‘Reagan’ beats Kerry

A new film on President Reagan’s victory over communism, seen by some as a boost to President Bush and his anti-terror doctrine, earned more than five times the revenue per screen than a highly touted biopic on Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry.

As WorldNetDaily first reported, “In The Face Of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed,” uses rarely seen footage and Reagan’s own words to make a case for naming the enemy – the tyrannical superpowers of the last 100 years – as “evil” and resolving to defeat rather than appease them.

The film, which places Reagan’s 40-year battle against communism in the context of the current battle with militant Islam, opened on six screens in the Dallas area this past weekend, averaging $9,116 per screen, while George Butler’s Kerry film, “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry,” averaged $1,713 in 163 theaters, according to Box Office Mojo.

The Reagan film will have a wider release in Texas next weekend, followed by a mid-October rollout nationally.

Tomorrow, a VIP screening is scheduled in Washington, D.C. Last Friday, John Thune, challenger to Sen Tom Daschle, D-S.D., hosted packed-house events in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, S.D.

The Reagan film received a 10-minute standing ovation from a full theater at the Liberty Film Festival in Los Angeles over the weekend.

“The response in Dallas and Los Angeles has reinforced our belief that there is a big audience out there for this film,” says producer Tim Watkins. “America remains Reagan Country and resonates with his steadfast message of courage, resolve and moral clarity. We think ‘the Gipper’ would be pleased.”

“In The Face of Evil,” distributed through American Vantage Media’s Non-Fiction Films, is based on Peter Schweizer’s best-seller “Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism.”

Kerry’s ‘Apocalypse Now’

Columnist Frank Rich of the New York Times called the Kerry film the senator’s “Apocalypse Now.”

“What stares you in the face is the anguish and grief of men who put their lives in the line of fire for a government that undertook a pointless war, mismanaged it, kept it going out of hubris and then abandoned it,” Rich wrote in a review. “Watch this and try not to weep.”

“Going Upriver” is loosely based on Douglas Brinkley’s book “Tour of Duty,” the sympathetic account of Kerry’s Vietnam service that triggered the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth” campaign.

The vets group, which disputes much of Kerry’s recounting of his actions during the war in its best-seller “Unfit for Command,” recently changed its name to reflect a new partner, ex-prisoner’s of war who say the senator’s war-crimes accusation was a tool of their communist captors.

A promo for the Kerry film says it “examines the story of John Kerry and the key events that made him a national figure and the man he is today. The film places particular emphasis on his bravery during the Vietnam War and his courageous opposition to the war upon his return.”

Like the Reagan film, the makers of “Going Upriver” see a broader context for their production.

“More than a biography of John Kerry, ‘Going Upriver’ is the story of an American generation that came of age in the tumultuous ’60s and that has now come to national leadership at the beginning of a new century – when issues of war and morality once again hold center stage.”

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Reagan film to challenge ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’