Big Al's Place: VanBebber Returns to Acting

In A Nutshell

Years after his release from Alcatraz, bedeviled by hallucinations fueled by untreated, late-stage syphilis, Al Capone wanders the overgrown grounds of his Miami Beach estate, ruminating with ghosts. Tomorrow will bring his forty-eighth birthday and one week later he will be dead. Between then and now sprawls an epic life, from the wild streets of turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, to a bloody Saint Valentine’s Day that shocked the world; here is the glamorous ascent and shocking decline of America's true king of crime.

Some History

Jim VanBebber's 2004 feature, The Manson Family, was hailed as, "Crucial," by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone's four-star review. It inspired Roger Ebert to proclaim, "...it has an undeniable power and effect...it exists in a category of one film - this film." The film's successful theatrical release brought further critical acclaim and Manson then went on to thrive on home video, including as the centerpiece of Visions of Hell: The Films of Jim VanBebber, a mid-career retrospective DVD box set released in 2008.

Capone first met VanBebber at Wright State University when both men were enrolled in the Motion Pictures Production program headed up by Academy Award nominated documentary filmmakers Jim Klein and Julia Reichert. When, in junior year, the class was divided into small groups with the purpose of producing a short film, VanBebber, with partners Marcello Games and cinematographer Mike King, decided to shoot a full length feature. That film, 1988's Deadbeat at Dawn went on to earn true cult status, playing to crowds on 42nd Street and on many waning drive-in screens before landing on cable's The Movie Channel where it debuted on Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater, hosted by Joe Bob Briggs, who had singled out Deadbeat in his nationally syndicated four-star review.

With funds derived from the sale of Deadbeat, King, Games and VanBebber began their follow up production, The Manson Family, which brings us full circle

7/20/10

VanBebber Returns to Acting

Our own very Eric VonZipper has finally taken on a brand new acting challenge, and this time it's for a real Savage. Director Mark Savage, the filmmaker behind Sensitive New-Age Killer and 2004's Defenceless: A Blood Symphony

Here's an excerpt from Fangoria.com's recent coverage of VanBebber's latest and maybe even strangest performance yet!

"Currently shooting in LA, THE CLOTH DAGGER “is a psychosexual thriller about a priest who both facilitates perversion and exacts a strange type of vigilante justice through the confessional,” Savage tells Fango. “Jim plays a wandering psychopath with a fondness for creating crime scenes.

These crimes eventually impact specifically on one of the film's main characters, played by Australian actress Kristen Condon. Michael Tierney, who is Lawrence Tierney’s nephew, plays the priest, a man who decides to help others submit to their own demons while attempting to keep his own at bay. He meets a prostitute [Renae Boult] with strangely common goals, and together they facilitate a flood of perversion that threatens to destroy them."