Movie Review of Carolina Skeletons (1991)

In 1934, two young girls were brutally assaulted, raped, then murdered by a river in Crawfordsville, South Carolina. 

A fourteen year old boy named Linus Bragg confessed to the crime. He was summarily executed in the local gaol. 

It all seemed cut and dried.  The population of the town moved on, but some of them were harboring terrible secrets.

Thirty years later, Mother Bragg has never accepted the fact that her little boy committed those murders.  She has fought long and hard to clear his name to no avail. 

On her death-bed, she calls home her second son, Jimmy Bragg, an officer in the armed forces. She makes him promise that he won't rest until he clears Linus's name.

But he is opening a massive can of worms, which few appreciate; not least the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and a potential murderer still at large.

As a made-for-TV movie, Carolina Skeletons didn't have the largest budget in the world, but it makes great use of what it did secure.

Louis Gossett Jr always puts in a good performance, as does Bruce Dern. But Kenn Michael (credited as Kenny Blank) was outstanding as Linus Bragg.

I spent the majority of his scenes wanting to reach inside the screen and protect him bodily if need be.

Apparently I wasn't the only person who thought so.  Kenn was nominated in the Best Young Actor in a Television Movie category of the Young Artists Awards in 1993, for his portrayal of Linus Bragg.

Others did their jobs well, with no-one else particularly standing out for a special mention; though none of them were unbelievable in their roles either.

The cinematography and musical score were particularly good.  There was one sequence, where Jimmy Bragg is trapped in his room by someone who has just tried to run him down, which really gripped me. 

I found myself biting my lip, trying to find a way out for him.  It really brought home the claustrophobic terror of being the wrong colored skin in a predominantly racist town. Much of it was very low-key, and all the more disturbing for it.

Nor was it lost on me that the opening song, all about Linus Bragg, was reminiscent of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit. In fact, I thought it was that song during the opening bars! And the singer obviously had her inspiration in Lady Day.  All good from where I was sitting.

Neither the book nor the movie purports to be a biography of George Stinney Jr., nor do they dramatize his story.

However, there are many recognizable correlations between fact and fiction.  George and Linus are both the same age and they lived in South Carolina. 

The main income for the town came from a saw mill, owned by a white family employing mostly black people.

The victims were both two little girls.  In fictitious Crawfordsville and the real Alcolu, the populations were ready to lynch the boy in gaol.  They were each failed by their legal counsel and other officials.  They both signed a confession.  They were both killed in the electric chair. 

In short, the background story, insofar as it affects Linus Bragg and is told in flash-backs in the film, fits almost perfectly over the top of the true life experiences of George Stinney Jr.  Hence the execution scene in this movie often being used to illustrate documentaries or articles about the real teenager.

The scene where Linus Bragg is strapped into the electric chair is one of the most memorable and disturbing moments in the movie. Bizarrely though, it doesn't go far enough. 

In the movie, Linus enters clutching a Bible, which is taken from him.  In reality, George was so small that he ended up having to sit on his Bible, just so the electrodes could fit him.  In the film, Linus's wrist strap breaks and he reaches out for Junior.  In reality, the adult mask was too big for George and fell off, revealing his terrified and tear-stained face as he was being killed.

For all of its poignancy, the electrocution scene understated the real execution of George Stinney Jr.

But if it held back there, it didn't in the rest of the story.  While there is plenty of suspicion that George was innocent, it's blatantly stated that Linus didn't do it.  The whole plot is founded upon the fact that the boy was a patsy for the real murderer.

The Bechdel Test comprises of three simple questions designed to assess the representation of females in a film.

To pass the first, there needs to be more than one named female character in a movie.  Carolina Skeletons sort of has several.  So it does pass.

But I say 'sort of' because they aren't full names.  The murder victims are Cindy Lou and Sue Ellen, but their surnames are never given.  James and Linus's mother is just billed as Mother Bragg.

Even the main female protagonist is only called Cassie.  We can extrapolate that her maiden name was Stoker, but she's been married and divorced since.  She may still carry her ex-husband's family name, and that is never given.

Only one woman in the entire movie can be named with any confidence - Sarah Cody.  She is called 'Sarah' by her husband, then later referred to as Mrs Cody.  Yet she's only a cameo role.

Otherwise the credits talk only about city clerks and secretaries.  Job titles with no given name.

The second and third parts of the Bechdel Test asks that two named female characters have a conversation.  It cannot be about a male character. 

At one point 'city clerk' calls down the stairs of the archives room to remind Cassie that it's five o'clock.  Cassie responds that they are just coming.  Does that count as a conversation?  I might have given it a scraped through pass, if 'city clerk' had actually been named.

Also Sue Ellen whispered into Cindy Lou's ear, but that was apparently about Linus's age.  Plus Cindy Lou didn't actually answer her.

With the best will in the world, I can't crowbar a pass on the Bechdel Test for this movie.