BOOK REVIEW -- "National Nightmare On Six Feet Of Film" By Richard B. Trask
David VP
Know About The Zapruder Film Is In Here
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963859544/sr=8-1/qid=1145310990
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I enjoy reading Richard Trask's books pertaining to the John F. Kennedy
assassination; and this one, published in late October 2005, is
certainly no exception. It's very informative and definitely a worthy
addition to anyone's collection of written materials surrounding the
shocking murder of President John Kennedy in November of 1963.
"National Nightmare On Six Feet Of Film: Mr. Zapruder's Home Movie And
The Murder Of President Kennedy" is a softcover volume containing 392
pages packed with just about every conceivable piece of information
revolving around the infamous 26-second color motion-picture film taken
by Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder on November 22, 1963,
which is a film which shows, in all its morbid detail, the
assassination of an American President in broad daylight on a city
street in Dallas, Texas.
Mr. Trask details the full history of the film and provides a good deal
of background and biographical information on Mr. Zapruder, an ordinary
Dallas businessman, born in Russia, who, by pure happenstance and
coincidence, turned out to be the amateur filmmaker whose name will
forever be associated with the death of JFK.
But, if it weren't for the prodding of his secretary, Lillian Rogers
(who encouraged Zapruder to go back home and retrieve his 8mm
Bell-&-Howell movie camera shortly before the President's motorcade
arrived in Dealey Plaza), that brief and awful 26 seconds in history
would probably have never been captured through Mr. Zapruder's lens.
Like Richard Trask's other books on the JFK assassination which focus
attention on the photographic aspect of the tragedy, the text of
"National Nightmare" is ever-readable, easily-understood, and
refreshingly-non-biased when it comes to taking a "Conspiracy vs. No
Conspiracy" position by the author. Mr. Trask lays out the facts and
leaves it at that.
This book's endnotes/footnotes are all positioned at the back of the
book in one separate section, so as to not clutter up the main text of
the volume. (So keeping two bookmarks handy is recommended, because a
lot of interesting info can be gleaned from some of these endnotes
too.)
One big surprise to this writer when perusing this book was seeing a
COLOR version of the Robert Croft photograph printed on Page 67 (within
a 16-page spread of mostly all-color photos and Zapruder Film frames).
I had never seen the Croft picture in color previously. And it's an
excellent-quality print of that famous amateur photo that I found in
this volume, too. The picture is needle-sharp and the color is
virtually perfect.
The Croft photo depicts the President's limousine on Elm Street, just
after the car has made its sharp left turn from Houston Street in front
of the Texas School Book Depository. It was taken at a point equivalent
to Zapruder frame #161 (per this book's text and captions), which is
just about the time the first gunshot was being fired in Dealey Plaza.
Other highly-recommended publications authored by Richard B. Trask
(centering on the photography of President Kennedy's assassination)
..... "Pictures Of The Pain" (1994) and "That Day In Dallas" (1998).
The latter is a condensed version of the former, focusing attention on
just three of the photographers who took pictures in Dallas on the day
JFK was killed (Cecil Stoughton, James Altgens, and Jim Murray).*
* = Although condensed into a smaller number of pages than that of its
predecessor "POTP", "That Day In Dallas" does contain "revised and
enlarged" material throughout its limited number of chapters. And the
specific photographs represented within that volume are unrivaled in
their clarity and quality of physical presentation, in this writer's
personal opinion.
I truly enjoyed both of those books, and was very glad to see "That Day
In Dallas" come out a few years after "POTP", because "That Day"
provides a larger-print format for many excellent-quality
assassination-related photographs, including several pictures you're
not likely to see in any other book on the subject.
As a companion piece to "National Nightmare", I would also recommend
highly the MPI Home Video DVD "Image Of An Assassination: A New Look At
The Zapruder Film" (released in the summer of 1998), which contains
four "digital" versions of the entire 26-second Zapruder Film in
various formats, including "zoomed-in" variants and a previously-unseen
"Widescreen" version of the movie, which includes the imagery between
the "sprocket holes" from Mr. Zapruder's "camera original" film.
That DVD also contains some valuable and collectible "bonus" video
programming, including interviews with Zapruder associates, as well as
the March 1975 "Good Night America" program (hosted by Geraldo Rivera),
during which U.S. audiences first saw the horrifying images of Mr.
Zapruder's movie. The DVD also has a crystal-clear video copy of the
Live interview that Abraham Zapruder gave on WFAA-TV just hours after
he had filmed the assassination.
Many of the above-mentioned items from that "Image Of An Assassination"
DVD are also referenced by Mr. Trask throughout the well-written pages
of "National Nightmare".
------------------------------------
In "National Nightmare On Six Feet Of Film", Richard Trask has
admirably filled in yet another in a seemingly-never-ending series of
pieces of subject matter that comprise the wide and varied fabric that
form the mosaic of literature covering the topic of the John F. Kennedy
assassination.
Nowhere can be found a more detailed and fact-based history of Abraham
Zapruder's historic film than that which resides within these 392
pages.
David Von Pein
January 2006