- Source: Bless the Beasts and Children (film)
Bless the Beasts and Children is a 1971 film adaptation of the eponymous novel written by Glendon Swarthout. It was directed by Stanley Kramer and stars Bill Mumy and Barry Robins.
Plot
Six teenaged boys, each a misfit in one way or another, are ostracized by the other boys at a summer camp but form a bond among themselves. After seeing a herd of bison selected for culling by local hunters, they resolve to sneak away from the camp in the middle of the night and set the penned bison free.
The film is presented partially out of sequence; the primary narrative of freeing the bison is interspersed with flashback scenes showing the boys' troubled lives.
Cast
Bill Mumy as Lawrence Teft III
Barry Robins as John Cotton
Miles Chapin as Sammy Shecker
Darel Glaser as Gerald Goodenow
Bob Kramer as Lally 1
Marc Vahanian as Lally 2
Jesse White as Shecker's Father
Ken Swofford as Wheaties
Elaine Devry as Cotton's Mother
David Ketchum as Camp Director (credited as Dave Ketchum)
Bruce Glover as Hustler
Wayne Sutherlin as Hustler
Vanessa Brown as Goodenow's Mother
William Bramley as Goodenow's Stepfather
Production and reception
A bidding war broke out over the film rights, which Stanley Kramer eventually won. Kramer negotiated with Columbia Pictures for the right to produce and direct the film, which made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in August 1971, as the United States's entry in the international competition. Kramer later commented on Soviet reception of the film, stating that they "viewed [the film] as a preachment against Kent State and My Lai," when he had envisioned more of a statement about the "gun cult" in America and how "easy availability of weapons contributes to violence."
= Awards and nominations
=Soundtrack and score
The music for the film was composed by Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin Jr. Their score included an instrumental selection titled "Cotton's Dream", which was later rescored to become the theme song of the soap opera The Young and the Restless, produced by Columbia's television division, now Sony Pictures Television. In late July or early August 1976, when ABC's sports summary program Wide World of Sports produced a montage of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci's routines during the 1976 Summer Olympics and used "Cotton's Dream" as the background music, the song became more popular; it was subsequently released in a re-edited and lengthened form as "Nadia's Theme", the title under which it became best known. (Comăneci herself never performed her floor exercises using this piece of music, however.) De Vorzon and Botkin Jr. also wrote lyrics for "Cotton's Dream", but no vocal version of it was known to have charted as of August 2017. The film's soundtrack also contains its theme song, performed by The Carpenters. The theme was released as the B side of The Carpenters' single "Superstar", which reached #2 on Billboard's Hot 100 and #3 in Canada.
See also
List of American films of 1971
References
External links
Bless the Beasts & Children at IMDb
Bless the Beasts & Children at the TCM Movie Database
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- The Carpenters
- Daftar lagu rock instrumental
- Bless the Beasts and Children (film)
- Bless the Beasts and Children (song)
- Bless the Beasts and Children
- Bless the Beasts and Children (soundtrack)
- Bless the Beasts and Children (novel)
- Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
- Barry Robins
- Barry De Vorzon
- Bruce Glover
- A Song for You (The Carpenters album)