The Accused (1988)

In honor of International Woman's Day I pulled out an old one I hadn't seen since it first landed on home video.

The Accused is an acclaimed movie about a devastating topic. Jodie Foster plays a woman who is gang raped on a pinball machine in a redneck bar. It's based on a real life case that set legal precedents. In 1983 Cheryl Ann Araujo was violated by four men. Not only were the actual assailants prosecuted, other men who cheered on the atrocity were as well.

Jodie earned an Oscar in a searing, atypical performance. She plays a trailer park waitress with course language and course habits. If you've ever spent time on the other side of the tracks, you've seen the type. A woman (or man for that matter) raised in bad circumstances with few options. Having more than her share of demons, she copes in unhealthy ways: Smoking, drinking to excess, destructive relationships. You may not like her, but she didn't deserve to be brutalized.

Foster's character is demonized by the media, legal defendants, and even her associates. It's a classic example of victim blaming.

Kelly McGillis is the prosecuting attorney who, obviously brought up with cultural advantages, at first treats Foster as a case, and later learns to accept her as a human being.

The Accused is rather brilliantly structured. The movie opens with Foster running out of the bar, screaming for help. Later, in difficult to watch scenes, we see the actual event take place. The rapists are bad enough, but the instigators are almost even worse. Leo Rossi is unforgettable in one of the most despicable roles in history.

I often think directors who came up in low budget exploitation movies end up being some of the best filmmakers. Look at Scorcese, Coppola, Demme, Dante, Bogdanovich. All started out in Roger Corman production teams. As did The Accused director Jonathan Kaplan. Kaplan directed Night Call Nurses and The Student Teachers for Roger. He went on to make drive-in staples like Truck Turner and White Line Fever, before moving on to bigger pictures like the troubled youth classic, Over the Edge.

What is The Accused if not a big, blown up Roger Corman movie? Corman dealt in social issues with his films, even if he did mask them in exploitative clothes. How much different is The Accused from, say, Jackson County Jail, in which Yvette Mimieux is an innocent woman molested in a small town jail cell and forced to fight for her survival?

I don't hear a lot about The Accused these days, but it was all the rage back in the late eighties. It's an important movie, and even more timely in America today, where assault and harassment are still too commonplace. News stories are well and good, but some people (like me) find the truth in great books and movies. It's not always about escaping reality.

Written by Mark Sieber