Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Harry's War available exclusively from LFB

If you haven't seen the film Harry's War you don't know what you are missing. You will enjoy this film -- unless you work for the Internal Revenue Department and make your living taking what other people have earned. This film has a first class cast including Edward Herrmann, Geraldine Page, David Ogden Stiers and Karen Grassel. And it has a great plot.

Herrmann plays a postal worker who is friends with the elderly, batty "Aunt" Beverly. Beverly is bonkers but harmless and she does her best to help people by giving them things they need from her massive junk yard -- though she prefers to think of the items as antiques. But an IRS agent, played by Stiers, decides that Beverly is a ripe target for extorting more taxes. And he sends her a tax bill well beyond anything reasonable in the hopes of forcing her to cave in and negotiate with the IRS in regards to how much of her property they may steal. 

Beverly turns to Herrmann's character, Harry Johnson, for help. But once the IRS knows he's involved with Beverly they freeze his bank account as well and start coming down on him. Harry doesn't understand any of this. He's sure that it has to be a mistake and that the IRS will understand once he explains it to them. But the IRS merely escalates their harassment leading to tragic circumstances that force Harry to "declare war on the IRS". 

Rarely do you get a film that discusses things like "constitutional government" and the abuses of the IRS. The film has moments that are funny, touching or infuriating. The film was released in 1981, and from what I understand, never saw the inside of a theater, in spite of a well known cast of actors. It did the rounds in video and eventually got transferred to DVD. But the company that owned the rights went out of business in the last few years. This made it impossible to find copies of the film --- even used copies were selling at a premium -- if you could find them.

Laissez Faire Books started doing some sleuth work and tracked down a company that bought out the inventory of Thomson Productions, who was distributing the film. It was discovered that there were some DVDs still in storage and Laissez Faire purchased the entire lot. That means, that as of now, LFB is the exclusive source for new copies of Harry's War. And we are making them available at the previous list price of $19.95 plus shipping. You can order this video by calling us at 1-800-326-0996. Once these copies are gone the film will be out of print unless we can persuade the new rights holders to do another run of it. We'll certainly try, but whether they do nor depends in large measure on whether they can be convinced there is still a market for this film. In spite of the age the films still holds together well. And, if anything, the message of the film about limited, constitutional government is actually more relevant than ever.

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