Racially questionable double feature:
John Ford’s PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND
and
Karl Armstrong’s NINJA VENGEANCE
(bear with me here)
After my recent Lincoln assassination phase (which mostly just consisted of reading Manhunt by James L. Swanson) I found out about this PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND movie. It’s about Samuel Mudd, the doctor who treated the leg John Wilkes Booth broke by jumping out of the balcony after shooting Lincoln (fuckin ham). Mudd was convicted as part of the conspiracy but instead of being hung he was sent to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. He tried to escape once, but failed, and had to stay in a dungeon for a while. But when a brutal yellow fever outbreak killed the prison doctor, Mudd agreed to take over and won the approval of 300 soldiers in the fort, who signed a petition for him to be pardoned. Sure enough he was later pardoned by Andrew Johnson. (read the rest of this shit…)
