Blood Done Sign My Name Blu-ray delivers stunning video and solid audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
When a black Vietnam War vet is murdered by whites in small-town North Carolina, it sparks a firestorm of violent protest. Amid the rising chaos, a local teacher and a newly arrived preacher will risk everything to see justice done and change the brutal legacy of the past.
Writer Jeb Stuart has a solid track record with popular entertainment. He scripted two of the most
successful and enduring action films of the modern era, the original Die Hard and the film
adaptation of The Fugitive. He also wrote and directed the unpredictably creepy (and underrated)
Switchback, with Dennis Quaid as an FBI agent searching for the serial killer who kidnapped his
son. In 2008, Stuart turned his talents in a completely new direction, writing and directing an
adaptation of a best-selling work of history by Timothy Tyson, a professor at the University of
Wisconsin. Tyson's book was also part autobiography, because Tyson's father, Vernon, was the
pastor of the First Methodist Church in Oxford, North Carolina, in 1970, and Tyson witnessed
many of the book's key events as a small boy.
Oxford was a small town that the civil rights movement had passed by, before so much of that
movement was subsumed (or maybe it would be fairer to say "drowned out") by the anti-Vietnam
protests that swelled to a crescendo during the 1968 presidential election and the first Nixon
administration. When Vernon Tyson arrived in Oxford to take over as pastor of First Methodist,
he found a town where race relations had changed very little in the past hundred years and where
his sermons about equality made many members of his uniformly white congregation
uncomfortable. Rev. Tyson's invitation to a distinguished black pastor to give a guest sermon
provoked an open revolt from the church's board of directors, which threatened to remove him
(though they didn't actually have the power). In vain did Tyson warn them that they were sitting
beneath a dam holding back "300 years of wrong" that was ready to burst.
The dam cracked on May 11, 1970, when a recently returned Vietnam vet named Henry "Dickie"
Marrow was shot, beaten, stomped and finally executed with a rifle bullet by a local storeowner
named Robert Teel and his son Larry. Dickie Marrow was black; the Teels were white. Even
before the Teels were acquitted of the murder by an all-white jury, Oxford exploded. After the
trial, a march began to the state capital at Raleigh. The number of marchers eventually swelled to
45,000. One of the organizers of the march was a young teacher named Ben Chavis, who, twenty-five years later, would help organize the Million Man
March on Washington.
It was as if, in the space of less than a year, a single small town was replaying the history of the
civil rights movement, in microcosm and on fast foward. Such stories are tailor-made for
dramatization, because they arrive at the writer's desk "pre-condensed", so to speak, with "types"
and representative characters already populating the narrative. It may be difficult for some
contemporary viewers to accept, but just forty years ago in large parts of America (and not just
the South), there really were people who acted and spoke like the persons depicted in Blood
Done Sign My Name. And while forty years may be a long time in the life of an individual, it's
barely a stroll around the block in the life of a nation.
Stuart opens the film in the current era, with elderly people reflecting on the events of 1970,
including an older white North Carolina state trooper recalling how odd it was to return from
Vietnam, where he was used to serving with soldiers of all races, then joining a police force that
was almost entirely white. Stuart returns to this framing device at the end of the film, because,
among other things, it will provide a perspective on how differently past events are perceived by
different generations.
After this prologue, the film catches up with the Tyson family just as they are relocating to
Oxford in early 1970. The family consists of Pastor Vernon (Rick Schroder, who hasn't been
seen much since he left NYPD Blue), his loyal wife, Martha (Susan Walter), and their four
children, Julie and Boo (Emily and Natalie Alyn Lind), future author Tim (Gattlin Griffith) and
his older brother Vern (Colin Stuart, no relation to the director). Stuart then spends almost a third
of the film showing the audience around Oxford, acquainting us with the town much like the
Tysons are getting to know it. This leisurely approach has become rare in moviemaking (and
unthinkable in a studio film), but Stuart handles it elegantly and it pays off later, when the
deceptively peaceful surface shatters.
Stuart keeps his "tour" of Oxford interesting by following the first rule of storytelling, which is
"show don't tell". Ben Chavis (Nate Parker) has returned home from a northern education, but
his first day teaching at the local black high school reveals unexpected layers in both Chavis and
the town, when his students are less interested in the lesson than in learning whether it's really
true that he knows the activist Stokely Carmichael. Chavis hesitates but then answers their
questions in detail, because he can see that his students are hungry for first-hand information of
what they've heard is happening in the world outside the city limits.
Even more revealing is Chavis' decision to reopen the drive-in restaurant owned by his
grandfather, to the surprise and pleasure of his mother, Elizabeth (Donna Briscoe). Renovated
and rechristened "Soul Kitchen", the establishment quickly becomes a roaring success, thereby
providing a preview of the combined economic muscle of Oxford's black community. That
financial clout will play a decisive role in the battle to come. It's certainly more powerful than
the rigged political process, as Chavis learns when he tries to get basketball hoops restored in city
parks. The resulting runaround is worthy of the most sophisticated big city machine.
There are even more sinister elements of Oxford, as exemplified by the Klan rally that the
Reverend Tyson lets his sons observe clandestinely. And then there's the Teel family. The
patriarch is Robert Teel (Nick Searcy), a bilious barber, who also owns a general store in the
black section of town, where he marks up all the prices and tells his customers to walk another
mile and half to the supermarket if they don't like it. A sarcastic tyrant to his two sons, Larry and
Gerald (Cullen Moss and Michael May), Teel Sr. is known for his hot temper, and we see the
town's local lawyer, Billy Watkins (Michael Rooker), caution Teel on that score when he turns a
black man away from his barbershop. (The man, Herman Cozart (Omar Benson Williams), will
later become a prominent member of the protest movement.)
As portrayed in the film, the murder of "Dickie" Morrow (A.C. Sanford), who is Ben Chavis'
cousin, by Robert Teel and one or both of his sons begins as a misunderstanding that quickly
escalates into a fight. But the Teels continue the violence long past the point where Morrow can
possibly pose a threat (not that he ever did), and that's how the witnesses at their trial describe it.
Consistent with the conflicting testimony, which was key to the defense strategy, Stuart doesn't
let us see who fired the final, fatal rifle shot. But the shot is loud, and it echoes through the rest of
the film.
Riots ensue in the downtown business district, which is all-white and Stuart doesn't stint on
showing the senseless destruction and greedy looting. (Both Martin Luther King and his
supporters and successors were known to protest that the civil rights movement was not a gift
certificate for a free color TV.) More focused and destructive attacks are organized by a small,
cohesive unit (in real life, Vietnam vets like Morrow) on the huge tobacco warehouses that were
essential to the town's major industry. But the reaction takes a decidedly different turn at
Morrow's funeral with the appearance of Golden "Goldie" Frinks (Afemo Omilami), a
flamboyant personality and powerful speaker sent by the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference as a "stoker" (Goldie's word). It's Goldie's idea to organize the march to the state
capitol, with Dickie's widow and her two children riding atop a mock coffin drawn by a mule to
meet with the governor. And it's Goldie who teaches the young Ben Chavis some valuable (one
might even say cynical) lessons about the use of publicity and perception in the fight for justice
and equal rights.
The Teel trial ends in an acquittal, which was the historical outcome. But as suggested by the
film's title (which comes from one of Goldie Frinks's speeches), the blood of Dickie Morrow did
not go unavenged. An entire way of life in Oxford was convicted for it and killed off within a
few years. There were other casualties (Vernon Tyson lost his pastorship at First Methodist), but
so thorough was the eventual eradication that, when the film returns to the present, the state
trooper in the diner is now revealed to be sitting with two black colleagues on the force—a
grouping that would have been almost unthinkable forty years earlier. In a final touch of irony, though,
the film reminds us how quickly memories fade. As the older man reminisces about once hearing
Golden Frinks speak and what a powerful presence he was, the younger man next to him (Chaz
Amo'n McNeil) looks up and asks: "Who's Golden Frinks?" The older man repeats the question
in disbelief, and the film fades to end titles.
Although Blood Done Sign My Name was shot on film, it has been heavily processed in post-production to give it an
almost digital sheen. The image is grainless, clear, sharp and remarkably
detailed, whether in wide shots of large crowds or in interiors like the courthouse where the Teels
are tried for murder. Colors are strong, but not overly vibrant or saturated; while the garish
Sixties may dictate style and fashion elsewhere in the country, they have yet to catch up with
Oxford. Black levels and contrast are so well handled that in scenes where fire suddenly blazes at
night (e.g., the Klan rally or the fires at the tobacco warehouses), both the intense flames and the
surrounding blackness retain their visual integrity.
Image continues to be addicted to BD-25s. However, with only one audio track and light extras,
the space appears to be adequate, and I saw no signs of compression errors or high frequency
filtering. Nor did I observe any other transfer-induced anomalies.
The DTS lossless track is relatively restrained in terms of surround activity. It provides a
generalized sense of ambiance for such environments as crowds, Ben Chavis' Soul Kitchen
diner, the march to the capital, Reverend Tyson's church during services and the courtroom.
Voices are always clear and centered. The soundtrack features a number of well-chosen period
songs by bands such as the Allman Brothers, which are delivered with appropriate punch, and an
original score by John Leftwich, whose principal credits are as a bass player and arranger. His
score for Blood Done Sign My Name often recalls the style of film composer Thomas Newman (which is meant
as a compliment).
TV One Special (HD, 1080i; 1.78:1; 22:39): TV One is a network jointly owned by
Radio One and Comcast with headquarters in Silver Springs, Maryland. This special was
timed to the film's release, is hosted by star Nate Parker and features interviews with
Stuart, Tyson and Chavis. In the latter half of the documentary, Parker visits Morehouse
College and meets with students in an African-American Studies class. It's an interesting
idea, although there's little sense of spontaneity with a camera crew present. A sound
mixing glitch at about the 8:40 time mark causes the voiceover narration to drop to nearly
inaudible volume, but the problem is of brief duration.
Theatrical Trailer (SD; 2.35:1, enhanced; 2:32): Like the film's marketing in general,
the trailer focuses on the murder of Dickie Morrow, but it also suggests the larger context
in which that crime occurred.
In a dismissive "review" submitted to one of the major unmoderated sites (I don't recall whether
it was Amazon, Netflix or IMDb), a poster summed up his reaction to Blood Done Sign My
Name with the phrase: "Get over it!" That's a bizarre reaction to a historical film, especially one
that so clearly tries to take a "warts and all" view of a microcosm of the civil rights movement
(as Timothy Tyson's book did). It started me thinking about how many history-based movies
could be tossed out with the same phrase. Saving Private Ryan: "The Allies won the war. Get
over it!" Braveheart: "England and Scotland are unified now. Get over it!" 1776, the miniseries
John Adams, The Patriot or, for that matter, July 4th celebrations in general: "You won your
independence. Get over it!" Gone with the Wind: "The South lost. Get over it!"
I could go on, but why belabor the point? One doesn't study history or revitalize it through
storytelling in order to nurse wounds. (Well, some people do, but they're doing it wrong.) Stories
like Blood Done Sign My Name are a way of understanding how we became who we are, and of
honoring—and sometimes judging—those who preceded us. It's unfortunate that studios rarely
make such films anymore, but premium cable and independent film companies have stepped in to
fill the gap. When a filmmaker of Jeb Stuart's caliber takes on material with the potential of
Timothy Tyson's book, one hopes for a good result, and Stuart has delivered. The vagaries of the
marketplace limited theatrical distribution, but the Blu-ray is exemplary and highly
recommended.
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