Wisconsin Death Trip (James Marsh, US/UK 1999)

Tartan's UK dvd release of Wisconsin Death Trip.
The image on the cover is from one of the recreated
scenes, not an actual photo – although there
are plenty of those as well.

I was part of a film review/film collector "scene" on YouTube 10-15 years ago. A scene where we all (kind of) knew each other and made review videos about horror films and new dvd's (yes, this was before BD's and 4K). And I remember watching this (see below) 5 minute review by "Tattooed Doorman" back in 2013:

Below: Tattooed Doorman's YouTube review (2013):

Now, 13 years later, I have finally tracked down and watched the film: A curious documentary style film entitled WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP. Back in the early 1970s an author called Michael Lesy came across a stack of old newspapers from the 1890s from a place in Wisconsin called Black Water Falls. And upon reading a few bits and pieces he discovered that a lot of weird and tragic shit had happened in the area back in the day. He wrote a book called Wisconsin Death Trip about it. And in 1999 a British film director, James Marsh, used the book for his film of the same title. The film did get a few awards, but I reckon it probably came and went and is basically forgotten by now. Hell, it was even forgotten by horror movie fans by 2013.

Basically, this (black & white) film describes something like 20-30 news stories from said local newspaper (1890-1900). Times were hard and there's reports of people who froze to death as they had no food, nowhere to go, some of them didn't even have shoes. A lot of these people were immigrants from Germany and Norway. A lot of stories of men killing women (their wives, girlfriends, women they admired, women who were kind to them, women they didn't want to survive them, etc etc). A story about two young boys who shot and killed a farmer so they could live on his farm. Women who killed their kids. Men who celebrated having kids by getting drunk and then killing their kids. And we also get the story about the ... "window smasher"! A women who went in and out of insane asylums and jails, and every time she got out she began to smash windows again. She was otherwise normal and she didn't know how come she had an urge to smash every window in town. She was last seen in 1925. 

The film is full of real still photos from back then, and the whole thing is narrated by Ian Holm.
The film is pretty interesting and certainly quite creepy, but the many stories make it more of an "interesting" watch than an actual good movie in the common sense of the word. I liked it enough to want to watch it again at some stage (and I'm aware that I might like it better the second time around – but then again maybe not, who knows).

In his review from 2013 Tattooed Doorman reckons some of the stories probably aren't real. I disagree. I don't think there's any grounds for this notion. It was a different world back then, life was cheap, and to me nothing of what is told seems far fetched to me.

As far as I can tell the film was only release on dvd twice; in the UK (Tartan) and US (check info from dvdmaniacs down below), and it never made it to Blu-ray. Both of the dvd's have a commentary track by the director and the cinematographer. And both the film and commentary track are now on YouTube. Unfortunately, I can't find the "Making of" feature anywhere online. For some reason the film has a Danish connection; the cinematographer, Eigil Bryld, is a Dane and the director lives in Copenhagen. 

Despite my hesitation I do find this is an Interesting film. Fully recommended (Tattooed Doorman recommended the film highly and mentioned it was his favourite doco).

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TATTOOED DOORMAN was a reviewer who originally never showed his face in videos as he was an actual doorman in the UK and from memory he wanted to keep out of trouble from being a YouTube "celeb". Later he did show his face and reveal his identity, though - maybe he got a new job - but the old masked videos were definitely cooler imo. Unfortunately, his personal video reviews are long gone as he decided to delete everything from his channel years ago. This review has only survived as it was posted on a different channel (shared by several reviewers) called "Bodybags".

Dvd info from Dvdcompare net:

If you wish to read another more in-depth review of the film here's one on Weird Movies website.

The full film on YouTube:

The commentary track on YouTube:

PS: You can also find the film in a slightly better PQ on some Russian site, but I'm not linking to that.