Wise Blood (1979) Online

I finally saw this movie. Had to get it on loan through the inter-library loaning service. I liked it very much. It was pretty faithful to Flannery O'Connor's story. John Houston and the cast deserve accolades for bringing this story, that can be elusive when trying to figure out what is going on, to the screen. And from some of the viewer's comments, I can see how difficult it is to understand. I sent some e-mails of my views to some of the reviewer's of this movie.

Any review of "Wise Blood" must be done in the context of the book. The odd ball and crazy characters we see all have a purpose. The hypocracy of religion is only a tool. Many of us at some point have seen some of the characters; the odd balls, the charlatans. Ned Beatty is magnificent in almost a cameo role for him. There is a tool in writing called "use of the grotesque" and some have called it "Southern grotesque". Referencing that most of the strange characters come from the South. But whether that is true or not, it did provide a source for Flannery O'Connor's books and stories.

It has been written that her stories and books are narrow, because they deal with Christianity and in particular with people in crisis and how these people go about resolving their crisis. But her stories are well-crafted and "full of insight about human weakness".

Hazel Motes crisis was trying to build a church of Christ without Christ and this led him down a path he could not resolve in his mind. Everywhere he turned, his church and ultimately he was rejected. I believe(I use these words because this is my interpretation) Hazel finally realizes that if all his attempts have failed then there is a Jesus. And Hazel being a prophet now must suffer like a prophet. The rest is his own doing his atonement for sinning. There was one small part in the book left out of the movie. When the police go to find Hazel, one of the policemen hits him with his night stick. I think of Christ being stabbed on the cross by a Roman Soldier, when the policeman hits Hazel. Also in the movie there is not enough emphasis on the Landlady's change. When she first starts taking care O hazel after he blinds himself, she is interested in his money(not explained well in the movie). After he leaves her and goes out in the rain storm, she is fearful he will get sick, and when he comes back not realizing he is dead, tells him it is okay. He can stay upstairs or not. He can do what he wants. She has experienced a return to grace. There is a collection of Mary O'Connor's writings and lectures she gave called "Mystery and Manners" edited by her good friend Sally Fitzgerald. There is a lot of material that helps to explain her writing. I wish I could explain more about Flannery O'connor, but I am glad I can read her and glad that John Houston made "Wise Blood" into a movie.

Regards,

Fran Stone

This is not an easy movie to get a handle on, so I'm not surprised reviewers either love it or hate it. Now, I've neither read the O'Connor novel nor lived in the South nor read the Bible since Sunday school. As a result, I have to take the movie as just that, a movie, without benefit of outside comparison.

I get the impression that underneath all the black humor and exaggerated characters, something profound is going on. But exactly what? Perhaps you need that outside reference to penetrate the subtext. Then again, perhaps the profound subtext is illusory, like Hazel's view of Christianity, such that the narrative amounts to little more than artfully eccentric entertainment, courtesy sly old John Huston.

The following are what I hope are helpful interpretations, generally not emphasized by other reviewers, many of whose commentaries were, nonetheless, very helpful to me.

Above all, Hazel has come to hate hypocrisy. His motto appears to be: If you own the Truth, then live it. For Hazel, Truth is the illusory nature of Christian metaphysics, (a disavowal that doesn't necessarily equate with atheism), and by golly he's going to live that truth in his own peculiar way. Thus, the hard-eyed obsessive stare, the refusal of commitment sex (Sabbath) but not commercial sex (an over-priced 4 dollars), and the rather heartless rejection of the pathetically friendless Enoch. In short, like his adversary, the true Christian proselytizer, Hazel is a driven man.

The trouble is that he knows only one way of spreading his truth-- by preaching angrily on street corners. Worse, his gospel is one of pure and insistent negatives (perhaps why atheism has never been popular), for example,"when you're dead, you're dead!" -- not exactly a crowd-pleaser. Nor, for that matter, is he going to allow Preacher Sholes (Ned Beatty) to dilute that negative message with a crowd-pleasing brand of hucksterism. Hazel may be strange, but he is no hypocrite.

Now, it's clear that the broken-down jalopy means more to Hazel than just another hunk of iron. He's always praising it, even as it coughs smoke and bleeds fluids. It's his chariot, and while it might not take him to heaven, it will take him to the next town to spread his Word. Note that he even uses it to slay the pathetic pretender who would take his place on the street corner. Moreover, it's not until Hazel loses that chariot (hilariously) that he takes on the role of the martyred prophet. After all, rejection now means he has no other place he can get to.

For me, the most revealing part of the film is Enoch's (Dan Shor) pathetic efforts at establishing contact with another human being. Huston, of course, doesn't play up the sentiment, but it's there anyway. Also, this may constitute the most damaging perspective on the dominant Christian culture of the movie-- even more damaging than Hazel's centerpiece non-belief. After all, if Jesus' message is unconditional love, why is Enoch alone and abandoned in an empty world of nominal Jesus followers. Nor, for that matter, is Hazel's brand of soulless non-belief any help either.

Then too, just count the number of happy smiles in the film-- practically none, except when the kids are reaching out to the fake human, Gongo the gorilla. Poor Enoch thinks that by donning Gongo's costume, people will finally reach out to him. But there's no such contact in this atomized world of social rejects. In fact, a dominant theme appears to be just that, rejection-- Hazel rejects Jesus, Sabbath, his landlady, Enoch, Preacher Sholes, while even the cop rejects Hazel's jalopy, at the same time, the whole seedy community rejects Enoch. Quite a commentary on an environment where Jesus is advertised on every big rock and sold on every street corner as a friend to the friendless.

Now, I don't know if there is any particular moral to the foregoing, but if there is, I suspect it's not a comforting one. Anyway, the movie is full of colorful characters, offbeat situations, and is never, never predictable. So, like the film or not, I expect that it's one you're not likely to forget.

Black humor has never been done better. But this is not a film for the squeamish. It's going to take some thought. Not a film to be watched while doing the dishes. This is a challenging but rewarding film that borders on being a great work of art. The first time I saw this film I was impressed. Each time I rewatch this movie it becomes more funny in an odd sort of fatalistic way. Each time I rewatch it it becomes more impressive. It's almost impossible to describe the way the bittersweet pathos of the movie collides with the funny, goofy, craziness of the characters. We've seen these people but rarely do we really consider their lives. They're damaged or idiots or inept swindlers or all three. We look at them with small amusement or try to get away from them, but don't give them much thought. I usually don't care much about actors. They are a dime a dozen. This film is different. This is pretty much every actors best role. Brad Dourif shows why he should be way more famous. Amy Wright is spellbinding in as a very strange girl. Dan Shor is hilarious and pathetic at the same time as a lonely moron. Stanton is hysterically funny as an utterly corrupt preacher. Lot's of other unusual and interesting performances including a small but wonderful performance by a sympathetic one armed mechanic, a wise but vicious highway patrolman and a small town hooker enjoying her own downward spiral. In the end all of the characters are doomed, but they are all worth caring for in spite of and because of their own strange but very human weaknesses. In addition it's beautifully filmed and has a heart rendering score that fits it perfectly. Reputed to be Hustons own personal favorite film, it bombed at the box office. Highly recommended.

John Huston used to describe the story as that of a young man who was disappointed by Jesus.

This is one of his least accessible works,not for the mainstream,and we can put it near "reflections in a golden eye" (1967),"under the volcano" (1984) and his final apotheosis "the dead" (1987)

"Wise blood" is a the story of a long suicide.It's a hell of a thing to tell the world "I believe in nothing" .the main character is so weird,so irrational,so unconventional that only an outstanding thespian could play him:that's what Brad Dourif does ,and his performance is remarkable:in the last third of the movie,he has almost nothing to say,and he must express everything with his face and his spellbinding eyes.In this last third,the only thing to do for the character is to nullify his life.

John Huston briefly appears as his father,the preacher man,but these flashbacks last hardly three minutes.

"Wise blood" is hustonian to the core.Vanity of vanities,all is vanity,all that man will try is bound to fail:it's everywhere in every milestone of Huston's career,from "the asphalt jungle" to "treasure of the sierra madre" and from " the misfits" to "the man who would be king" But here the hero does not even try :praying Jesus or denying him does not mean more to him than shaking the hand of a gorilla.And making money with his church without a savior does not even come to his mind.Around him,everybody needs something to lean on,be it a grotesque ape,a mummy or simply a man (see the landlady).

In 1979,Huston was more "modern" than the most daring young director.

What other testament to how criminally neglected this film is other than the fact it has a rough 900 votes at the time of writing this? A movie directed by Hollywood titan John Huston of all people. That's not to say WISE BLOOD is not a flawed film, few if any such films exist after all, nor that it has that dramatic wholesomeness and clear and profound characterization that makes something like THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE the classic it is, yet, much like 80's cult paean REPO MAN, it remains endlessly watchable and fascinating in its own demented way.

The movie follows the trials and tribulations of Hazel Motes, a young man fresh back from a war (not specified which - any war will do really) somewhere in the deep South who starts out as an angry man who believes in no saviours and no dogmas and dreams of a Church of Christ without Christ and slowly finds himself digressing out of circumstances out of his hand to that which he most loathes. It's not specified to what extent the war changed him as a man or if it did at all but it appears his fundamendalist Christian grandfather (played in a flashback cameo by John Huston hisself) had a larger impact in his formative years than any war trauma.

Turning from fierce individualist and hater of preachers to zealous preacher of his own church where there is neither fall, redemption or judgement because there's nothing to fall from and nothing to be redeemed for, and from preacher to self-tormenting repentant, Brad Dourif brings Hazel Motes and his monomaniac pursuit alive on screen with burning passion. Always tense and ready to lash out at everyone and anyone, he's a seething mass of tendons and nerves writhing with agitation.

I have not read Flannery O'Connor's original novel nor have I been brought up in a Protestant or Catholic background (or the South for that matter), but there's something captivating about Wise Blood beyond and despite its particular subject matter. That elusive quality that turns a good movie into a haunting one. Still, it's easy to see why it failed to find an audience when it came out and has been largely forgotten ever since. The seriocomic mood is perhaps a bit too incosistent for the viewer who needs to quickly determine what kind of response the movie before him demands. Part religious drama, part road movie, part demented black comedy, part satiric oddity, Wise Blood is as hard to file under a specific label as it is to watch without a reaction. Yet it doesn't fail in any of them, and that's why it's such a bonafide cult film.

Blessed with a powerhouse performance by Brad Dourif, enhanced by cameos of such character actor stalwarts as Harry Dean Stanton (in the role of blind preacher) and Ned Beatty (in the role of preacher manager), the picturesque baroque of the American South, and assured direction by venerable Hollywood giant John Huston, Wise Blood, in all its southern Gothic glory, is a cult film crying out to be rediscovered by a new audience.

Preaching the Church Without Christ, Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) tells anyone that will listen that he wants a church that is free from salvation and dogma, a church "where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way". With existentialist overtones, he says, `Where you came from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it." In John Huston's darkly satiric film Wise Blood, adapted from Flannery O' Connor's first novel, Haze is caught in a struggle between the obsessions of his past and his desire to live the truth.

The more he resists his rigid Christian upbringing represented by his fundamentalist grandfather, the closer he is drawn to it. No matter what he does, Jesus moves "from tree to tree in the back of his mind, the wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark." Raised in a predominately Protestant area, Flannery O' Connor was a devout Catholic whose novels and short stories paint a tragi-comic portrait of Bible Belt evangelism and the hypocrisy that thrives in decaying Southern towns. While the film is a human rather than a Christian interpretation and the ending is simply tragic without being spiritually revealing, it still remarkably captures the essence of the novel and, if nothing else, will send viewers scurrying to their nearest library.

Set sometime in the mid-twentieth century, Haze has returned from the war with a big chip on his shoulder. Without joy he returns to his family home in Eastrod, Tennessee but on finding it run down and deserted takes a train to the fictional Taulkinham. Here he is seen by everyone that he meets to be a preacher even though he strongly protests. Even the taxi driver tells him that his hat and "a look in your face somewheres" make him look like a preacher. Brad Dourif's appearance suggests Haze with a "nose like the shrike's bill, eyes the color of pecan shells and set so deep they are like passages leading nowhere." When he meets a blind street preacher Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and his fifteen-year old daughter, Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright), childhood memories are reactivated and he proudly tells them that he doesn't believe in anything.

With a zeal that might be described as the passion of the anti-Christ, Haze buys a broken down "rat-coloured" car that becomes the rock upon which he builds his new church, the Church Without Christ. Wearing a preacher's bright blue suit and black hat, Haze stands on the hood of his car and addresses a handful of stragglers, spewing his contempt for Christianity. "Listen you people", he says, "I'm going to preach there was no fall because there was nothing to fall from and no redemption because there was no fall and no judgment because there wasn't the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar." When anyone criticizes his car, Hazel defends himself with the statement, "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified." Haze attracts an assortment of mostly unlikable characters: con-artists, frauds, and women without moral discernment.

While some are repugnant, others are simply amusing and the film remains watchable because of its savage humour and colourful language. For example, when one character describes the Welfare woman who cared for him, "She sho was ugly. She had theseyer brown glasses and her hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull", and, "a red-haired waitress at Walgreen's has "green eyes set in pink" so that she looks like a picture of a Lime Cherry Surprise." One of the most compelling characters, Enoch Emery (Dan Shor), a slow-witted eighteen-year old with "wise blood" like his daddy, provides the comic relief. Enoch is so desperate for friendship that, mimicking the travelling Gonga the Gorilla show, he steals the gorilla costume and sneaks up on people hoping they will shake his hand. In another sequence, thinking it may be the "new Jesus", Enoch steals a shrunken mummy from the museum and gives it to Haze.

When Haze becomes fed up with the town and its inhabitants, he tries to leave but is stopped by a sheriff who tells him he isn't going anywhere and proceeds to push his car into a lake in a parody of the baptism ritual. His behavior becomes more and more extreme, having decided that he cannot live in both worlds, he chooses to live according to his convictions. Lacking the ability to express love, he internalizes the car's destruction and now sees himself as "not clean". He stuffs his shoes with glass and rocks and wraps barbed wire across his chest, then throws lime on his face. Suggesting a parallel with the story of Paul on the road to Damascus, he loses his sight but regains his vision. As strongly as he has denied Christ's presence, however, he now cannot resist it. In spite of himself, Haze achieves the grace that he sought to avoid.

This is a very fine, disconcerting film. Hazel Motes (a brilliant Brad Dourif) perceives truth - if not through a glass, then darkly. I doubt if he has read David Strauss or Ernest Renan or undertaken any quest for a historical Jesus. All he knows is that Christology is a sham and that the spirit is a chimera. However, he does not disavow organised religion - and he advocates a church of 'Jesus Christ without Christ' consisting only of himself and a near-imbecile, Enoch Emery (Dan Shor). If Flannery O'Connor were able to recreate him today he would, no doubt, preach via a blog rather than atop a car bonnet.

The problem that John Huston faced was to create the old, primitivist, backwoods, segregated south in a Georgia that had undergone a dramatic transformation since O'Connor published her 1952 novella (though Macon wasn't intended by her to be Taulkinham). This was not the Georgia of Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge or Lester Maddox, but that of Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young and George Busbee. The schoolchildren are obviously 'integrated' and bussed, and modern high rises sprout on the city skyline - no doubt part of the commercial overspill from Atlanta. Dourif looks as though he has stepped out of World War II, or Korea, but almost everything else looks modern. This has the effect - almost - of suspending time and place. I am sure that Huston would have tried hard to create period detail if he had the money, but this picture was - so it is said - made on a shoestring.

Motes ends the film blinded, but he is no Tiresias, nor is his blood 'wise'. He is simply a very confused, perhaps deranged, individual with a rigid notion of his own righteousness. His narrow, gothicised 'thought' world has no place for relativity or compromise - and at the same time he is cheap and trivial (I suspect that he blinds himself chiefly to spite his antagonist, the fraudulent Asa Hawks - an distinguished performance by Harry Dean Stanton - but would Asa have been impressed by this extreme act? Would he not have chuckled?). In the end he remains in a bare room in a ramshackle house on a buff above Taulkinham/Macon, having adopted the posture of one of the minor prophets. However, unlike Amos or Hosea he remains mute. He has nothing to say, but O'Connor and Huston have created something that speaks volumes about the commercialisation of religion (viz. Hoover Shoates - a droll cameo by Ned Beatty) and the prevalence of rustic superstition in an urbanised milieu. Towards the beginning of this film Motes, having visited his grandfather's abandoned farmstead, complains to a truck driver who is giving him a lift that the country is becoming depopulated because of the construction of the interstate highway system (which was just starting at the time the novella came out) - everyone is fleeing the land in order to find work in the cities. Old customs will persist for a while in urban environments, but the close proximity of differing attitudes and cultures will soon deconstruct and dissolve them. Now that the city is advancing rapidly into the country: greater Atlanta sprawls over the Piedmont down to Macon and Augusta, and across the Carolinas through Greenville to Charlotte, we are finally realising the death of the world that made Hazel Motes possible.

This film is shot austerely, which adds to the message. The music is, for the most part, effective. The dialogue is consistently superb, for example (please forgive the paraphrase):

Motes: I represent the Church of Truth Without Christ.

Mrs Flood (Motes' prospective landlady): Is that something foreign? (of course she means - shock, horror! - Roman Catholic)

Motes: Oh no, ma'am. Protestant.

It is rare to find an great film adaptation of a great book. One can think of great films that have been made from novels of the second or third rank: Dodsworth, The Age of Innocence,L.A. Confidential,The Magnificent Ambersons, Barry Lyndon. However, one can think of very few great film adaptations of great novels. In fact, great novels are often made into badly flawed or even poor films. One thinks of all the bad adaptations of Faulkner,Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, as well as the seeming near impossibility of making a great film from Joyce or Proust. There are a few exceptions to this rule. Interestingly, two of the best were directed by John Huston. The first was that perfect adaptation of one of the five best short stories ever written, The Dead. The other was this incredibly powerful, chilling, sardonic, profoundly moving, and superbly acted version of Flannery O'Connors tale of the "Christ-haunted" American south, Wise Blood. Huston was by his own account, a less than religious man. It is therefore ironic that the very Catholic friends and executors of that supremely ironic Catholic novelist, Flannery O' Connor should have chosen him to direct this, her masterpiece. I can hardly think of a more faithful, a more precise or a more literate transcription of one of the supreme masterpieces of literature to the screen. A truly great, searing, blackly humorous, extraordinarily moving, film.

Brad Dourif's performance as Hazel Motes is one of the finest I have ever seen. His talent is only matched by the brilliant direction of John Huston and the writing of Flannery O'Connor. Also Harry Dean Stanton and Amy Write are perfect together as the Father, Daughter team. It is sad, really, that films of this caliber aren't being produced anymore. Excellent acting. excellent writing. excellent direction. excellent soundtrack, and art direction. I applaud John Huston and the producers for doing the right thing here, and making a film that captured the feelings and the soul of a writer, O'Conner, and didn't give into basic, commercial self - interest.There was a time when FILMS meant something to people. We don't need another "Chucky get's Lucky" film; what we need are compelling films for people like Brad Dourif and the like minded talent in his company to have a chance to work in.

A hefty percentage of the comments on "Wise Blood" dwell on its relationship to the novel from which it was drawn -- pro and con. Brilliant faithful adaptation says one moviegoer. Trashy sacrilege screams another. Those of us who haven't read the book are stuck with the movie which balances superb atmosphere with strange storytelling. Let's start on the plus side. John Huston and his crew have caught not only the look but the feel, almost the smell, of a midsize southern town in Summer. The weathered frame houses, the sagging streets, the one-screen cinema, the tired used car lot with its rusty Ford Fairlanes, they form a richly authentic backdrop for the action. That's where "Wise Blood" gets into trouble. Who is Hazel,played by Brad Dourif, what war did he emerge from, why does he want to be a preacher and most of all, why does he suffer psychotic temper tantrums? You'll have to figure that out for yourself -- along with why a would-be acolyte steals an embalmed monkey for him and why the nymphet daughter of a "blind" evangelist is smitten with him, down to her threadbare stockings. Sure, there are allegorical references galore throughout the film. The phoniness of Gonga, the gorilla (a bruiser in an ape suit) matched against the phoniness of street corner preachers. But in the end, maybe you'll say to yourself (but never breathe a word to more ephemeral friends)I just wish the darned thing made more sense.

So John Huston's "Wise Blood" is a cult adaptation of a cult novel, and has a very cult-y feel to it, as in offbeat and satirical.

It's also a film with a lot of odd scenarios and very strange, earnest characters that try to reach out to the main character of Hazel Motes. Hazel has just returned from an unspecified war, and has a lot of foul baggage that he carries around from his days as the son of a manic preacher.

People try to get to know this defiant, and sometimes irrational man, but the only thing he has on his mind is spreading the idea that people don't need Jesus to save them. The only problem is, he's living in a community where Jesus is the bedrock of every day life.

"Wise Blood" has a few faults though. Sometimes the characters border on downright irritating, and there seems to be a curious lack of momentum to the story. The filmmakers seemed to dryly interpret the source material, and figured the result would be able to stand on its own. But the viewer is quite often left in the dark to a lot of the events. One part of the climax has a character blinding himself with chemicals, and this should have been the most dramatic part of the story, but is instead almost glossed over so matter-o-factly that it only further alienates the viewer from understanding the character motivations.

Believe me, it's a Weird film with a capital W. But from amongst it, the towering Brad Dourif shines in an attention-grabbing role, and he only shows his range and talent as a character actor. There are times when he becomes so fixated with fighting back against those he thinks are 'hypocrites' that he becomes almost frightening. The only problem is that the rest of the film is somewhat lackadaisical about its more disturbing content, and the lassez-faire attitude keeps the audience at arms length throughout.

What it lacks in direct punch, "Wise Blood" makes up for as a twisted morality tale on the lengths that religious obsession and guilt will string those along, in this very dark comedy. A low 7 from me.

I am not a reader of Flannery O'Conner, so I can't comment on her point, but I know she is considered a great American writer of Southern Gothic fiction, and that she only wrote two novels, one of which was made into this film.

I am familiar with Brad Dourif, who got an Oscar nomination for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was most recently in Rob Zombie's Halloween, is familiar to TV viewers on "Deadwood," and is the voice of Chucky. He put himself in the very capable hands of a great director, John Huston, who won Oscars for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (writing and directing), and accumulated 13 other nominations for such classics as Sergeant York, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, The Asphalt Jungle, and Prizzi's Honor.

What we get is a dramedy that is more comedy than drama. Hazel Motes (Dourif), in reaction to his strict fundamentalist upbringing, starts a church that he calls The Church of Christ Without Christ. Now, that will go over well down here in the South! He meets an assortment of preachers/con-men (Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty), a non-stop talker (Dan Shor), and an oversexed 17-year-old (Amy Wright). The collective wit of the entire cast in this film is about equal to a bowl of soup, and that is what makes it funny.

One of the first of Dourif's over 120 appearances, and it is a hoot!

A Southerner (Brad Dourif) -- young, poor, ambitious but uneducated -- determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.

This film is brilliant for its examination of religion and for its casting. On the former point, some aspects are clearly exaggerated. The world is full of crazy preachers, but probably not so many in one town that they are stumbling over each other. Is the film against religion? No. On the surface, yes, but it is really against hypocrisy.

And the casting... Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty are great, but Brad Dourif runs the show, and it is a shame his name is not more widely known outside of film fanatic circles...

"Wise Blood" is a rambling, ambling film about a young soldier who returns from the war and embarks on a career as an anti-religious street preacher. Brad Dourif plays Hazel, whose returning home from his ostensible tour in Vietnam seems much more like a release from a long prison stint. He doesn't seem to know anyone, or anything about modern society. He is strangely out of place in a strangely underpopulated and anachronistic universe. I kept asking myself if the film was supposed to take place in the present-day 1979 or the fifties? This is what happens to a Director's eye as he gets older...

Brad Dourif is a wonderful actor... always unafraid, always making original and unusual choices in his performances. Hollywood seems to consider him too much of an oddball to play the Lead, but I think that's exactly what makes him so fascinating... Amy Wright stars as Sabbath Lily, and almost completely steals the show with her magnetic eyes, expressive face, and wonderful comedic timing. Harry Dean Stanton also gives a great performance as a blind rival preacher.

The movie has great actors and some genuinely funny bits: Hazel's defensiveness about his car, Sabbath Lily's lustful pursuits, Ned Beatty's new Messiah, the gorilla sequence... but these seem at odds with the extraordinarily dark themes that lie beneath the surface, and the pointedly-bitter finale. It's a shame this movie didn't gel into something more cohesive and memorable, but it definitely earns points for originality... it is like no movie you have ever seen before, and for that reason alone it is a winner.

GRADE: B-

It's a great character study - in that, it explores what a person becomes if they are a "true idealist". The idea is that we all give up certain ideals every single day in exchange for making our lives more efficient and effective. Where the main character of this story is a solid, immobile foundation of ideals. We see how it slowly corrodes his life, his social connections and affects the people around him.

Think about it this way: if you live in a city where you think the MTA charges too much for bus/train fare, but choose to utilize the service because the other options are too hard to follow through with each and everyday, you've essentially given up an ideal. The main character in this movie wouldn't do that, he would walk to his destination or learn to ride a bicycle or what have you. That is, at least, my understanding of this the lead character in this phenomenal movie.

Wise blood

Is it a road movie or is a critique of religion - just what is it ?well you have to view a a very bizarre movie with a very bizarre and well acted k lead. to find out There are brilliant performances from the leads and most of the cast It starts out with a demobilised soldier who finds everything has changed at home ( including his parents have died)after journeying home; with nothing to keep him in his home town this , intense and bellicose , young man journeys around the south finding salesmen masquerading as men of the religion and people willing falling in with this charade- hazel motes decides t create his own religion one of truth and fact and one without Jesus. But hazel motes has his own daemons which manifest itself in dreams about sex and masochism – he goes from putting stones ins his boots ( a child hood thing ) to barbed wire around his torso and blinding himself. He is asexual but not homosexual and deeply disturbed.

Watch it ,as you know religion can do these things to a mind- albeit a delicate mind .

Hazel Motes returns from the conflict overseas, (Vietnam? Korea? World War 11? Flannery O'Connor's Deep South is a timeless place, cut off from reality and the rest of the world). Instantly we can recognize he's not, as we say over here, the full shilling or is a few sandwiches short of a picnic and in no time at all has taken to preaching his own peculiar gospel and founding his own church, (The Church of Truth without Jesus Christ, Crucified), and whose message appears to be, 'save yourself 'cause sure as Hell the Lord won't save you'.

He's an isolationist but he takes up with a supposedly blind preacher and his sexually voracious daughter while an idiot boy, several sandwiches shorter of a picnic than even Hazel, takes up with him. The only clue to his behaviour seems to lie in a few flashbacks to when he was a boy in the house of his fire-and-brimstone preaching grandfather, (Huston himself), and had a penchant for putting rocks in his shoes. Yes, you think to yourself, it will all end in tears.

Huston, of course, is in his element. Casting himself, however briefly, as the craggy Bible-belter is just up his street and this kind of Gothic horror-comedy brings out the best in him and there is a good deal of comedy to be found here; a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse. But the film probably wouldn't be anything without the superlative performance of Brad Dourif who seems born to play the gimlet-eyed Hazel; the problem was, of course, that Dourif was born to play Billy Bibbit in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and was never able to shake off that Southern Gothic not-quite-right-in-the-head character. It was what he was good at and casting directors never let him forget it. But if "Wise Blood" had been the only movie he'd made he would still deserve a footnote in the annals of acting.

This sly, little film captures Ms. O'Connor's novel with a spirit of empathy. Brad Dourif is "crazy" as Hazel Motes in a different mode than is usual for him (CUCKOO'S NEST, voice of CHUCKY). Daniel Schorr is splendid as his little helper, Enoch Emery and the rest of the cast work wonders. A 9 out of 10. Best performance = Daniel Schorr.

Flannery O'Connor's short stories would make stunning films (Sam Shepard crossed with Hitchcock). Amy Wright is a true original and Ned Beatty (so often miscast) is pathetic and yet all too familiar and human. One of the best of 1980 (after RAGING BULL and THE ELEPHANT MAN). Try to find this one if you can. Haunting, touching, Gothic Black Comedy!

Vignette styled look at southern towns, corruption, hypocrisy, and the hidden 'evils' of evangelism. Has a atmosphere that is so thick you can almost taste it.

Dourif's performance is so good, so solid, and so powerful that it literally propels you through the story no matter which avenue it takes (and it does take some strange avenues). His performance should have won him the Academy award and shows just how poorly used he has been. This is for all those who think Chucky in CHILD'S PLAY is the best thing he has done.

Although never completely satisfying, the final 20 minutes do have some rather 'odd' twists that may stay with you even after it's long over.

There isn't a likable Character to be found in this Existential, Philosophical, Film about Religion as seen through the Mentally Challenged. These Folks are not only unlikeable, they are for the most part, Retarded.

It is a beautifully ugly Movie with these unattractive Participants set in front of even more unattractive Sets and Locations. Things are in decay, not only physically but Spiritually.

This is an almost singular Film. It is Categorically undefinable and has never found anything more than a peripheral Cult Audience since released. No wonder. This is like a Sideshow Freak of a Movie. You gawk and gaze at amazement as these splinters of Humanity parade themselves openly in utter disregard of their inadequacies.

Old Salt John Huston Directs from a bittersweet, relentlessly cynical, scathingly satirical Author. The Cast, led by an outstanding Brad Dourif, is an A-List of B-Actors, some who have made Careers of playing oddballs. This is not a Film that is easy to like, but you could admire, and is nothing if not evocative and provocative.

A truly Underground piece of Subversive Art. It cannot be seen without some of the misanthropy melting your Mind as it inhibits your ability to comprehend what was just experienced.

I realize that bringing a novel to the big screen is always problematic. That is the only positive thing I can say about this truly horrid adaptation.

Have you read 'Wise Blood?' It's an amazing book. Flannery O'Connor wrote about the south as no one else has. She was a southerner herself, a devout catholic, and a remarkably gifted writer. In her first novel she wove together a dark and deeply disturbing tale of faith, doubt, and redemption with a macabre sense of humor and surprising evenhandedness. The characters in the book may seem outrageous to those who have not lived in the rural south, but I can assure you that such people do exist. Not only do they exist, they are human beings with families, feelings, and concerns like anyone else. Flannery's intentions were so often misunderstood - she was not lampooning these backwoods zealots - she saw in them the beautiful operation of what she would have called 'grace'...even in the most violent, distressing, and maddening of circumstances. To read 'Wise Blood' is to be washed over with a sense of dread and impending doom. Finally, it is to think long and hard about our judgments and preconceptions - our entire world view.

None of this comes through in John Huston's 'Gilligan's Island'-like adaptation. None. It is a farce. A bad farce. The entire film is saturated with a hauteur that turns the stomach. The acting is poor, the southern accents are fake and insulting. The filmmakers show no insight into the thinking of religious southerners. Ms. O'Connor's intense prose are reduced to sight gags and cheap, amateur theatre. The soundtrack is a mixture of hayseed silliness and 'Clockwork Orange'-style cheeseball electronics that doesn't fit the story or even the MOVIE. I was granted free admission to this movie and almost walked out. Truly, truly terrible.

As an aside, I do not agree with Ms. O'Connor's religious views, and while I was raised in the deep south, years ago I made my way north and have not looked back. But the south is a beautiful place full of fascinating individuals (like every other place on earth), and the cartoonish mockery with which southerners and their attitudes are dealt in this movie borders on offensive. If you're into being offended (which I am not), then this movie most DEFINITELY crosses the line.

I don't like to talk crap about an artist's work - John Huston was a man that I did not know, and I'm sure he was a sincere and gifted filmmaker, to which his respected place in film history attests. My views are clearly skewed by having read (and loved) Flannery O'Connor's work. So I don't claim to be coming from any other perspective. Maybe as a stand-alone film it works for cinephiles. But for Flannery O'Connor fans - and, I might add, for self-respecting southerners and openminded individuals of all stripes - this movie is a waste of time.

When novels are adapted by writers who know the book so well that they are unable to see past their familiarity to judgeif the screenplay stands on its own as a cohesive, compelling story with three acts and understandable character motivations, the result is something like John Huston's "Wise Blood." A movie so academically faithful to its source material that it fails miserably as a motion picture that makes any narrative sense.

As a companion piece to Flannery O'Connor's novel, it is a fine visual representation of the characters and events recounted. As a stand alone film, it virtually makes no sense and things happen only because the book says so, not because the film gives them any organic reason to.

I defy anyone who hasn't read the book to make any sense out of the character of Enoch Emory. Likewise the origins of the matrimonial feelings of the boarding house landlady. Both parts are well acted, but the writers leave in all the novel's "business" and are hamstrung at finding a way to convey the motivations behind them.

The best things about the film are Brad Dourif and Amy Wright. Dourif especially works miracles with a character that is underwritten on the screen but vivid on the page. In fact, most of the cast works extremely hard to bring some humanity to their characters, but they are ill-served by a script that fails to understand the special considerations required of telling a story on film and telling one on the page. The screenwriter obviously held O'Connor in such awe that he was afraid to do any thinking on his own.

I guess I had an advantage in reviewing this film since I viewed it just a few days after reading the novel. It was one of the most fascinating fiction books I've ever read and I was terribly curious how it could translate to a film.

Warning: Spoilers of sequence and plot twists follow. Do not read if you want to experience this film for the first time.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of this movie. The screenplay follows Flannery O'Conner's novel almost exactly with a few noticeable exceptions. The train ride at the beginning of the novel is shortened and the "flashback" of Hazel returning home is highlighted instead. This didn't seem to bother me too much though - the novel seems to start off slow and this probably makes the movie have a better flow.

One aspect of the story that doesn't translate well to the big screen is Enoch's inner "motivation" to do the things he does - waiting for instructions from his wise blood - and his contemplation of what to do with objects. I'm not sure how I would have addressed this in a screenplay either, so that part can be forgiven. However, I was unsatisfied with the ending and Enoch's transformation into Gonga. Whereas this was primal and wild in the book, it came across as silly and desperate in the film. It almost was rewritten as a comic sequence.

The music is also a bit silly.. 70% of the film is filled with a banjo or harpsichord tune which sounds like "The Tennessee Waltz". I guess that works on some levels, but it again goes for the silly aspect and doesn't really translate the loneliness of the novel.

Another minor point is the walking sequence with Hazel carrying the potato peeler followed by Enoch - for some reason I pictured this scene at night. I haven't checked the book to see if it was at night or in the afternoon (as the movie has it set). It would seem to work better at night - especially as Enoch describes how unfriendly the town has been to him.

One difficult problem with making this novel into a movie is the way that O'Conner doesn't really seem to show much love for any of her characters in the novel. To make the film satisfying to the casual viewer, a director would almost be forced to add more life and punchiness to the characters. Unfortunately, this seems to cheapen the brilliance of the novel. When I first started reading this book, I almost thought this was a limitation of O'Conner. She seems distant from her characters to the point where they are almost undeveloped. This, however, is really the true brilliance of her writing.. this style is subversive and infectious. It leads the reader on a memorable journey but leaves one unfulfilled and wanting more.

I'm not really sure that someone would enjoy this film much if they hadn't read the novel. It would be interesting to read a review of a viewer who was not familiar with the book though - how did they interpret Hazel Motes' fate? Did they enjoy this film on a serious level or was it just a strange comedy? O'Conner seemed to describe some of her themes as "matters of life and death to some people" in the preface to the second edition. I'm not quite sure that this film expressed that well.

Still, a film is not a book and certain compromises are necessary to make a movie good for a general audience. All in all, I think this project was well done and certainly worth viewing. I hope to see some film and TV versions of O'Conner's other work soon.

Everything about this movie was supposed to be perfect, from the great American source novel of Flannery O'Connor, to the spot-on casting of Brad Dourif, Ned Beatty, and Harry Dean Stanton, to the direction of the legendary John Huston. So what went wrong? Answer: the very conception of how to tell this story. This was undoubtedly meant to be a vivid, colorful, literary, even surrealistic story of a man's personal obsession with and against the great excesses of Southern revivalist Christianity. A movie like this should have been made by someone with the visual flair of Tim Burton or the Coen Bros. Instead, it reminded me of an early Richard Linklater movie like "Slacker," following a meandering path of disconnected vignettes with Southern weirdos spouting their own idiosyncratic dialogue into thin air. Now, much of this dialogue is utterly hilarious and beautifully written (and supposedly verbatim from O'Connor's novel), but great dialogue alone does not a great film make.

A film like this could only have been made in the 1970s, an era when filmmakers could helm projects which tackled very taboo subject matter (in this case the mother of all of them - religion). It's a shame it could never be made by a major studio in today's politically-correct climate, because if done right it would make an amazing literary period-piece. Who is this main character Hazel Moates really? We get to seem him do a series of some of the most insane things in modern cinema (off-screen), yet we never get a real character exposition. If someone is going to make a serious multi-layered satire of religion, they had better be prepared to go places visually and aesthetically for the viewer, and this movie does not. In addition, when is this movie supposed to take place (the cars are all contemporary 1970s, yet O'Connor's era of itinerant revivalist preachers wearing suits and hats ended in the 1950s)? Finally, Alex North's twangy hillbilly score is probably the most aesthetically incorrect soundtrack ever, next to the kazoo-and-banjo score from "Last House on the Left."

Wise Blood is a Drama with a good sense of black humour, it sometimes hits you in the stomach about the D-I-Y religions of the Deep South, or somewhere within the Dixie heartland.

Amy Wright plays a hyper-reilgious weirdo and looks like she is having lots of fun as a female leading role. Brad Dourif is the main character, who is a solider that is honourably discharged from the army and decides to become the man of the world to create a 'Church without Christ, and it does not cost a dime'. This is the first movie I saw with Brad Dourif performing and fell completely in luv with him. With his cool attitude and his Sharp almond-shaped eyes peeping from a fendora hat tilted to one side - you just know that he is gonna be around for a long time, while Actors come and go in Hollywood.

I think he should do more Comedies and leading roles because he does carry movies well and the audience that I have known sits up and pays undivided attention to Brad's spotlight.

It is a strange but fantastic little gem of a movie!!! the cast is full of perfect performers, and satirical scenes (I think one of the minor Actors of the cast dressed as a Mascot kept on getting a good ol' kick up the arse by everybody).

I highly recommend this Movie, it is even brilliant to watch on rainy Sundays. Go watch it.