Review of Titicut Follies (1967) by Fernando H — 20 Sep 2015

Operating as a horrifying indictment of the ways in which the US government treated people suffering from mental illnesses back in the 60s, Titicut depicts several atrocities, including guards forcing the residents to perform for their amusement, patients being herded like cattle and set out to wander around the grounds, the denying of treatments that are expensive, doctors force-feeding those who refuse to do so themselves, guards taunting the people they're supposed to be protecting as they wander around without clothes, and the imprisonment of those clearly suffering from mild forms of mental illness who have no business being there.

This brutal honesty places Titicut Follies among that special class of documentaries that unearth painful truths about the immense failings of our moral and governmental systems, this example made even more unnerving given the fact that the government tried for decades to destroy any evidence that would prove this film ever existed.