Plenty of conspiracy films lend themselves well to fiction, but with All The President's Men, its fear lies in its accuracy.
Alan Pakula's finale to the Paranoid Trilogy is an adaptation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's novel of the same name (the Washington Post journalists who first investigated the Watergate scandal), and in many ways, it's actually the trilogy's most terrifying work. That stems from the fact that pretty much all of the film follows the actual history of the Watergate affair, right through to Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.
The film itself is Pakula's finest work, as the director lays bare the machinations of Nixon's 'plumbers' and the threat that loomed over Woodward and Bernstein during their investigation. Also commendable is Hal Holbrook, who plays 'Deep Throat', the FBI informer later revealed to be Mark Felt, who helped the reporters break the case.
All the President's Men is the quintessential conspiracy epic and one that proves that the most effective type of terror is the kind derived from real history.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
