YMMV / Mississippi Burning

• Complete Monster:
  • Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell has long used his position to enable and encourage Ku Klux Klan hate crimes to happen across Jessup County. Pell regularly holds Black men in jail cells until nightfall, then releases them so that the Klan can ambush and brutally assault the men. When the order is passed down from the Grand Dragon to eliminate three young activists promoting equality, Pell takes charge and works with Frank Bailey in murdering the three men and disposing of the bodies. Pell continues to oversee various Klan hate crimes even as the FBI investigates, and he viciously beats his wife to the point of hospitalization when he learns she talked to the FBI.
  • Frank Bailey is the worst of the street-level Klan members in Jessup County, leading his gang in routine assaults on minorities. Bailey is the one who, alongside Pell, pulls the trigger on the trio of young activists, sneering antisemitic and racial slurs as he kills them. Bailey further takes part in an ambush of an entire church of Black people, brutally kicking a small child praying for mercy while his men sexually assault and beat adults around him. In his determination to ensure Black voters' voices are never heard, Bailey firebombs a variety of churches and voting booths to silence them, and even lynches a farmer after setting his home ablaze and nearly burning his wife and children alive.
• Fight Scene Failure: Anderson begins beating Pell in the barber shop. When Pell (played by Brad Dourif, who had a full head of hair) gets tossed over a bench, it is obvious that Dourif's double (who was balding) is in that shot.
• Nightmare Fuel: The film doesn't sugarcoat the vicious racism of the period:
  • The opening, when the pro-Klan sheriffs murder the three civil rights workers while acting like kids at a circus.
  • The frequent attacks on the black community, including homes being straight up bombed.
  • Frank Bailey brutalizing and threatening a young black kid.
  "You've already been told once, nigger! And we're not gonna tell you again. If you go making any more trouble by squawking them boot lips off to any of those Federal men, then we sure as hell are gonna have to put you in the ground, boy. And that's without a pine box. Do you understand ME ?!''
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Eddie is one of the young black children in the community.
  • Merle Dixon, Yondu and Chucky are among the murderous Klansmen.
  • Their leader was Ned Ryerson
  • The Green Goblin is an FBI agent.
  • Jigsaw himself is also an FBI agent.
  • Frankie Faison is the one delivering the eulogy for the black civil rights worker who was murdered.
• Signature Scene: The barber shop confrontation.
• Tear Jerker: The funeral speech sequence. Frankie Faison's more than convincing performance and the melancholy music in the background just make the scene more sad.

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