Review of Shooting Captured Insurgents

You may remember from my review of the 1896 Edison offering, LONE FISHERMAN, that I found compelling evidence establishing that allegedly fictional offering as film history's first snuff pic. Edison, the guy who filmed Dumbo being electrocuted on purpose--complete with flames shooting out of the chained pachyderm's feet--in order to win the contract for Osing-Osing's death chair, and who hung out with future Nazi enablers such as Henry Ford, always had a nose for the sick, macabre, and the quintessentially American. What could be more red-white-and-blue than marching four poor souls with their wrists tied into a courtyard, making them face the wall, and having some bozo with a drawn sword race around till ordering a quartet of riflemen to put bullets into the backs of heads four feet in from of them? (Edison probably gave Insurgent #2 from the left highest marks for his death flop, what with the leg kick and all). In its day, this short would cause only the richest of taxpayers to puke up their poached eggs over the waste of the price of four bullets (but Ford's buddy Adolph would get much more bang for his killing jar buck a few decades later, thanks to Edison docs such as SHOOTING CAPTURED INSURGENTS).