BLOOD RUNS IN COLDWATER
Titles at the end of the fictional Coldwater inform that there is no federal law regulating camps for delinquents, and state law enforcement is lax. When the film begins, macho Brad Lunders (played by B. J. Boudousqué) is arrested and taken to Coldwater, a camp in Colorado (actually filmed in the Ventura County mountains) for delinquent boys run by sadistic ex-Marine Sergeant Frank Reichert (James C. Burns). Upon Brad’s arrival, Reichert lectures that his role is transforming boys into responsible citizens. But the only boys who have been transformed are now guards who are just as sadistic as the commander. At the end of the film, there is a massacre and murder, but anti-spoiler ethics prevent any disclosure of who is killed and by whom. The purpose of the film is to explain why that happened, as the discipline is so severe that filmviewers see graphic descriptions of torture and other fatal and near-fatal indignities. Brad, who is sent to the camp for drug dealing and murdering his sweetheart according to flashbacks and a former buddy who is assigned to the camp, is the most intelligent of the delinquents. During his second year at the camp, from which there is no escape, he figures out a way to beat the system, becoming an orderly with power over the other boys, obtaining a master key, and purloining key documents. Vincent Grashaw, the film’s director and co-screenwriter, has a definite reform in mind during post-screening Q&As, as one of his classmates was sent to such a facility when they were in Granada Hills High, San Fernando Valley. The Political Film Society agrees, nominating Coldwater for best film exposé and best film on human rights of 2014. MH