Black River Falls
I haven't seen the movie, but I heard it was good. I am from the town of Tomah Wisconsin, which is about 15 minutes away from Black River Falls. I thought that was kinda cool.
shareWhile the summary says all of this happened in Black River Falls, it actually is a procession of ghastly events from all over Wisconsin, from Rhinelander in the far north to near the Illinois border. The implications of collective craziness depend on the illusion that everything happened in or near BRF. The filmmakers probably focused on BRF because it's small and had a diphtheria outbreak during the time period in question, the 1890s. Once the mythology of one small town going crazy evaporates, all we're left with is the sad story of duped, exhausted and depressed immigrants.
Bottom line: if you expect to learn about collective insanity in a small town, you'll feel ripped off. If you enjoy the macabre parade of death accounts, you'll lap it up.
Yes I agree, this film does nothing more than take all the chronicled events that made the newspaper over the course of a decade and present them as some aberration. When you consider that these types of things are just as likely to occur anywhere and given that they were even garnered from much farther away than BRF proper its not so shocking or unlikely.
I, like the poster above mentioned, did indeed feel ripped off. There was no case of geographical madness and really there was not much of a narrative to the film either, in other words theres no point. So some guy went through the news archives of BRF culled all of the sordid tales and crimes stories and pawns them off as something extraordinary.
And although the documentary is quite well produced its without merit.
There is NO Gene for the Human Spirit.