Nominated for a Best Documenary Feature Oscar, this is a brief and unforgettable portrait of neo-Nazis in 1970s America.
They look perfectly normal. Blond hair, blue eyes, and classic Germanic-Aryan features are decidely absent in most of these bland, pudgy white men and women, who wouldn't look out of place in the bowling alley or Rotary Club--except for their swastika armbands, revered portraits of Adolph Hitler,
and constant outpouring of verbal venom again blacks, Jews, communists and the "raceless mongrels" taking over. A few of the more coherent National Socialist White People's Party members are profiled in detail. San Francisco-based Allen Vincent, lonely son of a widowed Hollywood stage technician,
was in trouble with the law all his life. Among the Nazis, he seems to have found a degree of stability with fellow white racists he has never known before. Frederick L. Surbur is a career soldier, steeped in Nazi ideology despite his continuing rank as sergeant in the United States Army. He does
his best to indoctrinate his blond-haired little son, making the boy wear the uniform and march proudly. But to the cameras, the kid confides he doesn't plan join the Nazis and is only going through the motions to please dad. The boy also resents blacks for deliberately swarming over from Africa
to take American jobs. Ultimately, the Nazis head for San Francisco State University for a supposedly-open political debate. Briefed on what to expect from the "Reds," they stand impassive as students of all races scream abuse.
The film ends with a New York Times newspaper quote dismissing the newborn American Nazi movement as a joke--in 1923. THE CALIFORNIA REICH evidently intends to sound the alarm over organized retro-fascist groups, and there's a shuddery moment in which a well-spoken gun-range owner says that while
his comrades freely admit to being Nazis, when open revolution breaks out the worst atrocities will be committed by "sneaky Nazis"--disconnected, disenfranchised whites with no party affiliations, just anger over affirmative action. But just as vivid in THE CALIFORNIA REICH is an utterable
sadness, at the failure of these misfits to find a place in a democratic society, and especially how hatred and ignorance passes on to the children, like Surbur's brown-shirted son, or the even younger boy who tells his proud parents that he'd like to be a policeman so he can "kill niggers" (they
gently correct him; just put the niggers and Jews in prison). While some of these aspiring stormtroopers are just idiots and bullies, Allen Vincent evokes pathos. When asked to describe his ideal world, the onetime teen runaway wants not a reborn Austro-Hungarian Empire but rather a place "in
which no loneliness is possible." One senses this outcast ex-con would just has easily joined the B'nai B'rith had it been there to offer fellowship and purpose. Historical background details are omitted, placing the focus entirely on the warped racist mindset and cracked psychology, in their own
words. Filmmaker Walter F. Parkes later become a prominent Hollywood writer/producer, while these stodgy American Nazis had to wait for the British "skinhead" movement (with its emphasis on beer, rowdiness, and rock 'n' roll) to swell their ranks, more so than lonely Allen Vincent and his
tape-recorded manifestos. (Profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
