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The Accused

Catalog Number
1760
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Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
Release Year
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VHS | SP | Slipcase
111 mins (NTSC)
N/A | N/A | N/A
N/A | N/A
The Accused (1988)

Additional Information

Additional Information
On April 18th 1987, Sarah Tobias stops for a drink at a bar called The Mill.

The first scream was for help. The second is for justice.


Based on a real-life 1983 incident, The Accused tells the story of Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster), a working-class party girl who likes to live it up with her friends and flirt hard with the guys. After a fight with her boyfriend, she heads to a local bar to cool down -- and after a few drinks, plus some dancing and flirting, she finds herself thrown on top of a pinball machine and gang-raped by a bunch of locals, while others watch and cheer the proceedings. District attorney Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) takes Sarah's case but quickly negotiates a plea bargain in which the attackers' charges are reduced to reckless endangerment. Her reason: defense attorneys could use Sarah's not-so-pretty past to paint her as "asking for it," getting their clients off completely. But a stunned Sarah accuses Murphy of selling her out, and when the lawyer sees how the incident continues to destroy Sarah's life, she decides she must seek true justice. This time, she goes after the crowd of onlookers for "criminal solicitation" -- those who were egging the rapists on. Foster won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance


The Accused is a 1988 American drama film starring Jodie Foster and Kelly McGillis, directed by Jonathan Kaplan and written by Tom Topor.
Loosely based on the real-life gang rape of Cheryl Araujo that occurred at Big Dan's Bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on March 6, 1983, this film was one of the first Hollywood films to deal with rape in a direct manner, and led to other films (including TV films and shows) on the subject.
Jodie Foster, for her portrayal as Sarah Tobias, earned the Academy Award for Best Actress, the film's sole nomination. The Accused also became the first film to win the Best Actress Academy Award without being nominated in any other category since The Three Faces of Eve in 1957, when Joanne Woodward won Best Actress, the film's sole nomination.


The film grossed a total of $32,078,318.[2] The film was a critical success, garnering a 95% fresh rating in review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.[3] Of the two criminal prosecutions in the film, Roger Ebert finds that the lesson of the trial "may be the most important message this movie has to offer...that verbal sexual harassment, whether crudely in a saloon back room or subtly in an everyday situation, is a form of violence - one that leaves no visible marks but can make its victims feel unable to move freely and casually in society. It is a form of imprisonment."[4]
Marjorie Heins, in the 1998 book The V-Chip Debate: Content Filtering from Television to the Internet, stated that educators worried that the film would "receive V ratings and be subject to at least a presumption against curricular use in many public schools."[5]
The film was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival.

Release Date: October: October 14, 1988

Distrib: Paramount


Boxoffice: $32,078,318 2013: $61,971,300

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