Butterbox Babies

Solid acting on an interesting subject, with strong humanistic overtones. Not a box-office winner, but well-worth watching. Also, a good period piece - an excellent depiction of life in a conservative area of 70 years ago.

In 1938, in Nova Scotia, Canada, close to Halifax, the greed midwife Lila Young (Susan Clark) entitles herself as obstetrician and receives single mothers for a discrete childbirth and further adoption of the baby. Many years later, it was revealed that she charged the women for the birth and charge the candidates high amounts for the adoption. The babies not adopted were put together with the sick ones to die and buried in wooden boxes of butter in a clandestine cemetery. These events really happened in a location close to Halifax, in Canada, in a period along the Second World War. All the cast has an outstanding performance, but Susan Clark is perfect. The community has accepted her job, and the story does not show Lila only as a greed woman, but also as a deranged woman believing in the importance of her assignment and using the name of God to justify it. Although being excellent, this disturbing story is not indicated for all audiences. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): `Uma Cova Para os Anjos' (`A Grave For the Angels')

This was a good drama with some above average acting for a TV movie in Canada. The story kept us interested. It hasn't aged superbly well but neither have other TV movies from the same era. Nicely done.

Interesting Canadian b-movie about the true story of a woman and her husband, in the 1930's in Nova Scotia, in charge of a cheap country house where she helps young unmarried teenage girls to have their babies. Although she says she's working in the name of god, the woman is in fact a cruel butcher making money selling the babies to rich American families. This is well done with a low budget. Acting is just good, but the subject is interesting.

This is one of those movies that leaves you with a sick feeling because the story, twisted as it is, is not fiction but rather a true story. I find it hard to rate movies like this, because it is very hard to enjoy them when a person is sitting there wondering how the hell anyone could do such despicable things. It's not the Holocaust or anything, but it's still pretty darned disturbing. How anyone could have treated innocent babies like this is beyond my understanding, especially when the perpetrator of the insidious deeds keeps using God as justification.

Although this movie did leave me disturbed, I thought it was well done as a whole, though it perhaps could have used not to have been crammed into a two-hour TV movie, because there are parts of the story that could have used more elaboration, like Iris' experiences; there are so many people coming and going in the film, but very few of them are followed at all. I give it an 8; it's not Schindler's List, but it is certainly far better than most of the crap that gets made as a TV movie. Worth watching, as long as you're prepared for the subject matter.