This is an extraordinary documentary about the people who make up what used to be called the "lunatic fringe," consisting of such extreme right-wing groups as the Nazis, the Klan, white separatists, the ultra-fundamentalist, Jew-hating Christian Identity religious zealots, and others that make your everyday, garden-variety racists look like choirboys. This differs from many other documentaries about this particular nasty band in the American political spectrum in that the filmmakers were granted almost complete access by the subjects of the film themselves; many documentaries on these people are basically recycled newsreel and television news footage and interviews. The film's subjects granted this access in order to "polish up" their image--as one of their leaders admits to in an interview--but no matter what kind of spin they try to put on it, or how "reasonable" they try to come across, their views are so hateful, repellent and repulsive that it doesn't take long for their true nature to come out, and for all their rantings and ravings about the forces conspiring against them, they come across as their own worst enemies. At first many of their beliefs--for example, that 100,000 Red Chinese troops have been hiding in the mountains of New Mexico for 20 years, waiting to strike as soon as the "traitorous liberals" in the U.S. succeed in "taking away our guns"--are so hopelessly divorced from reality that you think they couldn't POSSIBLY believe what they're saying, and you look for another, even remotely logical reason they could have for making these assertions. Slowly, though, it begins to dawn on you that they're dead serious and believe utterly and completely that the "Jews," the "liberals", the "feminists", the "homos", the "secular humanists", the "race-mixers" and all the other groups they hate are joined together in one gigantic conspiracy to destroy Christianity and the white race, helped along by "race traitors" in Congress and the federal government (which they call "ZOG," their acronym for Zionist Occupation Government). You almost begin to feel sorry for them; they are, for the most part, poor, ill-educated and either unemployed or employed in semi-skilled, low-paying jobs, fearful of things they don't understand and resentful of people who have what they never will. Then you realize that it was people with this mentality who blew up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City and crashed planes into the World Trade Center, and whatever empathy you may feel for them vanishes. This is truly a landmark documentary; the filmmakers make no attempt whatsoever to editorialize, slant their coverage or take any point of view at all, just letting these people speak for themselves, and it's more terrifying than all the "Freddy Krueger" or "Halloween" movies put together. This is a must-see for anyone who wants to know more about the rise of the ultra-right wing in this country.
Review of Blood in the Face
