Bruce Post Campbell Movies
Producer Bruce Post Campbell was behind two independent feature films and several television specials from the late '60s through the '70s. He was a co-founder of the Campbell-Silver-Cosby production company that was responsible for creating Bill Cosby specials. Campbell's most highly regarded production effort was Dalton Trumbo's screen version of his controversial antiwar novel, Johnny Got His Gun (1971). The film earned a Palme d'Or Peace Prize at that year's Cannes Film Festival. During the mid-'90s, Campbell executive produced a series of dramatizations of stories from Kurt Vonnegut's short story anthology Welcome to the Monkey House. Campbell died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage on November 3, 1996. At the time, he was producing a film version of another Vonnegut novel, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and an adaptation of Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The author of the famous late 1930's antiwar book Johnny Got His Gun wrote and directed this film adaptation. It concerns a nameless young soldier (Timothy Bottoms) in a veteran's hospital in the World War I period. The young man has had his face blown off, he is without the use of any of his senses save touch, and also has no arms or legs. He is in a coma at the beginning of the film, and his doctors doubt that he will regain consciousness. This is also what they hope. A nurse, while changing his dressings, discovers that he is awake and responsive. The unrelieved awfulness of his situation is apparent to many. However, in order to keep the "good order" of the military, the regular Army general commanding the hospital will not allow the boy to be seen or his family notified, nor will he permit anyone to perform a mercy killing. Interspersed with this horror are flashbacks of the youth's life before the war. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1969
- PG
Serge Bourguignon, the auteur of the 1962 Academy Award winner Sundays and Cybele, doesn't quite come up to the standard set by that earlier film in Picasso Summer. Based on a Ray Bradbury story, the film concerns vacationing couple Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux. Enchanted by the works of Pablo Picasso, Finney and Mimieux trek through the length and breadth of Europe to meet the great artist himself. Their odyssey concludes on a melancholy note, but not before an engaging animated sequences wherein Picasso's paintings come to life, as it were. Filmed in 1969, Picasso Summer was long withheld from release; in fact, most filmgoers didn't get to see it until it began making the TV rounds. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
