The Phenix City Story

Thurs, Jul 24 • 7:00 PM

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

About this event

Phenix City, Alabama (a.k.a. “Sin City, U.S.A.”), became nationally notorious in 1954, when the good-ol’-boy gangsters who ran the town’s vice rackets conspired to murder Albert Patterson, a local lawyer who’d just been elected Alabama’s attorney general. Filmed on location while the murder trial was still in progress, Phil Karlson’s raw report opens with newsreel footage of journalist Clete Roberts interviewing townspeople involved in the events. The drama that follows, cowritten by Daniel Mainwaring (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), mixes actors with real-life residents and facts with invented incidents in a shockingly detailed depiction of depravity and corruption.

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