Product Details

• Actors: Alan Berg, Don Black (II), Anne Bohlen, David Duke, Rudolf Hess
• Directors: Anne Bohlen, James Ridgeway
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: First Run Features
• VHS Release Date: November 16, 1999
• Run Time: 78 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302540046
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,365 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Inspired by a nonfiction book by author James Ridgeway, this 1991 documentary--largely shot at a woodsy retreat in Michigan--focuses on a day in the collective life of American neo-Nazis, racists, and conspiracy nuts awaiting all people of color to ignite Armageddon in the United States. Ridgeway (credited as one of the film's directors) teams with filmmakers Anne Bohlen and Kevin Rafferty to take an intentionally leisurely, conversational tack with supremacists who have assembled for lectures and workshops on everything from getting their message out via home videos to moving all like-minded "white Christians" to the Northwest. Michael Moore (Roger and Me), barely containing his bemusement, helps out with interviews that seem evenly divided between young people in various forms of Nazi garb and older people who look emotionally exhausted from a lifetime of suspicion and hatred. Clips from the public careers of more prominent racists such as David Duke and George Lincoln Rockwell are a part of this film, too, but what's most interesting about Blood in the Face is the way those doomstruck souls huddling in the Michigan countryside appear far more pathetic than scary. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker

A skillfully made documentary about the radical right wing in North America. The movie's directors-Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, and James Ridgeway-put on display an alarmingly large aggregation of Fascist loonies: members of the Klan, the American Nazi Party, and other, less well-known organizations, all of them dedicated to spreading the gospel of anti-Semitism and white supremacy. What makes these zealots good subjects for a documentary is that they're compulsive talkers, tirelessly eager to expound their elaborate paranoid theories and make converts to the cause. (It passes the time while they wait for Armageddon.) Some really stunning delusional systems are elaborated here: everyone interviewed on this picture seems in need of a complete neurological workup. The film is fascinating, but it's also frustrating in that it doesn't provide much of a context for its menagerie of crackpots. The filmmakers don't try to explain the origins of these reactionary movements or to assess their current strength. The movie's tone is sometimes cautionary, suggesting that these groups constitute a sizable and material danger, and sometimes merely condescending, encouraging us to respond to the sheer ridiculousness of the radical right's ideas. When the film is over, all we can say for sure is that we've seen a compelling freak show. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre look at the fringe of the White Power movement, March 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood in the Face [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is an interesting and worthwhile video to see. The core issue comes during one of the interviews, when a grandfatherly man tells the interviewer that while he knows the filmmakers are using and making fun of them, they are also using the filmmakers to get their message out. Some of the characters in the film are nothing more than silly, such as the adolescents dressing up in SS uniforms, calling themselves the "Action group", and declaring that they are ready for anything. Others are more serious: true believers who are not just playing a role, but see themselves as activists for the White race. All in all, it gives everyone something to think about, from the screaming liberal, to the disaffected White man or woman looking for a connection.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In their own words, August 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood in the Face [VHS] (VHS Tape)

From the "grand old man" George Lincoln Rockwell to today's wanna-be Stormtroopers, the militant fringe is exposed in their own words. Seething with hate, and ready for an excuse to launch a "rahowa" (Racial Holy War). This film is as disturbing as it is necessary to watch. If you can find it, watch the even earlier documentary "California Reich" to see this madness in it's incubation.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The banality! The banality!, June 10, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood in the Face (DVD)

In "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad's character Kurtz's famous dying words are "The horror! The horror!" Kurtz has looked into the face of evil, and the experience was so explosive that it destroyed him.

Conrad's characterization of evil as a mysterious, implacable, overwhelming, consciously malevolent "heart of darkness" is one that most of us resonate with. But as philosopher Hannah Arendt pointed out in the early 1960s when covering the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, evil can also be "banal." Part of what she meant is the process that occurs when people fail to think or judge rationally, and so just accept as "normal" certain kinds of behavior that critical reflection would spot as wicked. But in using the word "banal," Arendt also wanted to de-melodramatize evil. Evil actions are more often sordid and grimy, based on ignorance and stereotypes, than diabolically clever.

"Blood in the Face" (which takes its title from the racist myth that only Aryans have moral sensibilities and are capable of blushing) is a perfect example of the banality of evil in both senses. Filmed at a Michigan gathering of Nazis, KKKers, and Christian Identity loyalists, the film exposes the sheer stupidity, paranoia, and incoherence of the True Believers.

Perhaps nowhere is the pathetic nature of it all better captured than in the description of George Lincoln Rockwell's tawdry murder at a laundromat. But there are lots of other examples: the long-haired yahoos in faux SS uniforms proudly announcing that they're ready for race war; the nerdy teenager who insists he wouldn't be a racist or a Christian if it weren't for the "lovable" teachings of Rockwell; the wedding between two KKK-robed lovers at a cross-burning; an old guy in a bola tie who gets so furious in denouncing Ronald Reagan as a Jew-lover that he looks positively apoplectic; the stern-faced warnings of a coming Armageddon, which will break the US up into racial enclaves; the bizarre Christian Identity claim that Anglo-Saxons are really the chosen people referred to in the Old Testament, and that Jews are imposters; and the dimwitted would-be television host who clumsily interviews fellow-racists and proudly announces that "we want to create a show that will make white people look intelligent." Duh.

The ridiculousness of these and other beliefs make for some genuinely hilarious interviews in the film. But this oughtn't to minimize the fact that neo-Nazis, for all their banality, both advocate and occasionally practice violence. Viewers are reminded of this at the film's end--just another lesson that evil in the world needn't be plotted by Hollywoodish mastermind villains to be horribly effective.

Highly recommended.