Topic: Southern Gothic

Direction Nic Pizzolatto · Cary Joji Fukunaga

Cast Matthew McConaughey · Woody Harrelson · Michelle Monaghan · Michael Potts

Synopsis TV Series (2014). 8 Episodes. Two detectives, Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, lives become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana... True Detective is a new series on HBO that follows the lives of detectives on...

Direction Robert Mulligan

Cast Gregory Peck · Mary Badham · Brock Peters · Phillip Alford

Synopsis The lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), decides to defend a black man (Brock Peters) undeservedly charged with raping a poor white woman. The bigoted townspeople would rather lynch the accused than try him, and they make life hell for the...

Direction William Wyler

Cast Bette Davis · Teresa Wright · Herbert Marshall · Patricia Collinge

Synopsis An ambitious woman takes on her corrupt brothers and honest husband in her drive for wealth. In the deep South at the turn of the 20th century, shrewish Regina Giddens readies her household in anticipation of a dinner to honor...

Direction David Simon · Eric Overmyer · Anthony Hemingway · Ernest R. Dickerson

Cast Wendell Pierce · Steve Zahn · Clarke Peters · Khandi Alexander

Synopsis TV Series (2010-2013). 4 Seasons. 36 Episodes. Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, 'Treme' chronicles the struggles of a diverse group of residents as they rebuild their lives and their city. ‘Treme,' pronounced Truh-may, takes its title from the name of...

Direction Charles Laughton

Cast Robert Mitchum · Billy Chapin · Sally Ann Bruce · Shelley Winters

Synopsis A schizophrenic preacher (Robert Mitchum) - possibly the devil himself - relentlessly hunts two small children (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) across the Depression-era Bible Belt to get at their dead fathers stolen fortune.

Direction Elia Kazan

Cast Vivien Leigh · Marlon Brando · Kim Hunter · Karl Malden

Synopsis After her husband's suicide, Blanche, helpless and disoriented, takes refuge in New Orleans at the home of her young sister Stella, married to the brutish Stanley Kowalski. While trying to start a new life for herself, Blanche begins to frequent...

Direction Richard Brooks

Cast Elizabeth Taylor · Paul Newman · Burl Ives · Jack Carson

Synopsis Based on the play by Tennessee Williams: A party is planned for the 65th birthday of family patriarch 'Big Daddy', but not everyone is in a festive mood. Big Daddy's son Brick, a one-time star athlete, has a drinking problem...

Direction Arthur Penn

Cast Marlon Brando · Robert Redford · Angie Dickinson · Jane Fonda

Synopsis Tense drama unfolds in a small town after a local bad guy escapes prison, causing everyone to fear what will happen when secret lives come to light.

Direction Quentin Tarantino

Cast Jamie Foxx · Christoph Waltz · Leonardo DiCaprio · Kerry Washington

Synopsis With the help of his mentor, a slave-turned-bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. In the American South, two years before The Civil War begins, a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) is set...

Direction Victor Fleming · George Cukor · Sam Wood

Cast Vivien Leigh · Clark Gable · Olivia de Havilland · Leslie Howard

Synopsis When wealthy Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) learns that Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), whom she's secretly in love with, is engaged to Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), she decides to tell him at a party about her feelings for...

Direction Peter Bogdanovich

Cast Timothy Bottoms · Jeff Bridges · Cybill Shepherd · Ben Johnson

Synopsis This coming-of-age tale set in the 50s focuses on best friends Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) and their relationships. Duane is dating the beautiful but fickle Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), a good girl who is looking...

Direction Peter Farrelly

Cast Viggo Mortensen · Mahershala Ali · Iqbal Theba · Linda Cardellini

Synopsis A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South. When Tony Lip (Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr....

Direction Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Cast Elizabeth Taylor · Montgomery Clift · Katharine Hepburn · Albert Dekker

Synopsis In 1937 New Orleans, Dr. John Cukrowicz, working at the state run Lion's View Mental Institution, is experimenting with a radical new treatment for hopeless cases of lunacy: lobotomy. Lion's View is woefully underfunded, but a supposed savior comes forth...

Direction J. Lee Thompson

Cast Gregory Peck · Robert Mitchum · Polly Bergen · Lori Martin

Synopsis Small-town lawyer Sam Bowden's life becomes torturous when Max Cady re-enters his life. Cady went to jail for 8 years after Bowden testified that Cady attacked a young woman. Now that Cady has been released, he begins to terrorize Bowden...

Direction Norman Jewison

Cast Sidney Poitier · Rod Steiger · Warren Oates · Lee Grant

Synopsis When a prominent local businessman is found murdered in the tiny southern town of Sparta, Mississippi, Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) gets picked up at the train station as a potential suspect, having essentially three strikes against him: he’s black, he’s...

Direction Alan Parker

Cast Gene Hackman · Willem Dafoe · Frances McDormand · Brad Dourif

Synopsis In 1964, when three civil-rights workers, two white and one black, mysteriously disappear while driving through Mississippi, two FBI agents, Ward (Willem Dafoe) and Anderson (Gene Hackman), are sent in to investigate. While Ward is young and by the book,...

Direction Marti Noxon · Jean-Marc Vallée

Cast Amy Adams · Patricia Clarkson · Chris Messina · Eliza Scanlen

Synopsis TV Miniseries (2018). 8 Episodes. A reporter confronts the psychological demons from her past when she returns to her hometown to cover a violent murder. Sharp Objects centers on reporter Camille Preaker who, fresh from a brief stay at a...

Direction Tate Taylor

Cast Emma Stone · Viola Davis · Bryce Dallas Howard · Sissy Spacek

Synopsis Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives -- and a small Mississippi town -- upside down when she decides...

Direction John Huston

Cast Richard Burton · Deborah Kerr · Ava Gardner · Sue Lyon

Synopsis When defrocked American minister Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon is expelled from his Virginia church, he travels to Mexico in search of his destiny and sanity. There he becomes a tour guide for a bus load of spinsters and a teenage...

Direction Jacques Tourneur

Cast Joel McCrea · Dean Stockwell · Alan Hale · Ellen Drew

Synopsis Civil War veteran Josiah Grey comes to a small town to be a gospel minister. In time he has a family and many friends, but he also finds friction with a few of his parishioners. A young doctor grates at...