The Amish Cook from Oasis Newsfeatures

Well, we have real-life stupidity going on in Iowa with Mitchell County officials badgering Mennonites over steel wheels.  And, now, we have Hollywood stupidity occuring centering on Iowa.  Look, in fairness, I haven't seen the movie...maybe it's the most artful indie film ever produced.  But it seems juvenile.  I'm a tough audience for films anyway.  Take a look at this depiction of a recently ex-communicated Amish family.

One of our site visitors alerted me to this film and she really said it best in an email to me:

Have you ever really noticed the number of horror films that have used the Amish as their bad guys?  Check out "Deadly Blessing".  "Supernatural tale / murder mystery set in the country in which widow Martha Schmidt (Maren Jensen) and her two friends (Sharon Stone, Susan Buckner) are repeatedly frightened by an unknown assailant, while at the same time being intimidated by a group known as Hittites (referred to as making the Amish look like swingers), led by Isaiah Schmidt (Ernest Borgnine), who is the father of Martha's late husband."
  There was an episode of Friday the 13th the series about a haunted quilt "The Quilt of Hathor" and a group that were Amish with another name given them.  Also an episode of The X Files with an Amish like group who turned out to be aliens!  Lazy screenwriters.  

Hollywood likes to conveniently pigeon-hole different groups and it does seem like the Amish are just often portrayed as either "crazy" like the above writer argues, or, as I've observd "buffoons."

That is one of the reasons I loved the movie Witness.   Yes, it was Hollywood fictionalization, but, by and large, it was tasteful.....