Wisconsin Death Trip

Rating:
Summary: A Real Dull Undertaking
Review: I expected this piece of work to at least stimulate the thirst for information but it was so dull I could not sit through it. An amateurish director, paid by numerous corporations and public interests from Wisconsin, makes this seem like an important piece of art, well, do not be fooled, this is worse than a student film. Incoherent and useless vignettes, read by a half mumbling Swede (Ian Holm) narrate what there is of a "plot". There's about 140 "death vignettes" and they are all boring. "Mary Jane shot her two year old son and then ate his guts," begins one story and it is never mentioned again. Big deal, so people killed themselves, there were no ghosts or supernatural things at work, people were miserable in that day, as they are today but the director does nothing to get us interested, he intercuts the film with contemporary society, showing nothing but white people in small town America, an utter bore. He hired a bunch of immature actors who stage the bits in segments, and they are all filmed in black and white, what a waste of film this was. At 1 hour and 15 mins, this is way TOO long and should be forwarded to the end.


Rating:
Summary: FAUX, FUN DOCUMENTARY OF CREEPY EVENTS
Review: Inspired by Michael Lesy's eerie cult-fave book from the 70s, WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP (Home Vision Entertainment) is a documentary drama that recreates the real economic, spiritual and physical collapse of the mostly German and Norwegian immigrants of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, in the 1890s. After a hard winter and a devastating dyptheria epidemic, there was an outbreak of madness, murder, mayhem, arson, possession, ghosts and suicide. The atmospheric recreations are interspersed with archival photos and newspaper clippings that are not without an element of black humor. Great eclectic music track.

Rating:
Summary: Cursed Or A Typical Town?
Review: It is the late 1890's in the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin and everything is going to hell. There is a diphtheria epidemic that wipes out the children and a long lasting economic depression. Soon after, many of the residents lost their grip on reality and commit suicide and murder in some bizarre and startling ways. James Marsh's documentary pulls the viewer in with these macabre tales and underscores them with color reenactments of some of the events. These reenactments, however, tend to take away from the mysteriousness of the story and keep reminding us that we are over a century away from this event and this is, after all, just a documentary. If only Marsh had kept it all black and white and interspersed more of the real photographs of the townspeople (Black River Falls had its own resident photographer), then it might seem more eerie. It also raises the question that this might not have been that unusual during this period of time in rural America. Black River Falls just happened to have well documented these events. Still, as a reflection of a time when life was hard and times were tough, Marsh succeeds in finding some truly strange occurrences. It's almost as if a curse was placed on this one small town. Iam Holm narrates and his foreboding voice is perfect.

Rating:
Summary: Cursed Or A Typical Town?
Review: It is the late 1890's in the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin and everything is going to hell. There is a diphtheria epidemic that wipes out the children and a long lasting economic depression. Soon after, many of the residents lost their grip on reality and commit suicide and murder in some bizarre and startling ways. James Marsh's documentary pulls the viewer in with these macabre tales and underscores them with color reenactments of some of the events. These reenactments, however, tend to take away from the mysteriousness of the story and keep reminding us that we are over a century away from this event and this is, after all, just a documentary. If only Marsh had kept it all black and white and interspersed more of the real photographs of the townspeople (Black River Falls had its own resident photographer), then it might seem more eerie. It also raises the question that this might not have been that unusual during this period of time in rural America. Black River Falls just happened to have well documented these events. Still, as a reflection of a time when life was hard and times were tough, Marsh succeeds in finding some truly strange occurrences. It's almost as if a curse was placed on this one small town. Iam Holm narrates and his foreboding voice is perfect.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: Lovers of the macabre know all about the horrors birthed of Wisconsin. Exhibit A is Edward Gein, a simpleminded sort of fellow prone to ambling around the small berg of Plainfield wearing a smile and his plaid hunter's cap. No one thought on Ed much, seeing as how he was a harmless chap always ready to lend a hand when it came to babysitting or helping out around the farm. Sure, his mother Augusta was a bible thumper with a poor opinion of the local ladies, but Ed was a right square guy. Even when a couple of women in the area disappeared, no one thought Gein had anything to do with it. Then the cops checked his farmhouse and found scenes of carnage right out of an Asian horror film. Exhibit B is Jeffrey Dahmer, a simpleminded sort of fellow prone to ambling around Milwaukee between his shifts at a chocolate factory. Jeff's private activities were, how should we say, peculiar in the extreme. After the police unearthed the soul shattering horrors tucked away in the nooks and crannies of his apartment, most of the man's fellow residents as well as the rest of the country began wondering why Wisconsin didn't have a capital punishment law on the books.

Yes sir, Wisconsin and its two odd ducks make for interesting reading. Potentially interesting viewing, too, if the documentary "Wisconsin Death Trip" had done its job. Unfortunately, Gein and Dahmer receive little attention here. Instead, the filmmakers posit that something downright sinister has always been going on in the region, and they promptly set out to prove it by culling late nineteenth and early twentieth century stories from the Black River Falls newspaper. You won't find quaint articles about which woman won a blue ribbon for the tastiest pie at the county fair in this movie. Nor will you see chamber of commerce reports lamenting the increasing cost of bacon grease. Nope, the stories these guys dug up consist of the bizarre, the awful, and the heinous. It's the story of Pauline L'Allemand, a supposed opera singer who moved into the area and lived there until she went insane. There's also the tale of thirteen year old John Anderson, a fugitive from the law after he went on an enigmatic killing spree. The most memorable figure in "Wisconsin Death Trip" is Mary Sweeney, a woman addicted to narcotics who went on window breaking excursions in the area for years. Murders, self-immolations, hangings, abandoned children, and a diphtheria epidemic find a place here too.

The documentary, sad to say, is about as interesting as watching the paint dry on your grandfather's Model T. Nearly all of the stories come to us through black and white reenactments coupled with a "spooky" voiceover that seems to scream "This stuff is scary!" Problem is most of the news articles in the movie aren't that scary; they are, in fact, fairly common for periodicals of this time. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time digging through old newspapers in order to do research, I can attest to the fact that lots of strange things happened in America, and not just rural America, back in the day. A diphtheria epidemic in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, you say? This isn't surprising at all in a time before modern medical techniques and improved sanitation rendered many afflictions scarce to nonexistent. As I watched "Wisconsin Death Trip," I began to think this was a film made for the consumption of cosmopolitan audiences who could look at the events onscreen as confirmation of their worst fears regarding those evil, Sinclair Lewis type provincials. Even worse, the filmmakers try to tie all of the events to one specific region when it's obvious from the voiceover that said occurrences took place all over Wisconsin.

"Wisconsin Death Trip" even tries to tie the weirdness of yesteryear into strange goings on in the Black River Falls of today, but that largely fails as well. The police found a body out in the woods? Well, the police seem to find bodies out in the woods quite frequently all over the country. Law enforcement officials also discover them in houses, cars, rivers, hospital beds, streets, and every other place human beings frequent on a day to day basis. The events discussed in "Wisconsin Death Trip" seem strange only if you've been living in cryogenic stasis for your entire life--which, I hear, resembles in no small way the experience of residing in Manhattan. The filmmakers could have done a better job had they simply rehashed the Gein and Dahmer cases, which would easily provide enough weirdness for several documentaries with a lot of strangeness left over for more. The DVD version contains a commentary track, deleted scenes, and a making of featurette showing us all of the people who worked on the reenactments. Yawn. I recommend almost any horror film or true crime book over this documentary. You'll thank me in the morning.


Rating:
Summary: The not so "Good Old Days"
Review: The most striking features of this little dark gem of a film that make it emminently watchable are the beautifully composed black and white shots, often rendered through unusual angles, and the simply elegant soundtrack composed of classical tracks mixed in with modern classical/folk. I found myself being pulled back in time as the film unravelled its stories and slowly steamrolled me over by the sheer volume of misery experienced by the northern immigrant communities. It makes one wonder how much of the small town, everyday life variety of American history is glossed over and forgotten about. Sadly, I think you could have made this film about any number of areas of the US and the human experience between 1850 and 1950 and you would find similar tales of suffering, strife and moral collapse. This should be required watching for those who still believe that there ever was a such thing as the American dream.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical journey
Review: This great film will stamp an indelible image into your psyche. I saw this at a cinema last year and it has stayed in my mind ever since. A more hauntingly beautiful film has not bettered this faux documentary about the lives our ancestors lived...and how things really have not changed.

Rating:
Summary: Much wasted potential.
Review: Wisconsin Death Trip (James Marsh, 1999)

Wisconsin Death Trip had the potential to be a life-changing documentary. James Marsh had all the right ingredients, he just put them together wrong. What he came out with is still interesting, but "what could have been" tends to overshadow "what actually is."

In the 1890s, the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, went insane. There's no other way to describe the goings-on. Historian Michael Lesy examined the town's history in the 1960s, releasing the book Wisconsin Death Trip, which was out-of-print for many years before singer Wayne Static stumbled over a copy in the nineties, titling the band Static-X's first album after the book. This documentary was released not long afterwards, leading one to wonder whether there was a cause-effect relationship there. The next year, the book was reprinted and re-released. It's a wonderful world.

The bulk of this sixty-seven-minute documentary, narrated by Ian Holm, is a straight retelling of a number of news stories from the Black River Falls newspaper during the decade in question, recreated by actors or illustrated with Charles van Schick's pictures (which also grace the original book), often both. There are a number of stories that are followed throughout the decade which draw the viewer in (it's impossible not to be amused by "the Wisconsin Window Smasher," Mary Sweeney, who travels the whole state snorting cocaine and throwing things through windows) and keep it from being just a string of unconnected anecdotes.

The real brilliance of the documentary, and what could have made it so great, was Marsh's intercutting scenes of present-day life in Black River Falls at the end of each section of the film. The demand for comparison is obvious, but the scenes of modern-day life are far too short for the viewer to make any comparisons, whether they be serious or light-hearted. There is no narration in the modern scenes, no attempt to look for descendants of those mentioned in the news stories (that we can tell, anyway), nothing but panoramic vistas of modern Black River Falls life. It's vague enough that an op-ed piece written in the 1890s, narrated over a modern scene in the only piece of narration given to film shot in color here, leaves the viewer confused as to whether the piece is supposed to be ironic (as it obviously was when it was written) or showing that the town really has reached the point the writer put forth a century before.

There is quite a bit to like here, but there could have been so much more. ***

Rating:
Summary: Macabre journey into Wisconsin's bizarre history...
Review: Wisconsin Death Trip is a journey back to the late 19th century into the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, where poverty, hunger, and a grueling winter are assaulting the inhabitants. The population of the small town is mostly of immigrants from Norway and Germany and they are suffering to the point of madness where murder and bizarre behavior results from their anguish. This anguish is often blamed upon witchcraft, ghosts, and other evils as it brings many to the Mendota Asylum for the Insane. As the film unfolds it becomes an expedition through Wisconsin and the many macabre incidences that took place between 1890 and 1900. In the end, it offers some interesting insight to the state of Wisconsin and it offers a truly grisly, yet well done, cinematic experience.

Rating:
Summary: Macabre journey into Wisconsin's bizarre history...
Review: Wisconsin Death Trip is a journey back to the late 19th century into the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, where poverty, hunger, and a grueling winter are assaulting the inhabitants. The population of the small town is mostly of immigrants from Norway and Germany and they are suffering to the point of madness where murder and bizarre behavior results from their anguish. This anguish is often blamed upon witchcraft, ghosts, and other evils as it brings many to the Mendota Asylum for the Insane. As the film unfolds it becomes an expedition through Wisconsin and the many macabre incidences that took place between 1890 and 1900. In the end, it offers some interesting insight to the state of Wisconsin and it offers a truly grisly, yet well done, cinematic experience.