Go Down Death
About Go Down Death
Big Jim Bottoms, played by Spencer Williams, runs a juke joint. A new preacher, played by Samuel H. James, draws the customers to church. Jim has the preacher photographed with three women. Aunt Caroline, Jim's adoptive mother, played by Myra D. Hemmings, tries to stop him. In the struggle she is struck, collapses, and dies. Jim says a burglar did it. After her funeral he sees himself in Hell. His body is later found in a canyon, and the photographs are gone.
Cast & crew
More about Go Down Death
Spencer Williams directed and plays Big Jim. Alfred N. Sack produced it, and Sack Amusement Enterprises distributed it. The title comes from a poem by James Weldon Johnson. Publicity also called it Go Down, Death! The Story of Jesus and the Devil. It is the third of Williams's religious films for Sack, after The Blood of Jesus (1941) and the lost Brother Martin: Servant of Jesus (1942). Wikipedia times it at 53 minutes.
Themes
Preservation
Prints survive. One is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- The Hell scenes use shots from the 1911 Italian film L'Inferno.
- Maryland, New York, and Ohio censors asked for cuts in that sequence, including a bare breast, a woman lifting her dress, and a devil chewing a man.
- Eddye L. Houston, Amos Droughan, and Walter McMillion are also billed.
Scenes
- Aunt Caroline dies in the fight over the photographs.
- Jim's Hell is cut together from L'Inferno.
Influenced by
- James Weldon Johnson's poem Go Down, Death
- L'Inferno (1911)
Also available
- Internet Archive (go_down_death)
