Crazy in Alabama

Plot synopsis:
This film moves back and forth between its two main characters.1- Peejoe Bullis (Lucas Black) and his brother Wiley (David Speck) are orphans who live with their grandmother (Sandra Seacat).2- Lucille Vinson (Melanie Griffith) kills her husband Chester because he won't let her go to Hollywood to star in the sitcom Bewitched, where she has been cast on a 2-episode role. Lucille is Peejoe and Wiley's aunt, and the sister of Dove, another uncle of the two boys.When Lucille goes to Hollywood with Chester's head in a Tupperware container after having poisoned him with rat poison, she leaves her seven children with her mother, so Grandma has no more place for Peejoe and Wiley. They have to go to live with Uncle Dove (David Morse), and his wife Earlene (Cathy Moriarty). Dove tells sheriff John Doggett (Meat Loaf), that they don't know where Lucille is heading for.On her way to New Orleans, Lucille can hear Chester's head talking to her (represented by the voice of Brent Briscoe), making sarcastic comments. The assistant at the Fleur de Lys hat shop (Marion Zinser) is a bit sarcastic at the beginning as well, but she is not so when Lucille buys a 500-dollar couture hat because she needs the hatbox to put Chester's head in. Later, Lucille stops at a bar, and a barman (John Fleck) thinks she is a whore and is rude to her. She gets annoyed, and steals the barman's money and car.Later on, she stops at a road coffee shop. There, Sally (writer Fannie Flagg) is a waitress, and realizes Lucille's being sought by the police, but she doesn't give her in. She talks to her for a while, and then she tells her to go without paying saying "it is on me". Because of the stolen car, Lucille gets pulled over by a police officer, who gets all excited hearing the story she is telling with sexual overtones. When they are kissing, Lucille handcuffs the police officer and steals his gun, although she leaves it outside the police station.Back home, Peejoe sees black people queueing up to register for voting although it's illegal in Alabama, and focuses on 17-year old Taylor Jackson (Louis Miller). Peejoe and Wiley go to a small swimming-pool, the only one in town but only-white. Taylor jumps in the pool, and all the white people get out of the pool, except Peejoe. Peejoe watches how the sheriff kills Taylor when he was running away from him, pulling him down from a railing, hitting his head on the cement and killing him. Later, Peejoe has an incident with a lawn mower, which hits him in an eye with a golf ball, and everybody wants to think he was attacked by the sheriff. Peejoe will carry a patch in his eye for almost the rest of the film.At the funeral, Peejoe parades with Taylor's mourners. He coaxes Wiley into following him. They all finish at the same pool, singing and jumping in, only to be disbanded by the sheriff. A Look magazine photographer (Michael Arata) is there, and takes a close-up picture of Peejoe's face. Peejoe is considered a hero, although he insists he only happened to be there. When Martin Luther King (Dudley F. Craig II) arrives in town -we never see his face-, Peejoe is introduced to him, and they shake hands.Lucille had earned some money in Las Vegas, having the time of her life playing roulette and shagging a very handsome bellboy (Brad Beyer). Eccentric limousine driver (Richard Schiff) takes her to Hollywood, where her agent Harry Hall (Robert Wagner) is expecting her. She presents herself under the name of Caroline Clay. There, bitchy actress Joan Blake (Elizabeth Perkins) is rude to her. Lucille works on the set of Bewitched, with the stand-in actors (Charlie Dell, Oliver Clark and Tracy Griffith) giving her the cue lines. Hall thinks Lucille should appear in films as well. At a party, the bitchy actress investigates what's in the hatbox, because her badly-behaved dogs are snuffing at it. When she sees Chester's head, she walks stiffy and dizzily, goes through a closed window and drowns herself out of shock, but nobody suspects Lucille had anything to do with it. Norman drives her out of the party.Back in Alabama, Earlene complains because the whole town is ostracizing her, because of Peejoe's involvement with the cause. She wants the two siblings out of her house, but Dove won't allow it. In the middle of the discussion, they see Lucille's episode on TV. They stop quarrelling and they watch it in amazement.Back to Hollywood, when Lucille is about to throw Chester's head from the Golden Gate Bridge, all her money -kept in a red bag- slips away. She tries to retrieve it. Two patrolmen (Kirk Fox and Jordan Lund) ask her questions, because they think she's trying to commit suicide, and that's when one of them see all the money and the head in the hatbox. Lucille is discovered and sent back to Alabama, where she could be sentenced to the electric chair.Peejoe and Dove have been talking to FBI Agent Murphy (William Converse Roberts) in secret, but Dove is afraid of Peejoe's security and doesn't want him to testify. Nehemiah Jackson (John Beasley) is Taylor's grandfather. He's in prison as well, because of his demonstrations and parades. He gives Lucille something to eat.Judge Louis Mead (Rod Steiger) is an eccentric man, who makes Lucille's children go away, in order not to influence the jury. At one moment in the trial, he wants to talk to Lucille alone. She's pleading self-defence and sanity.When Peejoe testifies, he says that there is a deal between sheriff Doggett and Dove: if he doesn't accuse the sheriff of Taylor's murder, Lucille will not be given the death penalty. Later in the trial, Lucille tells the jury how Chester abused and mistreated her and her children -all with cinema stars' names like Marlon, Rock, Marilyn... (Dane Le Blanc, Dakota Johnson, Estella del Carmen Banderas and Jackson Isaacs) However, the jury isn't adamant to feel pity for her, and they find Lucille guilty on all counts. Outside the courtroom, Murphy arrests sheriff Doggett, who is unrepentant. Dove asks Peejoe if he had planned it all, and he said it just came to him in the spur of the moment. Dove tells Peejoe that that was something he couldn't run from, so that he won't have the opportunity to change his mind. Peejoe is happy about that.Judge Mead gives a long speech when sentencing Lucille. He says the jury wants Lucille to go to the electric chair, but that he has never sent a woman there. He doesn't think she's a danger to anybody, except her late husband. First he sentences her to 20 years, then he suspends the sentence and makes it a 5-year probation sentence, if she seeks psychiatric counselling. Lucille can go free, although the prosecutor shouts and is really angry.Outside the court, Norman is waiting with a car and a bunch of flowers. He and Lucille go away with all of Lucille's children, presumably back to Hollywood.Back in Alabama, the town is filling the pool with cement, because a judge has ruled it should be integrated (be for everybody, not only for white people). Peejoe and Wiley find it ludicrous. They go away fishing with a black friend, and he says that now nobody has a pool.

Tags: violence, murder, romantic

Review:
Performances like Steiger's make you want to ransack the video store to rent all his older films.Finally, I believe Lucas Black is destined for greatness.
When I saw that Antonio Banderas had directed it, I thought "Oh, here's another one of those films where the actor/director has to put his wife in the leading role..
This movie really is strange with its incredibly serious (and gruesome) subject matter of a woman who methodically murders and decapitates her husband and then carries his head around with her - first in Tupperware and then in a very stylish hat box!
It's the 1960s in Alabama and Lucille (Melanie Griffith) murders and decapitates her abusive husband Chester, and heads to Hollywood with his head.
Our narrator is Lucille's nephew, he is living with his uncle (David Morse), witnessing the evil of the town sheriff (Meat Loaf) and trying to make sense of the civil rights movement.This is an odd, yet ultimately successful, merging of two very different stories.
Griffith is compelling -- her husband, Antonio Banderas, directs her as he sees her, the camera keeps finding the perfect woman; thrilling, sensual and sweet.In the "featurette" on the DVD, both Griffith and Banderas say the movie is about freedom, and the stories parallel well because Lucille's freedom from her husband's oppression parallels the blacks' freedom from civil oppression.
Antonio Banderas did a great job in direction, but Lucas Black stole the show with his acting.
Antonio Banderas did an awesome job as a director and Melanie Griffith is outrageous.
I loved this film.I am not normally a fan of Melanie Griffith, but she is superb as the Southern Belle, Lucille.Antonio Banderas does a brilliant job behind the camera, telling two stories both about the difference between Justice and what is Just.Rod Steiger is superb in his cameo role as the judge..
A woman chops her husband's head off and leaves a punch of kids behind to go fill her dream to become a movie star.
But behind this crazy story line this movie holds a truly honest, sarcastic, picture of a strong, loving woman.In addition there is another story of a boy who will also become a star even without wanting to become one.
The trouble with most Melanie Griffith vehicles-and for some reason I'm excruciatingly aware of the number of them I've seen- is that you're only seeing one character, ever, and not a very good or memorable one at that.
Melanie Griffith is not only not a very good actress, she is so abominably bad and mind-numbingly predictable in her infantile reactions and sex-kitten phrasings that she should never have been seen aside from her appearances in Body Double and Something Wild, in which the characters she played were simply tailored to fit her deficient persona.
We have a typical Hollywood construct, 60's racist Alabama, intercut with a retail clerk's dream of ascendance to stardom: kill your abusive husband, steal a car, by a hat for the hatbox, (paste classical reference here) sweet-talk a cop out of holding you in jail--Banderas probably knows so little about police procedure in this country that he actually thought the hatbox in a stolen vehicle would not be checked-- win big in Las Vegas, audition for Bewitched, and become a star.
Now, the "serious" side of this movie flounders like the fully dressed blacks diving into the pool--we're supposed to think here of baptism, even before we see the image of the little boy floating in the crucifixion pose--and we are also supposed to swallow yet another screenwriter's slam-dunk of a terribly complex and many-sided situation, that of racial injustices of sixties Alabama.
Banderas, who, come to think of it, may actually be the closest thing to a male counterpart to Melanie Griffith you're liable to find.
What we have, then, is shoddy "stars" that no one really wants to see, like Melanie Griffith, shoddy directing, that we could live without, like Banderas,' and shoddy films, that no one really wanted to see, playing three times a day on Bravo, like this one.
CRAZY IN ALABAMA / (1999) **1/2 (out of four) By Blake French:	"Crazy in Alabama" is actually very well constructed; with good performances by a strong supporting cast, including David Morse ("The Green Mile"), Rod Steiger ("End of Days")" Meat Loaf Aday ("Fight Club"), and a compelling leading performance by director Antonio Banderas' wife, Melanie Griffith.
The first details a woman named Lucille (Melanie Griffith), who dreams of becoming a famous actress in Hollywood after chopping off her cruel husband's head.
Although it is his first feature film, Antonio Banderas, also a well-known actor starring 1999's Viking drama "The 13th Warrior," he should have realized the complexity of the plot as a negative contribution.
If the writers had just stuck with the comedy instead of -- once again - laying down their heavy-handed Leftist cultural agenda - this would have been a very entertaining and fun film.Certainly the "voice" of the head in the basket (you have to see this to know what I mean) was funny.
Too bad the bias had to enter because it was a fun film to that point with Melanie Griffith, Lucas Black and David Morse all doing a fine job..
Amazing that a movie blending a southern vixen killing her abusive husband and fleeing the country with his head can mix with a racially motivated killing and yet be good.
This is what "Crazy in Alabama" exactly is.This is basically a story of freedom-obtaining it through the civil rights struggle, while a white woman sought her freedom in disposing of her horrible husband.Melanie Griffith, directed by husband Antonio Banderas, is just perfect for the part.
With a great southern accent, she wears hats so similar to Judy Holliday in "Born Yesterday," or Jean Hagen in "Singin' in the Rain."This melding of marital abuse and civil rights in 1965's Alabama hits the high mark.
When they were announcing filming of this movie and doing location checks, everybody in Alabama (where I live) was so excited!
Oh boy, Banderas and Griffith are coming here to film!
Crazy in Alabama is a smart, witty film about  aspiring actress Lucille,(Melanie Griffith) and her nephew, Pee-Joe (Lucas Black).
The film is definately worth seeing, with moments of comedy interspersed among the drama unfolding in the small southern town.The strong story is supported with excellent performances from Griffith, Balck, and David Morse..
Interesting director, Banderas; wonderful roles for Griffith, Meatloaf, Steiger.US rated PG-13, but recommendable also for (smart and strong) 10-agers..
I thought that the cast especially Melanie Griffith, David Morse and the young Lucas Black were very believable.
Rediscover Melanie Griffith in one of the finast film I have seen in years!
The acting was excellent but I did have reservations.While Melanie Griffith would normally have been perfect for wacky Aunt Lucille, she was NOT 34 years old as the radio announcer said on the getaway car radio.
One or two should have been 12 or 13, given Ms. Griffith's age.And I was totally put off by the fact that Lucille got her BIG BREAK by just sending in her head shot to the producers of "Bewitched," and they went on and on about how wonderful she looked.
Now THAT would've made a lot more sense and it would have been far more BELIEVABLE!!!!!!!Other than those points, I found everyone's acting wonderful, and Banderas did a fine job of directing.
Mr. Bandera's first movie as film director was a true surprise.
Although the Civil Rights angle is fairly well-acted, it's everything you've seen in at least 20 other movies -- it's like the Lucille story is the candy and this part is the medicine.
As Lucille, Melanie Griffith is sooo adorable (which is quite a surprise for anyone who finds her babydoll voice more irritating than nails on a blackboard) and as for the others who appear here, it's just pleasure upon pleasure: the seldom-seen, ever-brittle Cathy Moriarity as Lucille's sister-in-law, Fannie Flagg as a sympathetic and much-married diner waitress, Robert Wagner as Lucille's Hollywood agent, Rod Steiger as the judge at Lucille's murder trial, and on and on.
`To Kill a Mockingbird' meets `Nurse Betty' in Antonio Banderas' directorial debut, `Crazy in Alabama'.
The film starts when we hear that Lucille (Griffith) murdered her husband.
While not quite as good as I thought it would be, `Crazy in Alabama' is a wry, oddball comedy/drama that has originality and entertainment in spades.
Intertwining the light hearted and almost childlike fulfillment of Lucille's life long dream to make it big in Hollywood with the backdrop of the violence and intolerance of the Civil Rights Movement in her hometown of Indstry, Alabama has you laughing one minute and almost in tears the next.
Peejoe (Lucas Black) is 13 living a simple life until his eccentric aunt Lucille (Melanie Griffith) kills her abusive husband.
Released in 1999 and directed by Antonio Banderas (Melanie's husband at the time), "Crazy in Alabama" is a drama/comedy about an Alabama housewife (Melanie Griffith) in 1965 who kills her abusive husband and takes off to Hollywood to attain her dream of being a starlet, all the while carrying her husband's head in a suitcase.
Robert Wagner and Rod Steiger are on hand as a Hollywood producer and judge respectively "Crazy in Alabama" has that quirky, hip flare of movies of the mid-to-late 90s, like "Pulp Fiction," "Michael," "Mojave Moon," "The Way of the Gun" and "American Psycho"; but especially "Nurse Betty," which came out less than a year after "Crazy in Alabama." These two films have the same quirky tone mixed with black humor and also share plot similarities—an abused wife kills her husband and flees to Hollywood.
If you have a taste for these types of movies you might like "Crazy in Alabama."For me, it was half-good and half-meh.
There are slow ways and there are fast ways and Chester (her husband) was killing me the slow way for 13 years." Unfortunately, I'm not a big Griffith fan, which isn't to say I DON'T like her; it's just that I can take her or leave her, although I love her spirit and voice.
Watched this because it has Antonio Banderas's directing his wife Melanie Griffith.There are 2 ongoing stories set in the 60s in Alabama.
An abused wife (Melanie Griffith) kills her husband and sets off to Hollywood to make it as an actress carrying her husband's head in a hatbox.
It's part feel good fantasy and civil rights commentary.Melanie still looks young and slim and gives her signature ditzy performance.
it got a six.This is a black comedy with plenty of food for thought....interweaving the drama of prejudice, wife abuse, freedom and the difference between(to quote a line from the film) "justice and being just".....OK....the plot is generally preposterous;but because of good directing and fine acting this is an entertaining picture.The stars that shine are the lead actress, the actors playing her nephew, the sheriff and her chauffeur.
I hope I look as good as that at his age.....and Rod Steiger is the great American ham actor as the judge...definitely worth renting this film from the video shop!.
Melanie Griffith's acting stood out in this film.
She is convincing as a Lucille, a loon from Alabama, who travels to Hollywood to fulfill her dream of becoming a movie star.
While it's not unusual to see actors become directors, I underwent a huge frameshift in seeing Banderas making his huge directorial debut in Crazy in Alabama.
As you might have not known, Antonio Banderas has been acting for quite some time (since 1983) in various movies that even surprised me.
You can quote me on that.Melanie Griffith, as it happens is also in the movie, starring as Lucille.
More than I expected from a "husband directing wife" movie.A little uneven though; the two stories flip-flopped with no apparent tie, even though you knew there would eventually be one; once it came it was not entirely satisfying.
In the meantime, I kept thinking, "this movie is about the kid (peejoe), not about Melanie Griffith, why do they keep interrupting it with her disjointed scenes?"A great cast gives good performances.
I particularly liked the kid, Lucas Black ("Sling Blade"), David Morse...and look for an almost unrecognizable Richard Schiff ("The West Wing") as the limo driver, Norman.Other than the odd blending of the stories, Banderas (director) didn't get in the way at all (this is a compliment).
The plot was fresh and funny; the supporting characters were excellent (particularly David Morse and Lucas Black); the adaptation kept the essence of Mark Childress' book.
"Crazy in Alabama," the directorial debut of Antonio Banderas, tries desperately to live up to its title yet simply emerges as deep-fried Southern malarkey garnished with social significance.
Melanie Griffith, obviously past her darling ingenue stage and heading into the career sunset of doddering, crazy aunt roles, plays the stereotypical Southern lunatic who has decapitated her abusive husband, packed his head in a tupperware container she carries with her in a hatbox and headed off (pardon the pun) to find fame and glory in the spotlight of 1960's Hollywood.
And not all the scenes of phony emotional uplift at the end - a scanning of tear soaked faces at a ludicrous trial, a shot of Griffith, standing through a sun-roof riding off into the sunset, arms raised in a victory salute - can mitigate the tastelessness at the film's core."Crazy in Alabama" simply proves that, for an offbeat film to be successful, an attempt has to be made to blend the disparate elements of plotting and tone into an organic whole.
Melanie Griffith really shined, especially at the end, and Lucas Black was terrific throughout the entire movie.
A movie that is well directed, acted and with a great script.
Great satire and moving, Melanie Griffith gives an excellent performance, Banderas directed with an amazing feeling for emotions and effects.
Melanie Griffith plays a battered wife who snaps and decapatates her abusive husband and heads to Hollywood to become a movie star with his head in a hotbox.
If you're a fan of Antonio or Melanie Griffith see some of their other movies.
Average drama/comedy movie set in U.S. 1960's Alabama Civil Rights Movement.Two main story lines in one movie.Has average all around production.The screenplay could have been better.Only for fans of historical setting comedy/drama road/coartroom movies and big fans of the lead actors.....
I didnt laugh one time and I wasnt moved by the story about the black people, so I would say it's a bad movie.
Actor Antonio Banderas directs his wife, Melanie Griffith, in this off beat black comedy.
This movie is worth seeing just to watch the courtroom scene and the judge at the end.
Melanie Griffith also fares very well in her role as eccentric aunt on the lamb with her husband's decapitated head!!!
The other performances are also very good especially Lukas Black as Griffith's young nephew who is really the main character in the film.
The film's message was a bit too obvious and the courtroom scene in the end was just a vehicle for a soliloquy by Melanie Griffith who was appropriate for the part.
No matter how poor any reviews may be or how this film does at the box office, I applaud that they left out the graphic violence and sex scenes from the book and went with the character development and emotions of the stories.
Crazy in Alabama is a great movie the depicts the changing of the world in the 1960s in the south as well as one woman's adventure and dreams.
This movie is very touching and I believe that Banderas did a good job at directing.
Melanie Griffith, directed here by her husband Antonio Banderas, plays the loony Aunt Lucille, a 1960's-era housewife who murders her abusive husband in order to escape from her oppressive, drab life.
But then it clumsily tries to become a "message film" with a weighty parable about freedom and civil rights, and it draws a parallel between Lucille's cartoonish road trip and the deadly-earnest battle for African-American civil rights which is both ridiculous and patently offensive.Back in Alabama, a stereotypically repulsive and bigoted sheriff (Meat Loaf Aday) beats several black youth who are trying to enter a whites-only pool, accidentally killing one of them.
One reviewer stated that "Crazy in Alabama" is heartwarming because it promises that good will triumph over evil, even if it takes a while-- and it's this naive and simplistic "black-and-white" view of things that is the movie's downfall.
Crazy in Alabama (1999): Dir: Antonio Banderas / Cast: Melanie Griffith, Lucas Black, David Morse, Meatloaf, Cathy Moriarty: Black comedy about unusual behavior divided into two subplots.
Lucille (Melanie Griffith) is fleeing her small town because she just killed her husband and cut off his head.
I feel that the film industry needs to take a little more responsibility than this.When I rented the movie, I started out skeptical about the prospects of a film directed by Antonio Banderas, even more since his wife Melanie Griffith was cast in the lead.
Banderas showed very solid direction, good camera work, excellent period props (great vintage cars), and an attention to detail that was impressive for a first time director.Melanie Griffith was the best I can remember her since `Working Girl'.
But as good as she was, the best performance was from young Lucas Black as Peejoe.
It was a good story with an identity crisis, but most people will have an easy time liking this film..
Melanie Griffith stars (why did she EVER do THAT to her lips!?), followed by a talented, young Lucas Black, and a story full of stars in surprisingly small roles.
Melanie's real-life hubby, Antonio Banderas, directed, and this is where it falls down.
"Crazy in Alabama" is about a woman (Griffith) in 1965 who kills her husband, and takes off.