Richard Schechner Movies
- 1992
- R
After devoting most of her professional career to an objective study of the mental health of homosexuals, psychiatrist Evelyn Hooker used the evidence she gathered from her research to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. This documentary explores this pioneering (heterosexual) woman's extraordinary life and career, and in interviews she is shown to be someone who is very intolerant of sloppy reasoning and intolerance itself. She began studying homosexuals after she became acquainted with Hollywood's gay and lesbian elite in the years just following World War II. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Tom Kalin directed this cool and aloof black-and-white study of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, a case told before in two previous films -- Rope and Compulsion. In 1924, in Chicago, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two 18-year-olds, kidnapped and murdered the 13-year-old Bobby Franks, immediately killing him and then stuffing his naked body up a culvert. The motive for the crime was simply that they wanted to prove to themselves that they were smart enough to get away with it. The previous film versions downplayed Leopold and Loeb's homosexuality, but Kalin's version plays it up into a psychosexual motif. Loeb (Daniel Schlachet) is the calculating intellectual, while Leopold (Craig Chester), the amateur ornithologist, is the emotional and weak one. In love with Loeb, Leopold is willing to do anything for him, and when Leob uses the withholding of sex as a prompt, Leopold is even willing to commit murder to have his sexual desires satisfied by Loeb. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Schlachet, Craig Chester, (more)
- 1970
This adaptation of "The Bacchae" by Euripides seems to be a collection of black and white home movies using hand held cameras. The filming and editing was done by Brian De Palma, but nothing distinguishes the film from being a filmed stage performance of writhing and groaning amateur actors and actresses. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Finley, William Shephard, (more)
