Film Review: Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life (2005, dir. Tom McLoughlin)

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

I completely get why this is one Lifetime movie that Lisa hasn’t written about. This is a total mess of crap. I’m going to borrow Lisa’s format she often uses for reviewing Lifetime movies because otherwise this would probably just be reduced to a string of expletives.

Why Was I Watching It?

Because I was too stupid to listen to the slew of negative reviews on IMDb. Instead, I was intrigued and managed to find a copy of this thing.

What Was It About?

I can tell you what it was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be about a teenage boy who gets addicted to porn. In reality, I think it’s about how seeing big breasts means you will become addicted to energy drinks and you will go insane when you go through puberty and never masturbate.

The movie begins with a kid who has been beaten up jumping into a pool. Cut to three months prior and the kid is swimming in a meet. In no time, this kid is introduced to porn and since his girlfriend wants to remain a virgin, he gets hooked. He also just gets hooked on energy drinks at the same time. Because it’s nearly impossible to look at porn without massive amounts of caffeine in you. Honestly, I think they put that in the movie so they would have even more of a reason for why his swimming and school work suffers.

His Mom (Kelly Lynch) spots the porn because this kid is too stupid to close his door. He’s dumb enough to not shut his door, but later he suddenly becomes smart enough to hack through the library firewall to look at porn. HA!. Later he introduces his younger brother to porn.

Now, when I say he’s addicted to porn, it’s a little more complicated. Sometimes it’s just plain porn like this.

But a lot of the time it’s this girl named Monica who apparently goes to school with him. There is so little information about her that all I can say is that she is supposed to be a senior. Honestly, I’m quite sure they never even tell us why she puts herself out there like that. No money seems to come her way. At least the girls on Degrassi: TNG set up a business.

The film plays out like the kid has a drug problem. You’ve seen those films a million times so you know how it plays out. There’s really only two things left to talk about.

First, this bizarre scene where he is surrounded by women in the water.

Second, the ending of the movie. I hate to use the word slut, but I honestly don’t know of any other way to describe how they portray Monica. She actually meets with him at a restaurant, moves to the other side of the booth, grabs his hand and puts it on her breast. No explanation whatsoever except she seems to be super horny. It’s really weird. Now the ending. He appears to get beat up by the boyfriend of Monica because she’s a slut, then he jumps in the pool, and is suddenly cured of his porn addiction. This movie is more of a mess than Nukie.

What Worked?

Nothing. Okay, it did get the bit right about how porn sites would generate a seemingly endless amount of popups. I really think that’s it.

What Did Not Work?

Everything else.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

I have also looked at porn on the Internet. But I was never dumb enough to do it when my parents could easily see it. It’s no wonder his parents say that swimming is the only way he’s going to college. It’s not money. They know their son rivals Bill Pullman’s character in Ruthless People (1986).

Lessons Learned

If someone tells you there is a Lifetime movie worse than this, then avoid it because your life may depend on it. Honestly, I have not watched a movie this bad since Ricky 1 (1988). Up to now I have only referred to it as the movie that shall not be named, but this is on par with it so I have no choice. That means it’s horrifyingly bad.

Val’s Movie Roundup #23: Hallmark Edition

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Just Desserts (2004) – It’s not every day that I get four decent Hallmark movies. This one I actually enjoyed quite a bit. It’s about a baker whose family bakery is falling on hard financial times. There is a cooking contest going on and he decides to enter. Apparently, his family has some baking secrets. Our main character Marco Poloni (Costas Mandylor) knows his stuff and even some of the bigwigs in the industry, but got slighted along the way and decided to kind of remain in obscurity. However, with the bakery in trouble and a contest that could help draw crowds, he decides to step out of the shadows. Problem is he needs a partner. That’s not an issue though. During a conversation at a fancy restaurant where he is having a discussion on the bakery being bought out, he tries a dessert and it’s almost right according to him. He has a partner! It’s pretty funny, because he comes back to the restaurant and just barges right into her kitchen to ask her to help him with the contest.

The rest is exactly what you expect. What makes it work is largely Costas Mandylor’s performance. Lauren Holly does a good job too. Amazingly, this movie was directed by Kevin Connor who brought us the epic disaster Strawberry Summer. The only problem I can think of here is that I was disappointed that they didn’t have Poloni make a reference Nicolas Cage’s character in Moonstruck (1987). Seriously, you see him walk in front of ovens in a white undershirt and you want him to yell, “I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride!”

I definitely recommend this one.

Before You Say ‘I Do’ (2009) – This one you really have to judge in two separate parts. This movie is about a guy (David Sutcliffe) who proposes to a girl (Jennifer Westfeldt), only to have her change her mind because she was burned by a bad marriage 10 years prior. So while going through a yellow light, he makes a wish that something could be done about what happened to her 10 years before. He is then hit by a car and now he’s in 1999.

The first part of this movie works. The two actors and Lauren Holly do a good job. He immediately goes to where she was working in 1999 believing that they will fall in love at first sight, but it doesn’t happen. So, he warms up to her friend played by Lauren Holly and works to make his way into her life while also trying to talk her out of the upcoming disastrous marriage. This stuff works well enough to enjoy the film. I liked David Sutcliffe and Lauren Holly. Jennifer Westfeldt is good enough. Kind of looks like Phoebe from Friends though. This part really is okay.

But there’s the second part. That’s the time travel. It’s not broken per se, but it’s like they didn’t even try. Really, the only honest attempt I saw to make it look like 1999 was that they had all the computer screens be CRTs. Jennifer Westfeldt looks exactly the same as she did in 2009. They didn’t even bother to change her hair. They also leave it up to you to figure out that he hasn’t gone back in time Back To The Future style, but Quantum Leap style. That is, instead of physically traveling there and thus, there being two of him, he has become unstuck in time and slipped back into his 1999 self. Also, if you went back in time to 1999, we all know it would come up at least once. But nope, he never mentions 9/11. They could have fixed that issue completely by just having him go back 7 years instead. It’s a stupid mistake that is just one more thing that should have been fixed if they were going to put in any effort to the time travel part of the story.

Still, throwing aside that the time travel stuff is a bit of a mess, the romantic comedy works well enough. Not a seek out, but you’ll be okay if this happens to be on.

Taking A Chance On Love (2009) – It’s weird, but unintentionally I am working backwards through The Note trilogy. This one is definitely better than the third one. It’s still forgettable, but better. This time Peyton McGruder (Genie Francis), the advice columnist, has a woman come up to her and say I love your column, but your advice on taking a chance on love is idiotic. Then she just walks away. It’s rather humorous.

In this one McGruder is not married to Kingston Danville (Ted McGinley). Also, we get to meet the girl that McGruder gave up for adoption many years prior. I think near the end of the film we find out McGruder tried to kill herself while she was pregnant with her. Since that didn’t pan out, she gave birth and put her up for adoption. It seems the girl’s parents went out of the picture and McGruder came back into her life. I’m sure all this information is in the first film. Unfortunately, this movie kind of leaves you in the dark for about 30 minutes. You will think that it’s impossible to watch this one without having seen that one. But that’s not true. You reach 30 minutes and there’s enough exposition that you can follow the movie. Till then it’s a little rough.

Basically, there are four things going on here. The lady who came up to McGruder and insults her needs help resolving a very old incident involving two guys and baby that happened many years ago. McGruder needs to get over her hesitancy and just marry King. McGruder’s daughter needs to stop drinking and not feel she’s in any danger if McGruder gets married. Finally, King and his son need to both get on the same page about the son wanting to be a photographer. That’s it. Just like Signed, Sealed, Delivered, it’s very character driven, not plot driven. It’s not as good as Signed, Sealed, Delivered though.

For those of you who remember when I reviewed the third one, yes, McGinley does have an assholery moment that happens for a minute without really any lead up or anything to follow it. I really want to see the first one just to see if that one has a similar scene. I’m not sure why that’s a thing with these movies, but it seems to be true.

Also, because this is Hallmark, it should be no surprise that two actors from Degrassi: TNG make an appearance. John Bregar who played Dylan is King’s son and Raymond Ablack makes a brief appearance.

Married With Children meets Degrassi: TNG

Oh, and unless I missed something or the plot summary on IMDb is wrong, that’s not a California license plate.

This one is fine, but I get the feeling that The Note trilogy is like the first five Friday the 13th movies. Individually, there not so good, but taken together, then you have something. I’ll find out eventually. Just as all streams lead to the toilet in computer science, it seems that all Hallmark movies eventually come to me. I swear that’s a saying I read in a computer science textbook many years ago.

Growing The Big One (2010) – Nope, you’d think there was, but according to IMDb there’s only a serious of porn films called Chasing The Big Ones. Not sure how Hallmark lucked out on this title, but good for them.

Now let’s talk about the movie. This is probably my favorite of the four films here. I like Shannen Doherty. She’s never going to win any major awards for acting, but I always seem to enjoy her performances. Kavan Smith is good too. I enjoyed him on Eureka. He is actually pretty interesting because of the way he looks. He can easily come across as a really kind and nice man, but all he has to do is make the most subtle adjustment to his facial expression, and it’s oh my God, he’s a psychopath. For some reason I really like that about him.

Doherty plays a radio show host from Seattle whose grandfather dies so she goes to the country to see this pumpkin farm she has inherited. Suddenly, her job back home disappears when she hears someone else on the radio in her slot. Well, not disappear, she’s reassigned. They want her on this plant show because everyone is going green these days. It’s stupid and Doherty calls them on it, but once her boss hears she now has a farm in the country, her fate is sealed. Thus, Doherty now lives in the country where she broadcasts and livestreams via webcams about a subject she is totally ignorant about.

Enter Kavan Smith! If he was in the film before this, I don’t care, nor do I remember because I want to believe this was the first time we see him. In the middle of the night he tries to break into her house and Doherty nearly maces him. He claims he was fixing the lock because he was friends with her grandfather, but we know he was there to steal the pumpkin seeds. Her grandfather was well known for growing the biggest pumpkins because of his secret method and special seeds. Is there a contest for growing the biggest pumpkin that will make the show a hit, carry the rest of the film, and bring Smith and Doherty together? Of course there is!

This is a movie that works because the two actors are just so enjoyable to watch. I didn’t really think they had any chemistry together, but I didn’t care. I enjoyed it.

One other thing to mention. There is a guy in town who sells manure. His mascot is a superhero character. He even dresses as this superhero at one point. They never say it, but that means his mascot is Shitman.

Film Review: Black Fly (dir by Jason Bourque)

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“It’s just another fond memory of country living.”

— Noel Henson (Matthew McCaull) in Black Fly.

Black Fly, an intense psychological thriller from Canada, tells the story of two brothers.

On an isolated island, Noel Henson (Matthew McCaull) lives on the farm that was once owned by his parents. He has a mullet, he loves his dog, and he ends each workday with a cold beer. And maybe it’s because I’ve got plenty of country in my background as well but, as soon as I saw him, I immediately recognized Noel’s type. He’s outwardly friendly but definitely prefers to have space of his own, the type who likes to live by his own rules and will probably never forgive you if you break one of them. You would definitely want to help build your house but you might not necessarily invite him to come inside of it afterward.

Noel’s younger brother is Jake (Dakota Daulby). Maybe because I’ve always had a weakness for sensitive and artistic loners, I felt that I immediately knew Jake’s type as well. He’s the guy who has been let down one too many times by everyone around him. He’s got a sketchbook full of drawings of monsters and fantasy girlfriends. When it comes to someone like Jake, you’re torn between feeling sorry for him and fearing what will happen if he ever truly loses control of his anger. When we first meet Jake, he is escaping from his abusive uncle. When he shows up at the island, Noel is there to greet him. It’s been years since the two brothers were together but it quickly becomes obvious that Jake idolizes Noel.

At first, everything appears to be perfect between Jake and Noel but slowly, cracks start to appear. Jake and Noel’s childhood was hardly ideal. Their abusive father was shot while hunting. Their mother committed suicide. Noel is overly possessive of his girlfriend, Paula (Christie Burke), and she appears to have some secrets of her own. A violent motorcycle gang has recently shown up on the island and is trying to intimidate Noel into leaving his home.

And, of course, one of the brothers is a murderer.

Now, I’m not going to tell you which brother is a murderer. One of the best things about Black Fly is that, up until we witness the film’s first murder, we are kept guessing as to which brother will turn out to be the murderous one. At first, it’s easy to imagine either one of the two brothers turning out to be a murderer. Both McCaull and Daulby give totally believable and authentic performances. At first, they’re both likable but, as the film progresses, we get small clues of trouble underneath the surface. And those small clues become bigger and bigger until the violence finally explodes on-screen.

Black Fly was written and directed by filmmaker Jason Bourque. That name should be familiar to our regular readers because he previously wrote the script for End of the World, a film that I enjoyed so much that, two years after it originally aired, I’m still taking advantage of any excuse to link to my review of it. Bourque’s direction of Black Fly is atmospheric and suspenseful, making great use of some truly desolate locations. Whether it’s the trailer park that Jake flees at the start of the film or the dilapidated farm that Noel calls home, the locations in Black Fly are just as important as the characters, with the decay of the island neatly mirroring the decay of Noel and Jake’s relationship. As the film reaches its violent conclusion, Bourque’s direction keeps the audiences off-balance and throws us straight into the tension-filled world of the characters.

Based on a true story, Black Fly is a potent and visceral look at guilt, violence, and family secrets. It will be having its U.S. premiere at the Arizona Underground Film Festival on September 25th, followed by two showings at the San Diego Film Festival on October 1st and October 3rd.

Found-Footage Alien Invasion Two-Fer : “Hangar 10”

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

One more “found-footage” alien invasion yawner.

Trash Film Guru

Silly me. I thought that, when it came to “found-footage” UFO-themed horror flicks, Oren Peli’s Area 51 just had to be the bottom of the barrel. The nadir. The armpit. The asshole. Then I came across a low-budget 2014 effort from the UK called Hangar 10 and realized how staggeringly wrong I was.

The marketing behind director Daniel Simpson’s half-assed opus is certainly interesting — it was quietly dumped out onto various VOD “home-viewing platforms” (it’s since been released on DVD, but being that I watched it on Netflix I can’t really comment on any technical specs or extras-that-probably-aren’t-included-anyway) with little by way of explanation, I’m assuming in order to lure in unsuspecting folks who were stupid enough to believe it might be “real.” The credits are curiously incomplete, as well, and as a result it took some little amount of legwork on the part of horror buffs to even…

View original post 401 more words

Insomnia File No. 7: Fair Game (dir by Andrew Sipes)

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

On Tuesday night, if you were suffering from insomnia at midnight, you could have turned over to HBO Signature (commonly listed as HBOSIG) and watched Fair Game, a remarkably mindless action film from 1995.

Originally, my plan was to start this review of Fair Game by telling you, in quite a bit of detail, just how sick I am of the Russian Mafia. Seriously, Russian mobsters have become the default villain for lazy crime films everywhere. And, quite frankly, I’m getting bored with them. I’m bored with how the head Russian mobster is always described as being “former KGB” and is always found sitting in the back room of restaurant, wearing an overcoat and smoking filterless cigarettes. I am bored with how his main henchman is always some big guy with a crew cut and that guy always has a thin sidekick who wears his hair in a pony tail and has a bad mustache. I’m sick of the overexaggerated accents of American and British accents trying to sound Russian and the way they’re always listening to EDM while driving. It’s all so predictable and tedious.

But then I considered that Fair Game was made 20 years ago. Even if the villains are Russian mobsters and even if they are some of the least interesting Russian mobsters in cinema history, it’s totally possible that, when Fair Game, was made, there was still some sort of novelty about the Russian Mafia.

However, even if we give Fair Game a pass on using the cliché of the Russian mob, the villains still weren’t particularly interesting. Kazak (Steven Berkoff) is … well, the film isn’t really that clear on what Kazak’s big plan is but he has a lot of henchmen and they certainly do end up killing a lot of people. Kazak runs his operations off of a yacht that belongs to a Cuban criminal named Emilio (Miguel Sandoval). Emilio is in the process of getting divorced and attorney Kate McQuean (model Cindy Crawford, who made her film debut here and has never played a leading role since) is determined to repossess his boat. So, Kazak decides that the perfect solution would be to murder Kate…

Which makes absolutely no sense. Kazak doesn’t want anyone to discover his operation so he decides to blow up a good portion of Miami, all in pursuit of one person. Wouldn’t it make more sense for Kazak to just blow up the boat and buy a new one?

Anyway, as the film opens, Kate is out jogging when suddenly someone driving by in a car opens fire on her. She ends up getting grazed in the arm, not that it seems to bother her. She wears a bandage for a few scenes but it soon vanishes. Kate is all business so, even after getting shot, she still goes into the office and starts to make plans to repossess that yacht. Personally, if anyone ever shot at me, I would probably be so freaked out that I would never leave the house again.

Now, you may be thinking that Kate was shot because of Kazak but actually, it turns out that the shooting was just a random thing that happened. Apparently, the shooter was trying to shoot someone else and Kate just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, we never find out who actually shot Kate and that really bothered me, as that seems to be kind of a huge plot point to bring up and then refuse to resolve.

Anyway, Kate meets a detective named Max Kirkpatrick (William Baldwin) and, soon, they’re on the run from Kazak’s assassins. The majority of the film is made up of Max and Kate running from one location to another. One thing that really bothered me was that literally everyone that Max and Kate talked to ended up getting killed just a few minutes later. At one point, Kate flirts with a computer service expert to get him to help them out. The scene is played for laughs but then, five minutes later, that same innocent technician guy is being brutally tortured by a bunch of Russians and, though we don’t see it happen, it’s safe to assume that he was eventually murdered by them. And no point do Max or Kate appear to feel any guilt or concern about the number of innocent people who are killed just for associating with them.

Anyway, Fair Game is a completely mindless film that has a rather nasty streak of sadism to it. (I imagine, when this film was released, it probably set a record for close-ups of people getting shot and stabbed in the crotch.) William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford both have perfect bodies and give totally wooden performances, which leads to them having a dimly-lit sex scene that is both physically hot and emotionally cold at the same time.

(I have no idea what entropy at absolute zero means but it sounds like a pretty good description of the chemistry between Cindy Crawford and William Baldwin in Fair Game.)

One good note: Salma Hayek has a small role as Max’s ex-girlfriend. Whenever she shows up in the movie, she starts screaming at everyone. I don’t blame her.

Previous Insomnia Files:

The Daily Grindhouse: The Undertaker and His Pals (dir by T.L.P. Swicegood)

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Say what you will about the overall quality of the 1966 horror-comedy, The Undertaker And His Pals, it has an absolutely brilliant opening shot. One man on a motorcycle drives around in a circle in a parking lot. He’s wearing a leather jacket and his features are hidden underneath a white helmet. Soon, another man wearing a leather jacket and white helmet rides up on another motorcycle. And again, they circle the parking lot. And then, they’re joined by a third identically dressed man on yet another motorcycle and the three of them circle the parking lot before then driving off into the city. The night is dark, the city streets are otherwise deserted, and the entire scene is tinted an otherworldly yellow. It’s a truly creepy scene and, for those first few moments of the film, those three faceless riders are truly frightening. If you ever watch The Undertaker and His Pals, be sure to appreciate that opening scene because nothing else in the film matches it.

It turns out that our three motorcycle riders are up to no good. Two of them own a restaurant and, because they’re too cheap to actually order fresh meat, they kill people and serve them up as the special of the day. The third one is the local undertaker. Business has apparently been struggling so he’s started killing people so that he can get paid to provide them a funeral. Apparently, half of each corpse is turned into lunch meat while the other half is put in a cheap, wooden casket at Shady Rest Funeral Parlor.

Now, here’s what makes The Undertaker and His Pal such a strange movie. The murders are graphic and gory (and I imagine they were quite extreme for 1966) but the rest of the movie is an over-the-top comedy, full of bad puns and slapstick. At the start of the film, while the latest victim is being stabbed to death, the camera continually cuts to a photograph of her sailor boyfriend, looking more and more upset with each cut. Later, the undertaker accidentally steps on a skateboard and we watch as he uncontrollably careens into the middle of the street while everyone else in the film points and laughs. When the undertaker finally falls off the skateboard, we even hear a waa waa on the soundtrack. After the undertaker has his accident, the owner of the diner accidentally insults a customer and literally gets a custard pie thrown in his face. (And again, we hear that waa waa.)

And then there’s the names! The film’s first victim is named Sally Lamb. The next day, the special at the diner is literally “Leg of Lamb.” When an administrative assistant named Ann Poultry complains about the poor quality of her leg of lamb and threatens to call the health department, the next day’s special is “Breast of Chicken.”

Ann worked for and was dating a detective named Harry Glass (James Westmoreland, appearing here under the name Rad Fulton). After her death, Harry is … well, Harry really doesn’t seem to care. Harry is the film’s nominal hero but he really doesn’t do anything. In fact, he is remarkably stupid. Though he claims that he’s trying to solve his girlfriend’s murder, he seems to spend most of his time unknowingly eating her down at the diner.

The Undertaker and His Pals is weird and yet strangely watchable. Of course, it helps that the film is only 66 minutes long and that the acting so cartoonish (and, I think, intentionally so) that it’s impossible to take the movie seriously. (If the film was, in any way, believable, it would be almost unbearably grim and misogynistic.) Fortunately, the film ends with clips of the entire cast coming back to life and laughing, letting us know that no one was intentionally harmed or traumatized and apparently, everyone had a great time making The Undertaker and His Pals.

I imagine the film was made to capitalize on the success of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s similarly over the top Blood Feast. Ultimately, The Undertaker and His Pals works best as a weird time capsule of what was shocking in 1966.

Tough As Nails: BRUTE FORCE (Universal-International, 1947)

Posted on September 8, 2015 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

The prison movie has long been one of the most popular of the crime genre. Beginning with 1930’s THE BIG HOUSE, to THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and beyond, audiences flock to get a forbidden glimpse behind the walls. Newspaper columnist turned film producer Mark Hellinger gave us one of the starkest, most realistic looks at prison life in BRUTE FORCE, as relevant now as it was back in 1947.

Westgate Penitentiary is a walled island facility much like Alcatraz, ruled with an iron hand by Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn). The warden (Roman Bohenen) is weak and inefficient, and the prison doctor (Art Baker) a drunk. Inmate Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster), just back from solitary thanks to having a shiv planted on him by one of Munsey’s stoolies, is desperate enough to plan a jailbreak with his cellies in R17. They stage a fight in the machine shop and drive the rat to his death while Joe visits with the doctor…

View original post 587 more words

Found-Footage Alien Invasion Two-Fer : “Area 51”

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Trash Film Guru

In recent years, Oren Peli has gone from the promising young director of the original Paranormal Activity to a veritable “horror mogul,” with his name attached (albeit as a producer) to projects as varied as Rob Zombie’s Lords Of Salem, Barry Levinson’s The Bay, and the blockbuster Insidious series. And yet, for all his newfound clout, his sophomore directorial effort, Area 51, has been sitting around, unreleased, since filming on it wrapped in 2009.

You’d figure there must be a good reason for that, of course (and there is), but the funny thing is that, just when everybody finally forgot about this thing, it quietly (hell, silently, even) made its way onto various “home viewing platforms” (including Netflix, which is how I caught it — perhaps worth noting is the fact that it’s not, to the best of my knowledge, available on either Blu-ray or DVD yet) just a…

View original post 561 more words

4 Shots From 4 Films: Blow Out, The Parallax View, Network, The Set-Up

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

4 downer endings from 4 of my favorite films.

Blow Out (1981, dir. Brian De Palma)

The Parallax View (1974, dir. Alan J. Pakula)

Network (1976, dir. Sidney Lumet)

The Set-Up (1949, dir. Robert Wise)

Scenes I Love: Ken Burns’ The Civil War

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Arleigh

I think Lisa Marie and I could spend hundreds of hours just talking about history. While I love history in general, I do admit that military history has been a particular fascination of mine. Some would say that I’m just being bloodthirsty. That I’m reveling in the worst aspects of humanity. I would strongly disagree with that opinion.

Military history is not just about rehashing the cold facts and figures of battles, wars and conflict. It’s a type of history that gives people a window to the past. A past we could learn from so as not to repeat the same mistakes in the future. It’s not even the death and destruction shown through historical writing by aficionados and academia.

With PBS re-airing Ken Burns’ The Civil War this week we get to witness one of the great triumphs in filmmaking 25 years after it first aired in 1990. It’s a documentary that gives us an everyman’s look at the cause, effect and consequence of the bloodiest war in American history. A war that would shape the American consciousness for generations to come. It was also a war that pit brother against brother, fathers against sons and lifelong friends against each other as battlefields across the states and territories of the United States flowed with the blood of Americans.

One of the great things about this documentary series is how it doesn’t just rely on the facts and figures of this historical event in American history, but the personal voices of individuals who participated in the war and it’s periphery. These voices (as narrated by stars such as Morgan Freeman, Sam Waterston, Jason Robards, Julie Harris, Arthur Miller and George Plimpton to name a few) adds an poignant and personal touch to what could’ve been a very dry and academic exercise.

One of the best scenes in the series arrives at the end of the first day of five for the series. It’s a letter from one Union officer Sullivan Ballou to his wife a week before he participates in the war’s first major engagement, the First Battle of Bull Run.

Sullivan Ballou’s Letter

July the 14th, 1861

Washington D.C.

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure—and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows—when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children—is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country?

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death—and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.

I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one. A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and “the name of honor that I love more than I fear death” have called upon me, and I have obeyed.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar—that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father’s love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers his and hers I call God’s blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.