27-12-2013, 03:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 27-12-2013, 05:22 PM by Tracy Riddle.)
I got the chance to see The Price of Power with English overdubbing (bought a boxed set of public domain Spaghetti Westerns - 44 films for $12) and it was quite good.
The film was released in Italy in 1969 and the writer (Massimo Patrizi) obviously was pretty familiar with the Kennedy assassination. It doesn't look like it was released at all in the US until many years later.
It's about 15 years after the Civil War, and a very Kennedy-like man (and Civil War vet) is President (played by Van Johnson - the President is never actually named as far as I can recall). He wants to heal the Union, end the de facto slavery of sharecropping and segregation, tax the rich and help working people. He plans a trip to Texas to campaign for his programs. At one point he says, "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."
There is a lot of opposition to the President in Dallas, which is run by businessmen and land-owners. The Vice President is a Texan controlled by these Dallas businessmen because of his corrupt past. The sheriff of Dallas is involved with a couple of the top businessmen in a plot to kill the President as he rides through town in a carriage with his Jackie-look-a-like wife.
A black man is the Oswald character who is framed and later killed for allegedly shooting the President from an upper story window behind him, while the viewer watches two men firing from the front (from a wooden "overpass" as witnesses call it). The President dies, the First Lady goes back to Washington with the body, and his top aide gets involved in a complicated cover-up. He seems to be on both sides at once, mostly trying to protect the new President from being controlled by the Dallas businessmen, and to keep a new Civil War from starting.
Finally evidence comes out that two doctors examined the President's body (the first one said he was shot from the front, the second lied and said the shot came from the rear). Witnesses recall seeing the shooters on the "overpass." The cover-up falls apart and there's lot of gun fighting and all the plotters get killed.
There was a saloon that was supposed to be like the Carousel Club, and a stripper is a character in the film, but I'm not sure if the owner was one of the plotters. There were a lot of characters in the film; it was hard to keep some of them straight.
Edit: I forgot to mention there's also a "Wanted for Treason" poster with the President's face that gets circulated around the town.
The film was released in Italy in 1969 and the writer (Massimo Patrizi) obviously was pretty familiar with the Kennedy assassination. It doesn't look like it was released at all in the US until many years later.
It's about 15 years after the Civil War, and a very Kennedy-like man (and Civil War vet) is President (played by Van Johnson - the President is never actually named as far as I can recall). He wants to heal the Union, end the de facto slavery of sharecropping and segregation, tax the rich and help working people. He plans a trip to Texas to campaign for his programs. At one point he says, "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."
There is a lot of opposition to the President in Dallas, which is run by businessmen and land-owners. The Vice President is a Texan controlled by these Dallas businessmen because of his corrupt past. The sheriff of Dallas is involved with a couple of the top businessmen in a plot to kill the President as he rides through town in a carriage with his Jackie-look-a-like wife.
A black man is the Oswald character who is framed and later killed for allegedly shooting the President from an upper story window behind him, while the viewer watches two men firing from the front (from a wooden "overpass" as witnesses call it). The President dies, the First Lady goes back to Washington with the body, and his top aide gets involved in a complicated cover-up. He seems to be on both sides at once, mostly trying to protect the new President from being controlled by the Dallas businessmen, and to keep a new Civil War from starting.
Finally evidence comes out that two doctors examined the President's body (the first one said he was shot from the front, the second lied and said the shot came from the rear). Witnesses recall seeing the shooters on the "overpass." The cover-up falls apart and there's lot of gun fighting and all the plotters get killed.
There was a saloon that was supposed to be like the Carousel Club, and a stripper is a character in the film, but I'm not sure if the owner was one of the plotters. There were a lot of characters in the film; it was hard to keep some of them straight.
Edit: I forgot to mention there's also a "Wanted for Treason" poster with the President's face that gets circulated around the town.