Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21349 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-05-24
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 75 minutes

DVD Description
A most extraordinary experience awaits those with a taste for the strange and the bizarre in the small town of Black River Falls. Rocked by an inexplicable confluence of events in the late 1890s, this sleepy Wisconsin town generated some of the most unlikely news reports and stories ever told. Previously harmless residents – including children – commit a series of gruesome, violent murders. Sightings of ghosts and reports of haunting and possession run rife. An epidemic sweeps through the town and takes with it some of the residents’ newest born sons and daughters. Extreme cases of paranoia, insanity and delirium plague the townsfolk. And the population finds itself terrorized by a cocaine-snorting madwoman with a taste for smashing windows.

Based on documented accounts and narrated by award-winning British actor Ian Holm, this haunting and surreal film beautifully evokes the otherworldly spirit and wayward madness of a time and place marked by an altogether unreal set of circumstances. Bizarre. But true.

Special Features

• Feature length audio commentary by Director and Director of Photography
  
• Midwestern Gothic: The Making of "Wisconsin Death Trip"
  
• Photo gallery
  
• Deleted scenes
  
• 4-page booklet with Tom Dawson film notes
  
• Tartan trailer reel

DVD Technical Information:

• Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen
  
• Running Time: 75 mins approx.
  
• Region Code: 0 (all)
  
• Language: English
  
• PAL
  
• Disc Format: DVD-9

Synopsis
Based on Michael Lesy's 1973 book of the same name, WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP is a strikingly original non-fiction film that tells the strange story of one cursed American community. In the late 1890s, the small rural town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, suffered an incredibly bizarre crisis. Economically depressed and battling a diphtheria epidemic, in addition to relentlessly bleak weather conditions, the residents of Black River Falls began to collectively lose their minds. Through recreations, old photographs, and newspaper clippings culled from the era (read by Ian Holm), James Marsh's film shows just how bizarre a time in history this actually was.

Customer Reviews

Cursed Or A Typical Town?
It is the late 1890's in the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin and everything is going to hell. There is a diphtheria epidemic that wipes out the children and a long lasting economic depression. Soon after, many of the residents lost their grip on reality and commit suicide and murder in some bizarre and startling ways. James Marsh's documentary pulls the viewer in with these macabre tales and underscores them with color reenactments of some of the events. These reenactments, however, tend to take away from the mysteriousness of the story and keep reminding us that we are over a century away from this event and this is, after all, just a documentary. If only Marsh had kept it all black and white and interspersed more of the real photographs of the townspeople (Black River Falls had its own resident photographer), then it might seem more eerie. It also raises the question that this might not have been that unusual during this period of time in rural America. Black River Falls just happened to have well documented these events. Still, as a reflection of a time when life was hard and times were tough, Marsh succeeds in finding some truly strange occurrences. It's almost as if a curse was placed on this one small town. Iam Holm narrates and his foreboding voice is perfect.

In the midst of life, we are in Death Trip...
Haunting, sinister, tragic, beautifully macabre, James Marsh has created an unforgettable work of art in his documentary, "Wisconsin Death Trip". Themes of infanticide, madness, suicide, murder and violent gun-related activity that would make the most cynical paperback chronicler of the doings of serial killers think twice, abound in this stately and exquisitely -imagined film. In one small community,we are presented with the hardships and sufferings of the people through the accounts in their local newspaper. They become vibrant, real, characters who live for a modern sensibility in dramatised vignettes, whispered details from the director of the oft-frequented madhouse, and in powerful photographs preserved from the period. The music contributes to the air of spirited melancholy, ranging from opera to Appalachian melody. Present day scenes point up the undying weirdness still to be found in an outwardly wholesome and idyllic setting- "a great place to bring up children", yes indeed, but also a place where they regularly met with an early demise.
Required viewing, and incidentally, a perfect present for the Goth in your life.....

NOT REALLY MUCH HAS CHANGED
Not really much has changed from the turn of the 19th to the 21st - a teenage killer who has no remorse or comprehension of what he has done, drugs, alcholism, abandoned children, domestic violence, infidelity they all feature prominantly in this black and white, (cut with color scenes of the modern town) film.
However it isn't all that - there are some eerie and uncomfortable moments, such as the 14 year old bride and her 63 year old husband, dead children and drowned people.
A good film, not for the sensative - but I have to give it four stars because of the highly irritating and barely inaudible whispering voice that comes on during the asylum scenes - I for one could have done well without that, it didn't add to it in anyway and was just irritating especially since you have to turn up the damn volume to hear it.