It's funny how tastes will change with age but I have over the last ten odd years developed a strong taste for films that psychologically scarred me as a kid.
Make of that what you will but let me tell you of all of the depraved horror and gratuitous cinema violence I smuggled past my parents as a teenager, the damage that this one caused on my impressionable young mind was by far the most difficult to kick of them all.
All that aside Ghosts of the Civil Dead still remains one of the most absolutely under-rated masterpieces of my life time in my view. The story is elegantly assembled, challenging the viewer to dust off the old brain by not spoon feeding the information but never becoming unnecessarily confusing for the sake of appearing intellectual. I believe there was a team of five on the screen play itself, including director John Hillcoat and musician/actor Nick Cave (they've recent teamed up again to make The Proposition which is another great watch).
One of the many brilliant qualities of this film is it's ability to instigate such overwhelming reactions of tension, pity, repulsion and so on in the viewer without ever straying away from it's beautifully under-stated approach.
The music is minimalistic but filled with the sense of foreboding and dread befitting of the subject matter. The various thematic points of the film are more than adequately addressed without resorting to fluffy, dialogue masturbation. Saying more with less in cinema is the greatest indication of screen writing talent in my view (thesauruses aren't that hard to come by).
It always shocks me to think that what seems to me to be somewhere in the realm of fifty percent of the cast in this movie have never gone on to do another film since. All performances were absolutely brilliant, though I must say that if I were giving an award for best performance, it would have to go to the wise yet highly intemperate Ruben played by Vincent Gil. It totally blew my mind to see Gil so effectively nailing a role of that caliber (not that the Nightrider was anything other than a stand out performance but you know... it wasn't quite so demanding as that of Ruben).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Ghosts of the Civil Dead is an intensely disturbing and powerfully enlightening portrayal of high security prison life that will not only have you questioning the values of the incarceration system in regard to human rights but also the value it provides to society in general.
I believe it can still be obtained from online stores in Aus if not Amazon. Keep an open mind and you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Make of that what you will but let me tell you of all of the depraved horror and gratuitous cinema violence I smuggled past my parents as a teenager, the damage that this one caused on my impressionable young mind was by far the most difficult to kick of them all.
All that aside Ghosts of the Civil Dead still remains one of the most absolutely under-rated masterpieces of my life time in my view. The story is elegantly assembled, challenging the viewer to dust off the old brain by not spoon feeding the information but never becoming unnecessarily confusing for the sake of appearing intellectual. I believe there was a team of five on the screen play itself, including director John Hillcoat and musician/actor Nick Cave (they've recent teamed up again to make The Proposition which is another great watch).
One of the many brilliant qualities of this film is it's ability to instigate such overwhelming reactions of tension, pity, repulsion and so on in the viewer without ever straying away from it's beautifully under-stated approach.
The music is minimalistic but filled with the sense of foreboding and dread befitting of the subject matter. The various thematic points of the film are more than adequately addressed without resorting to fluffy, dialogue masturbation. Saying more with less in cinema is the greatest indication of screen writing talent in my view (thesauruses aren't that hard to come by).
It always shocks me to think that what seems to me to be somewhere in the realm of fifty percent of the cast in this movie have never gone on to do another film since. All performances were absolutely brilliant, though I must say that if I were giving an award for best performance, it would have to go to the wise yet highly intemperate Ruben played by Vincent Gil. It totally blew my mind to see Gil so effectively nailing a role of that caliber (not that the Nightrider was anything other than a stand out performance but you know... it wasn't quite so demanding as that of Ruben).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Ghosts of the Civil Dead is an intensely disturbing and powerfully enlightening portrayal of high security prison life that will not only have you questioning the values of the incarceration system in regard to human rights but also the value it provides to society in general.
I believe it can still be obtained from online stores in Aus if not Amazon. Keep an open mind and you'll be pleasantly surprised.