UNCONQUERED on DVD
ATTENTION! This information is neither an endorsement nor an affirmation of the legality of the product described.

About once a month, I get email asking me where someone, usually a teacher, can acquire a copy of this film on DVD or VHS. Eric Austin of Maximum Media (www.rarevideo.ca) contacted me on January 1, 2008, to say his company offers UNCONQUERED on DVD. I was sent a sample containing 4 sections of the movie. It's blurry compared to the crisp quality of today's tv movies and television shows. It's possible that this is a transfer made on a private computer or DVD/VCR from a CBS/FOX commercial videotape (I didn't know there ever was one, but I saw no evidence in the sections I viewed that this DVD was merely a copy of a television broadcast). There are no extras and while the jacket is nice, the menu screen looks homemade, i.e. unofficial. Still, for folks like the educators who are desperate for a copy of this movie to show students, this is better than nothing.

If they could only provide a copy of the 1992 short, HALFWAY HOUSE!
Dermot Mulroney in UNCONQUERED


What a strange feeling it must be. You teach this runt for years. He graces your plays and your honors English class. He dresses up in a little pirate costume to play cello for your production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Then he's off on his own and the next thing you know, your regular issue of Scholastic Scope arrives in the mail and there he is, plastered all over it. Dermot? Is that you? Starring in a tv movie?

UNCONQUERED was originally known as INVICTUS, the poem quoted throughout the film. The true story of anti-segregationist Alabama attorney general Richard Flowers and his persecuted but invincible son is one of Dermot's most woefully underrated and underexposed projects. Even he seldom mentions his role as the determined young man who overcomes various handicaps to shine athletically in honor of his framed and jailed idealistic father.

The Photos



About the time his twin, Brad Pitt, was making ACROSS THE TRACKS, Dermot was making HIS running flick... UNCONQUERED. Ejected from the high school football team (in theory because of his asthmatic history... in reality because his father is anti-segregationalist), Rich Flowers Jr. turns to track instead. His success changes his classmates' attitude towards him. But when their contempt for his father sufaces at the athletic banquet, Richard promises his mother he will never play college football for Alabama. He plays for rival Tennessee instead. In one of the film's most effective anti-racist moments, Coach Bear Bryant assures his racist, all-white team of Alabama players that, in a few short years, if less than half his team is black, they'll know he had a bad year recruiting.


Losers-R-Us. The son of an anti-racist newspaper editor, the son of an anti-segregationist attorney general, and an orphaned girl from the wrong side of the tracks come together when no one else will have anything to do with them. They even attend the Sadie Hawkins dance as a trio. Heads up, Mulroney Curse Watchers. One of them doesn't make it through the film.

UNCONQUERED features two Mulroney recidivists... Frank Whaley will turn up again in CAREER OPPORTUNIES and Tess Harper was in DADDY ("Oh, Bobby! What's the matter!?").


It is unbelievable to me that UNCONQUERED doesn't regularly air on Martin Luther King Day.

I'm Rebecca Webb and I can be reached via e-mail at:
webbrl@morris.umn.edu
Modified December 14, 2005