The Turning (1992) was made and then shelved until a fortuitous thing happened. One of the supporting players became famous. Not only that, but this long-forgotten property contained her only on-screen nudity. The actress is Gillian Anderson, who showed breasts. This was a compelling enough reason to release the film in 1997, five years after it was made, but if not for the fortuitous convergence between the movie's Gillian Anderson  nudity and Gillian's subsequent fame on The X-Files, there would have been no release to vote on.

Raymond J. Barry returns to his home town in rural West Virginia. His drunken trailer trash mother has notified him that she and his philandering coal miner father are divorcing, because daddy has a new girlfriend. This goes against his white supremacist family values, so he resolves to go home and prevent the divorce. His training and experience as a Neo Nazi and KKK member inspires a somewhat unorthodox approach to this matchmaking. His father's new girlfriend, Tess Harper, who nailed her character, was tougher than he thought and equal to the challenge. Gillian played his former girlfriend in a small role, but one that facilitated much of his character development.

The subject, as American History X proved so well, is certainly fodder for compelling cinema, but this project was unable to shake its roots. This film covers some of the same ground as American History X, but owes its origins to a stage play, "Home Fires Burning," which dooms it from the start. I can see that the subject matter and intense but static scenes may have been compelling on a stage, especially in an intimate venue, but nothing about this screenplay was cinematic. A large part of the problem was the dialogue, probably lifted directly from the play, which was simply too large for the screen, and too flowery. Barry's character, by his own admission, was white trash. His supremacist propaganda rants could be explained by indoctrination, but the rest of his dialogue was far too flowery for poor white trash. Other characters suffered from the same stage prose problem.

As an only nude appearance by an A list actress, this earns a C- for those of us interested in screen nudity, otherwise, the same themes have been covered much more effectively elsewhere.

It is finally available on an all-region DVD. Click the picture below for information.