film set in New York, but couldn't trust himself to do a convincing American accent. (His accent in this film was widely ridiculed, particularly since it wavered throughout the movie). Marvin replied, "But Richard, you're a great actor. You can learn." Burton apparently treasured the compliment for the rest of his life. The plot is so scattered you´re not fully sure what´s going on with the different layers, it almost feels that they edited out several parts of the movie. Both Richard Burton and Lee Marvin seems to be on autopilot and not wanting to be there, hence the heavy drinking. The topic is of course horrifying but handled strangely. The soundtrack becomes a joke as it feels like it belongs to something out of "The Dukes Of Hazzard", with other words it makes no sense what ever. "The Klansman" is a scattered piece of film handled in a strange way that implies severe production problems.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
lol if you can imagine a movie called the klansman being quirky, well this is it. Good only to laugh at OJ
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I heard and read different places online about this movie, that pretty much all the older actors in this were totally drunk during the filming of this turd. When O.J simpson is your hero character...somethings terribly fucking wrong here. Lee Marvin and Richard Burton were just getting a check here and it probably went to more booze just to forget they were in this.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
Full Review
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