The Phenix City Story

Behind the bland title lies a barnstorming semi-hysterical thriller which pulls few punches in its attempt to chronicle the true story of an Alabama town which was founded in the early 1800s by runaway blacks and renegade whites, and by the 1950s had become a kind of supermarket for every conceivable criminal activity, from black market babies to elections rigged by crime syndicates. Eventually the military moved in and laid waste most of the vice area. Karlson's film follows this extraordinary story with newsreel-type relish, and the militaristic ending may be the closest any American film ever got to advocating a domestic coup.