October True Crime: Murder in Coweta County (dir by Gary Nelson)

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1948, one of the richest men in Georgia committed a murder.

John Wallace was a landowner, back when that title actually meant something. He was known as the boss of Meriweather County. Everyone in the county seemed to work for Wallace in one way or another. He controlled the county officials. The sheriff enforced the law only as far as John Wallace would allow him. The bootleggers had to pay Wallace for protection. When one bootlegger, a sharecropper named Wilson Turner, failed to do so, he was fired and kicked off of Wallace’s land.

Turner retaliated by stealing two of Wallace’s cows.

Wallace responded by murdering Turner.

Because Turner attempted to flee and Wallace chased after him, Wallace committed the murder not in Meriweather County but in neighboring Coweta County. What Wallace didn’t realize was that this meant the investigation didn’t fall under the jurisdiction of his hand-picked sheriff. Instead, Sheriff Lamar Potts of Coweta County headed up the investigation. John Wallace was eventually arrested by Sheriff Potts and he was eventually convicted of murdering Wilson Turner. At the time, the case drew a lot of attention both because of Wallace’s wealth but also because two of the main witnesses for the prosecution were the two black men who Wallace forced to help him dispose of Wallace’s body.

It’s an interesting story, largely because the history of America is full of men like John Wallace, people who set up their own little dictatorships. It’s often portrayed as being a Southern phenomena but John Wallace really wasn’t that much different from the crude political bosses who, for decades, dominated politics in city like New York and Chicago, the type who held onto power through a combination of intimidation and patronage. In my home state of Texas, George Berham Parr inherited the political machine that controlled Duval and Jim Wells County. Parr committed numerous crimes during his time as the “Duke of Duval” but he had important friends. He was the one who “found” the votes necessary for Lyndon Johnson to win a senate seat in 1948. (In return, Johnson got Harry Truman to pardon Parr for failing to pay his taxes.) Parr is also suspected of having been involved in at least one murder but it wasn’t until LBJ himself retired from politics that anyone truly investigated Parr’s activities. In 1974, he was again convicted of failing to pay his taxes and Parr was later found dead at his ranch. Suicide was the official police ruling.

As for the story of John Wallace, it was turned into a made-for-TV movie in 1983. Murder in Coweta County stars Andy Griffith as John Wallace and Johnny Cash as Sheriff Potts. Griffith, playing a soulless villain, is chilling as John Wallace. Wallace is all-smiles and good ol’ boy charisma whenever there’s a crowd around but, once it’s just him and his cronies, a different side comes out. Wallace thinks that he can get away with murder because he’s been able to get away with everything else. Sheriff Potts is determined to see that justice is done. Murder in Coweta County is an atmospheric Southern crime story, one that is so full of atmosphere that you can feel the humidity. While Johnny Cash was definitely a better singer than an actor, Andy Griffith’s villainous turn makes the film worth watching.

14 Days of Paranoia #3: The Lincoln Conspiracy (dir by James L. Conway)

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When it comes to conspiracy theories involving presidential assassinations, the theories surrounding JFK may get all the attention but it’s the theories surrounding the death of Abraham Lincoln are usually far more plausible.

Unless, of course, it’s the theories that are pushed in the 1977 docudrama, The Lincoln Conspiracy.

A mix of documentary-style narration and really cheap-looking historical reenactments, The Lincoln Conspiracy essentially indicts almost everyone who was alive in 1865 as being a part of either the conspiracy or the subsequent cover-up. Really, it’s remarkable how many historical figures are implicated in this film.

With the Civil War coming to a close, President Lincoln (John Anderson) hopes to pursue a generous reconstruction policy for the former Confederate States. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Robert Middleton), Senator Ben Wade (Dick Callinan), and a host of other are all opposed to this plan, both because they want vengeance and they also want to make as much money as possible off of the Southern cotton fields. They come up with a plan to impeach Lincoln but, in order to draw up the articles, they have to make sure that Lincoln is not seen for a few days. When Col. Lafayette Baker (John Dehner) discovers that an actor named John Wilkes Booth (Bradford Dillman) is planning on kidnapping Lincoln, Stanton and his conspirators decide to give Booth their unofficial support. However, when the plan changes at the last minute and Stanton decides that it would actually be a bad idea to kidnap Lincoln, an angry Booth decides to just kill Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and William Seward.

Booth succeeds in shooting Lincoln and making his escape. The other members of Booth’s group all fail in their assignments. Andrew Johnson becomes president. Though grievously wounded, William Seward survives. Booth flees to Canada and …. oh, you thought Booth died? No, that was just a look alike who was shot by a bizarre soldier named Boston Corbett. By allowing everyone to believe that Booth was killed, Stanton is able to cover up any role he and his allies played in inspiring the assassination. Unfortunately, Col. Baker keeps a diary and it seems like he might be planning on revealing the truth but he dies mysteriously before he can.

(And, to give the film some credit, Col. Baker’s sudden death at 41 was an odd one. And, though it’s not really explored in the film, Boston Corbett, the man who shoot Booth, really was a weirdo who was described by contemporaries as being a religious fanatic who castrated himself and claimed to hear the voice of God.)

It’s a big conspiracy theory that is presented in The Lincoln Conspiracy. In fact, it’s a bit too big to really be taken seriously. The film pretty much accuses everyone in Washington of having a part in the assassination. The film itself has the cheap look of a community theater production and the use of Dr. Samuel Mudd as a narrator only adds to the film’s silliness. If you’re a fan of gigantic and thoroughly implausible conspiracy theories, as I am, the film is entertaining in its way. If nothing else, Bradford Dillman certainly looks like how most people probably imagine John Wilkes Booth to have looked. Otherwise, The Lincoln Conspiracy is far-fetched and not at all realistic, which is why I assume that a lot of people in 1977 probably believed every word of it.

Previous entries in 2025’s 14 Days Of Paranoia:

Icarus File No. 2: Maximum Overdrive (dir by Steven King)

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There is exactly one effective sequence to be found in Maximum Overdrive, a horror film from 1986 that attempts to show us what would happen if all of Earth’s machines decided to destroy humanity.

It takes place at the end of a little league game. The coach, happy that his team has won, declares soda for everyone! He walks over to the soft drink machine and puts in his coins and…nothing happens. The coach stares at the machine perplexed. His team gathers around him.

Suddenly, a can flies out of the machine and hits the coach in the groin. Coach falls to his knees, just to get another can driven straight into his skull, leaving him with a big bloody hole in his head. As the coach twitches, his teams starts to run away. Suddenly, the machine is shooting cans out at them. Some of the kids escape but quite a few don’t.

Suddenly, as the kids flee, a driverless steamroller crashes through a fence and drives across the field, graphically flattening one of the players…

It’s over-the-top, it’s kind of scary, it’s fun in a naughty sort of way, and it’s exciting to watch. It’s totally absurd and yet it’s effective at the same time. It’s a really brilliant scene, one that hints at what Maximum Overdrive could have been. It hints that Maximum Overdrive‘s first-time director did have some potential and watching it, one is tempted to feel a pang of regret over the fact that he never directed another film after this one.

However, then you watch the rest of Maximum Overdrive and you realize that one effective scene was a total fluke. To your horror, you realize that this film’s director (and screenwriter) has decided to set nearly the entire film in the ugliest and most disgusting truck stop in the world. You realize that the director has no idea how to maintain suspense and that his idea of horror appears to be having a lot of trucks constantly circling the truck stop. And then, worst of all, you realize that the unlikable caricatures inside the truck stop are meant to be our heroes!

And you find yourself wondering if things could possibly get any worse. Well, believe me — they can.

First off, a guy named Camp Loman (Christopher Murney) shows up and reveals himself to be a total lech and then starts trying to sell bibles and really, what do you expect from someone named Camp Loman? And, what’s annoying, is that the film’s director seems to think that he’s blowing our mind by presenting us with an hypocritical bible salesman. I mean, seriously — the amount of time devoted to Camp Loman will make you nostalgic for scenes of a steamroller crushing a child.

And then Emilio Estevez shows up as our hero but he scowls through the entire movie and delivers all of his lines through gritted teeth, as if he’s pissed off about appearing in Maximum Overdrive and really, who can blame him? That said, it doesn’t really make for an enjoyable performance.

But hey — Emilio’s not the only person in the truck stop. There’s also Pat Hingle, playing the owner of the truck stop. He’s overweight, wears a tie, smokes a cigar, and speaks with a vaguely Southern accent. Hmmmmm, do you think he’s going to be a bad guy?

Oh! And let’s not forget the waitress played by Ellen McElduff. “WE MADE YOU!” she shouts at the machines and then she shouts it again and again and again and again and it’s almost as if the film is being directed by a guy so in love with his own dialogue that he doesn’t realize how annoying the same line gets when it’s screeched over and over again.

And I haven’t even gotten to the helium-voiced newlyweds yet…

When I recently watched Maximum Overdrive on Encore, there were a lot of things that annoyed me, such as the bad pacing, the bad acting, the bad dialogue, the bad special effects, the bad cinematography, and the bad everything else. But what really got to me was just how inconsistent this movie was. Some machines turned into killers but oddly, others did not. At one point, a machine gun starts shooting at the people in the truck stop but the weapons that Pat Hingle keeps in the truck stop never turn on their human masters. Seriously, if you’re going to make a terrible movie, at least be consistent.

So, you may be asking, why is this an Icarus File? Well, it was directed by Stephen King, the writer who is routinely called the “master of horror.” King may be a great writer but, judging from this movie, he was a really crappy director. I imagine, when the film was in pre-production, the logic was that if King could write a scary book then he could definitely direct a scary movie.

Nope.

It turns out that, just as Icarus should never have gotten so close to the sun, Stephen King should never have directed a movie.