The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald / The Other Side of Bonnie & Clyde (Something Weird)

Starring:George Russell, George Edgley, Arthur Nations, Charles Mazyrack, Joreta C. Cherry, Howard Ware, Don Gillespie (II), Dan Terrell, Bill Peck, Jenna Jordan, Raymond Bradford, Ted Mitchell, Edwin Cherry, Bill Bell (VI), Bill McGhee, Jonathan Ledford, Bill Thurman, Charles McLine, Tommie Russell, Annabelle Weenick
Director: Larry Buchanan
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

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The Trial of Your Attention Span
Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald

The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald / The Other Side of Bonnie & Clyde (Something Weird)
Starring: George Russell , George Edgley , Arthur Nations , Charles Mazyrack , and Joreta C. Cherry
Director: Larry Buchanan
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000CG8H1
Release Date: 2003-11-11

Customer Reviews:

The Trial of Your Attention Span.......2007-01-23

Larry Buchanan is remembered today mostly for a string of no-budget AIP remakes he was hired to direct in the mid-1960s. You know, Zontar, It's Alive, In The Year 2889...yeah, *those* pictures. Did you know that he also had a remarkably long career in overlooked genre of conspiracy films? See, I knew you were sharp. From the 'CIA murders' of Jimi Hendrix and that cozmik blues booze hag in "Down on Us", to a matching set of Marilyn Monroe biopics, if a public figure died under mysterious circumstances, bet the farm that Larry was casting the 'the real story' before the body was cold. He somehow missed Bruce Lee; then again, that market was pretty saturated. After years of obscurity, Something Weird has paired Mr. Buchanan's premiere forays into the land of tin foil together in one handy dandy package. The real surprise is how middle of the road they are compared with his later work.

"The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" is sure to disappoint all but the most ardent Court TV addict. It's not even that conspiratorial, operating from the assumption that Oswald was the lone gunman. Every once in awhile, something will break up the monotony of exposition, say a tape of the real LHO on a New Orleans radio station, but those moments don't crop up often enough. You may recognize a couple of the Buchanan stock players like William McGhee (Don't Look in the Basement) and Bill Thurman (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)among the crowd of witnesses. If cross examinations keep your riveted to the recliner, hey, this may be up your alley. The acting, sets and dialogue are competant. Personally, it took me three attempts to make it through ninety five minutes without dozing off. I have a feeling my experience may be the more common one.

Billed as a response to the Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway film released months earlier, "The Other Side of Bonnie & Clyde" takes the side of law and order. Capt. Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who sprung the ambush where the infamous duo were gunned down in Louisiana, is the hero. Narrator Burl Ives seems to condemn the murder of police officers on the screen. Well, plenty of them drop in the reenactments of Bonnie & Clyde's crime spree here. Fnord, fnord. This ersatz documentary is loaded with surprising facts. Did you know Clyde Barrow played sax? Or that Bonnie Parker was a poetess, and wrote the epitaph that appears on her grave marker? Buchanan even insinuates Barrow may have been bi*sexual. Authentic footage of the bullet riddled Ford and their corpses being paraded in front of the media are included. Accomplice Floyd Hamilton submits to a polygraph test to dispel some myths that have spread over the years. Definitely interesting.

Something Weird has a great reputation for delivering in the extras department. This disc is no exception. Both films sport feature length commentary tracks with Buchanan and moderator Nathaniel Thompson. Larry seems a little scatterbrained, breaking off onto tangents as he tells stories, and never getting back to the original point. Lenny Bruce lives, ladies and germs. (Yes, yes, I'm aware that Mr. Buchanan has since passed on). On several occasions during TTOLHO, he seems poised to reveal some secret information about the Kennedy assassination given up by one of Jack Ruby's strippers. The failure to pay off that tease may lead you to wonder to what degree the king of conspiracy films (Ollie Stone, you say? Pssh...) was just conning us all. Some may simply call it showmanship. A rube's a rube.

There's also three older black and white shorts, all of the "true crime" variety. "You Can't Beat the Rap" is a couple minutes of Louis Sonney shooting the spit with ex-con Roy Gardner from a viewing post overlooking Alcatraz. The two versions of "Crime Marches On" are good for some "did anybody actually believe this stuff?" laughs. Our melodramatic narrator, Wedgwood Nowell, informs us that the root of criminal behavior is parents who cannot answer their children's questions! Those kids "exalted opinion(s) of (their) own superior mentality" leave the brats feeling "capable of outwitting fellow human beings"! The viewer is treated to a trip to the FBI's fingerprint center, a series of creepy wax busts of famous outlaws, actual clips of Chinese capital punishment, the mummified corpse of Elmer McGurdy, a dramatization of John Dillinger in the chair, and a tour of notable penitenteries. Do you ever stop and wonder if, sixty years from now, our grandchildren will look back at Fox News with the same bemusement reserved for these relics?

Finally, there are seventeen trailers, seven of them Buchanan's. "The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde" is in rough shape, but still a nice addition, loaded with colorful graphics and a great theme song. "Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell" and "High Yellow" look like trashy fun. But wait, what do we have here? "The Loch Ness Horror"? A giant rubber dinosaur head devouring beachgoing teenagers? SWV, you MUST issue this film pronto! The square up: "The Trial" is flat, "Bonnie & Clyde" is interesting, and the extras are bonzo. This is not the type of disc that will rack up hours in the DVD player unless you really dig either subject matter. Renting before purchase may be a great choice. Give Larry credit, though. He knew how to market to an audience the major studios wouldn't touch. And four decades on, we're still talking about him.

Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.......2005-06-19

This dvd offers a weird set of films from exploitation/schlockmeister Larry Buchanan, the low rent director of such cult favorites as Mars Needs Women and Common Law Wife.

*** - THE TRIAL OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD (1964) is a black-and-white preenactment of the trial of John F. Kennedy's assassin had Oswald not been shot and killed by Jack Ruby a few days after his arrest. The movie places the audience in the jury box and keeps it there. Everything takes place in the courtroom, the drama consisting solely of whatever heat is generated by lawyers cross-examining witnesses, with a stray objection being tossed and sustained or overruled by the judge. It's an interesting piece of speculation that's severely hobbled by the dearth of facts as known at the time. The movie presumes that Oswald acted alone, so conspiracy buffs might find this one borders on the outrageous. The action is static and the scope of inquiry is limited, but to the best of my knowledge this is film to deal with the Kennedy assassination. Its fascination, for me, at least, derives from the fact that it's a first response to a national tragedy before the Warren Report, Jim Garrison, and suchlike made the scene and muddied up things.

*** - Burl Ives narrates THE OTHER SIDE OF BONNIE AND CLYDE (1968), a documentary that assumes a strong pro-law enforcement attitude and concentrates most of its attention on the man who brought Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow down, Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. THE OTHER SIDE OF BONNIE AND CLYDE was released the year after the mega-hit (but now kind of forgotten) BONNIE AND CLYDE, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. If you aren't familiar with the Beatty-Dunaway movie this one's going to look like it's shadow boxing. The first movie made Robin Hood-like heroes out of the outlaws, combined comedy with violence, and made light of the number of law enforcement officials the duo killed. BONNIE AND CLYDE embraced the bad guys, while THE OTHER SIDE OF... recoils in horror. This one is valuable mainly because it interviews witnesses and participants, including Hamer's widow and son, a woman who had been kidnapped by the pair, and Floyd Hamilton, brother of Bonnie and Clyde gang member Raymond Hamilton and, for a while in the `30s, himself an FBI public enemy #1.

I'm not familiar with any of Buchanan's cheese and sleaze movies, but after watching these two, I have to admire his opportunism. Neither of these movies are great, or even very good, but they followed hard on the heels and addressed controversial events and movies. Both are worth a look.

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