When people talk about Southern Gothic literature, they are usually referring to writers such as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Erskine Caldwell and Carson McCullers and novels featuring marginalized characters suffering from loneliness, madness or despair in distinct Southern settings. A typical example would be McCullers’s second novel Reflections in a Golden Eye, published in 1941, which is set on a Southern army base in the 1930s and depicts various characters who identify with voyeurism, self-mutilation, repressed gay desire and murder. On the other hand, her 1951 novella The Ballad of the Sad Café has some Southern Gothic elements but is actually much closer to a bizarre folk tale handed down from some primeval culture with its grand passions and Greek tragedy stylings. It would seem the most unlikely candidate among her novels for a film adaptation and yet it was turned into a movie in 1991 by actor and celebrated author Simon Callow. Critics were divided over its success as cinema but for those willing to suspend their disbelief over the larger-than-life characters and storyline, The Ballad of the Sad Café is an admirable attempt to capture the heart and soul of McCullers’s original work. Callow finds a nice balance between theatricality and naturalism, the grotesque and the poignant, all supported in part by strong performances, especially Vanessa Redgrave in the central role.