Stanford Experiment artifact at local film premiere

[Press release from The Nightlight Cinema.]

Dr. David Baker, Professor of Psychology at the University of Akron, will conduct a show-and-tell with an original artifact from the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment prior to the local premiere of the 2015 movie “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” The special screening with Dr. Baker will take place at The Nightlight Cinema (30 North High St., Akron) on August 31, 2015 at 9 p.m.

In the film “The Stanford Prison Experiment” Billy Crudup stars as Stanford University professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who, in 1971, cast 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated jail to examine the source of abusive behavior in the prison system. The results astonished the world, as participants went from middle-class undergrads to drunk-with-power sadists and submissive victims in just a few days. The film was the winner of two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including Best Screenplay, and was created with the close participation of Dr. Zimbardo himself.

The Stanford Prison Experiment (opens July 31st at the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland and the Nightlight Cinema in Akron)

[THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT opens Friday July 31st at the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland and the Nightlight Cinema in Akron.]

Review by Milan Paurich

The first thing you notice in THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT is the butt-ugly early-'70s coiffures and facial hair adorning nearly every cast member. That and the incessant smoking, both of which are a lazy director's shorthand for, "Psst: this is a period movie, folks." For awhile that's pretty much all I noticed. Oh, yeah. And trying to identify the familiar faces underneath all of that mangy hair.

Truth be told, the film's basic set-up--based on a controversial real-life 1971 study conducted by Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo--did little to grab me. Certainly not the ham-fisted way it was playing out courtesy of Tim Talbott's glib, facile script (based on Zimbardo's book, "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil") and Kyle Patrick Alvarez's equally unsubtle direction. To put it in academic terms, STANFORD PRI was flunking out as both psychology and sociology.