***SPOILERS***Hard hitting attack of the surge of McCarthyism that went almost unchecked in the early 1950's in the US and ended up destroying thousands of innocent lives, physically and financially, until Senator Joseph McCarthy overreached himself in taking on the US Army in the disastrous, for him, Army/McCarthy Hearings in the spring of 1954. The film "Storm Center" centers around this small New England town where the widowed and beloved Alicia Hull, Bettie Davis, is its library's head Iberian. Mrs. Hull allows this very pro Communist book "The Comunist Dream" in the liberty's bookshelf and that leads to her being fired form her job and almost run out of town on a rail by the local town fathers as well as population.
In her refusing to give into the pressure put on her Mrs. Hull ends up losing all her friends in town and slandered as a Pinko Commie and that lead to little Freddie Slater, Kevin Coughlin, who thought the world of here to turn against her. Even though Mrs. Hull seemed to take all the slings and arrows at her in stride little Freddie soon went over the deep end in not being able to handle what he was brainwashed, by the local townspeople, into thinking that his once good friend Mrs. Hull was made out to be.It was at the dedication of the town library's new children wing that Mrs. Hull did so much to get built that little Freddy finally lost it and went completely bananas when he was ask to be in a photo op with her. By then they die was cast into what was going to happen next with little Freddie going from a book loving young boy to a book burning Nazi type.
***SPOILERS*** Shocking ending to the movie has Freddie going insane and setting the town library on fire with him inside it. By then it was too late to stop the damage that all this red bating started with Freddy setting the library on fire and possibly, it's not quite sure, ending up killing himself. We see in the final moments of the movie all the great books that enlightened mankind being burned to a crisps and the townspeople who in fact, in their mindless actions against Mrs. Hull, initiated this horror watch helplessly as the entire town library went up in flames. And with that the both humanism and all that was good in being an American go up in flames along with it along with it.
In her refusing to give into the pressure put on her Mrs. Hull ends up losing all her friends in town and slandered as a Pinko Commie and that lead to little Freddie Slater, Kevin Coughlin, who thought the world of here to turn against her. Even though Mrs. Hull seemed to take all the slings and arrows at her in stride little Freddie soon went over the deep end in not being able to handle what he was brainwashed, by the local townspeople, into thinking that his once good friend Mrs. Hull was made out to be.It was at the dedication of the town library's new children wing that Mrs. Hull did so much to get built that little Freddy finally lost it and went completely bananas when he was ask to be in a photo op with her. By then they die was cast into what was going to happen next with little Freddie going from a book loving young boy to a book burning Nazi type.
***SPOILERS*** Shocking ending to the movie has Freddie going insane and setting the town library on fire with him inside it. By then it was too late to stop the damage that all this red bating started with Freddy setting the library on fire and possibly, it's not quite sure, ending up killing himself. We see in the final moments of the movie all the great books that enlightened mankind being burned to a crisps and the townspeople who in fact, in their mindless actions against Mrs. Hull, initiated this horror watch helplessly as the entire town library went up in flames. And with that the both humanism and all that was good in being an American go up in flames along with it along with it.