It's 1965 Alabama. Peejoe (Lucas Black) is 13 living a simple life until his eccentric aunt Lucille (Melanie Griffith) kills her abusive husband. She cuts off his head and takes it with her to Hollywood. Her brother Dove (David Morse) and wife Earlene (Cathy Moriarty) run the funeral home. They take in Peejoe and his brother. It's the time of the Civil Rights movement. Local black youth Taylor Jackson gets kicked out of the white public swimming pool and returns with a group of black youths for a peaceful sit-in. During a confrontation, Sheriff John Doggett (Meat Loaf) kills Taylor. Peejoe is the only witness.

This movie is oddly split in two with the two stories. I don't know the reason unless it's in the book. Melanie Griffith tries to be quirky but it wears down by the time she gets to Hollywood. The tone gets so far away from the more serious Alabama side that it becomes untethered. The Alabama side is deadly serious but Antonio Banderas may be a little loose with the directing. I would rather follow either one side or the other but following both is distracting.

In 1960s Alabama, corrupt sheriff Meat Loaf kills a Black boy by accident, and no one says boo. Meanwhile, Melanie Griffith cuts off her husband's head with a carving knife and goes off to appear on BEWITCHED before she winds up on trial before Rod Steiger.

I like to think that this is a pro-civil rights movie, showing how absurd attitudes were in Alabama, and how they had to change. You can make that case, I suppose, and director Antonio Banderas' feature directorial feature won a couple of awards. So did his wife, Miss Griffith, for her work here. She walked away with a Razzie.

Given that Mark Childress wrote the novel it was based on as well as the screenplay, it should be consistent in the subtext. I suppose the conclusion is that Alabama is no place to live for sane people. I mean in the 1960s, of course.

If the writers had just stuck with the comedy instead of -- once again - laying down their heavy-handed Leftist cultural agenda - this would have been a very entertaining and fun film.

Certainly the "voice" of the head in the basket (you have to see this to know what I mean) was funny. With surround sound, it was particularly effective. All of sudden, you hear a voice come out of one of your rear speakers and it's this head coming from inside a box! It's funny, believe me.

So were other parts but then the film turns into another typical preaching about racism in the South and then gives - courtesy of Fannie Flagg playing a waitress - an anti-religious cheap shot or two. "Religious" people are usually referred to in film as "fanatics," as Flagg says here. People who espouse Left Wing causes, from the environment to abortion to PETA, are never called fanatics. I wonder why that is? Too bad the bias had to enter because it was a fun film to that point with Melanie Griffith, Lucas Black and David Morse all doing a fine job.