The Klansman

Small town Alabama in the late '60s: rape, murder and rampant racism tear apart a sordid little community under the watchful, apathetic eyes of sheriff Marvin. Young directs with an alarming lack of subtlety, concentrating purely on (voyeuristically portrayed) action and rarely investigating the gradations in morality that inform the various characters. A pity, because the script by Sam Fuller and Millard Kaufman suggests the potential for something far better, a study in universal corruption pitched somewhere between Arthur Penn's The Chase and the inbred psychoses of Jim Thompson's novels.