Vernon, Florida (1982)
Errol Morris Films

Description

"Vernon, Florida" is an odd-ball survey of the inhabitants of a remote swamp-town in the Florida panhandle. Henry Shipes, Albert Bitterling, Roscoe Collins and others discuss turkey-hunting, gator-grunting and the meaning of life. This second effort by Errol Morris, originally titled "Nub City," was about the inhabitants of a small Florida town who lop off their limbs for insurance money ("They literally became a fraction of themselves to become whole financially," Morris commented.) but had to be retooled when his subjects threatened to murder him. Forced to come up with a new concept Morris created "Vernon, Florida" (1981) about the eccentric residents of a Southern swamp town.

Tags

1970s, 1980s, Florida

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Old School Reviews | John Nesbit

Vernon Florida is well worth tracking down, and I'd certainly rather watch Morris' film than visit the actual place
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

The ordinary denizens of a small Southern town become natural subjects for filmmaker Errol Morris in Vernon, Florida, a hypnotically bizarre character study. Based on the evidence of the film, this small humid town in the panhandle is home to a disproportionately high percentage of oddballs.
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8.3 digitallyobsessed.com | Jon Danziger

Nobody hunts up eccentrics quite like Errol Morris, and he hit the mother lode when he went to the Florida panhandle in the early 1980s, resulting in this strange and sort of wonderful documentary.
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8.0 filmcritic.com | Annette Cardwell

It may seem at first that Morris is poking fun at these swamp-town yokels, but – after spending enough time with these eccentrics – you too begin to understand that his fixation on these people is a genuine fascination.
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8.0 allmovie | Dan Friedman

Vernon, Florida is one of the rare documentaries that gets funnier every time it's seen. Errol Morris simply invades a small town in the Florida Panhandle, turns on his camera, and lets things go from there.
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8.0 New York Times | Janet Maslin

Mr. Morris has a ssembled interviews with the foremost eccentrics in this very odd town.
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6.7 Time Out

While less sharply focused than the pet cemetery film, this is equally delightful in its loving - but detached - portrait of the more eccentric inhabitants of small-town America, in this case the backwater community of the title.
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