To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
A masterpiece of cinema that chronicles a summer for children Scout and Jem Finch as their father Atticus defends a black man on trial for the rape of a white woman.
It's the study of a Scout's coming of age, not in the traditional sense but in that of growing up quickly and the loss of innocence with so much going on around her. Mary Badham as the young girl gives probably the best performance i can recall by a child actor. Even better than Giovanni Frezza in Fulci's House by the Cemetery.
Yet it's also a brilliant treaty on small town prejudice and racism, of good and evil and how one man - Atticus, superbly played by Gregory Peck - can somehow stand tall and do what is right against all the odds.
You don't need to have read the acclaimed novel by Harper Lee to see how much of an influence To Kill a Mockingbird has been on the career and probably life of Stephen King.
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