Wise Blood (1979) User Reviews

Dourif Hits It Out of the Park

[gavin6942 · 8/10 · 14 July 2014]

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...

Soak up the atmosphere

[MikeMagi · 6/10 · 1 August 2013]

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.

American Gothic

[MOscarbradley · 8/10 · 25 August 2007]

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.

Worth Looking Into

[dougdoepke · 27 October 2008]

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.

The Brad Dourif Show.

[Degree7 · 6/10 · 21 August 2013]

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.

No man with a good car needs to be justified!

[lastliberal · 7/10 · 9 April 2008]

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!

Darkly satiric

[howard.schumann · 9/10 · 10 March 2004]

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.

Should Have Been Much Better, Considering the Production Values

[Sturgeon54 · 6/10 · 25 January 2013]

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."

A perfect adaptation of O'Connor's masterpiece.

[coop-16 · 10/10 · 1 May 1999]

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.

The Author and the Director

[flarrfan · 7/10 · 5 October 2016]

This is a good movie, but it's not a great film. The book is great, and the movie is faithful to the book, which often reads like a screenplay because of the way O'Connor used dialogue. The director (Huston), with only a few minor deviations from the book's description of characters' inner thoughts, makes pretty much the point the author intended. For those confused about the director/author's viewpoint, I think Miss O'Connor's spoiler foreward to a later edition of the book gives it all away:

"That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for some readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them, Hazel Motes's integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author, Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to do so. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen."

Thus the mystery about meaning reflected in many of the comments here and on the message board, a mystery which even a black comedy film adaptation can only deepen as well.

Not Sure What This Film Is Supposed to Be

[evanston_dad · 4/10 · 7 July 2020]

Flannery O'Connor was a better short story than novel writer, and her book "Wise Blood," which was an expansion of a few of her stories, among them "Enoch and the Gorilla" and "The Peeler," probably should have just stayed stories. John Huston, in adapting "Wise Blood" to the screen, isn't able to improve it and in fact makes it much worse. This is an ugly, deeply unpleasant film, and I don't understand what it's supposed to be or who it's supposed to be for.

Huston gets dreadful performances from all of his actors, none worse than Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes, who overacts to the hilt and whose performance is so grotesque as to be unwatchable. Amy Wright fairs just as badly as one of Motes's romantic obsessions. The character of Enoch Emory, who was the focus of some of the stories that became "Wise Blood," is so sidelines as to fade out of the movie after a point without having had any purpose for being there in first place.

"Wise Blood" has a cynical attitude toward religion, treating it as a breeding ground for opportunists and charlatans. Fine by me. I'm not religious myself and have no love for organized religion in general. But is that really the whole point Huston was making? If so, I'm not sure it was worth the two hours I spent with this movie. Likewise, Motes is basically a sociopath. Sociopaths as characters can be compelling (Hannibal Lecter says "hi"), but crazy isn't inherently interesting, and I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from Dourif's character.

I felt like I needed to take a shower after watching this movie.

Grade: D+

wise blood

[robertpiser · 10/10 · 17 October 2005]

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.

such a strange angry guy

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 31 January 2015]

Army veteran Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) returns to the South after the war to find his abandoned crumbling ancestral home. His grandfather (John Huston) was a preacher. He's wounded but doesn't want people to know where. He intends to do something he's never done before. He hates to be called a preacher. He encounters blind street preacher Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and his daughter Sabbath Lily Hawks (Amy Wright). He counters by preaching his own Church of Truth Without Christ Cruxified. He is hounded by Enoch Emory (Dan Shor) who claims to have wise blood. He buys an old rundown car to sleep in. He follows the blind preacher's daughter.

There is a surrealism to all of it like the characters are not of this world. All of them are a bit off. Brad Dourif creates one of the most eccentric angry character that is still compelling to watch. This is such an off-kilter group. I'm fascinated enough to follow his meandering journey. There are some terrific supporting actors delivering wonderful performances.

A beautiful novel ruined by John Huston

[solomon-29 · 1/10 · 7 August 2006]

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.

Wise Blood and Mary Flannery O'Connor

[duncan52 · 3 May 2003]

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

Freak show

[buonoart · 6/10 · 11 March 2021]

I stuck with this indie-style film though I did not find it compelling. Nevertheless there are good performances and a certain poignancy to these badly malformed, defective and very human characters. Although the plot is fairly linear as Hazel encounters one freak after another, there's a sense of incongruity, or at least I kept feeling it. I was expecting somehow a more tidy or at least dramatic resolution of the several subplots and characters but then again the entry and exit of these characters to the main story really doesn't seem to rise to the level of subplot. But the weirdness kept me in it. And as a consequence of watching this I am now interested in reading O'Connor's catalogue, so the time invested should pay dividends.

The plot summaries and reviews note that Huston has a recurring cameo in flashbacks as Hazel's preacher grandfather, but I believe I also saw him Hitchcock-style as a passenger on Hazel's train ride early in the film.

Strange, disturbing, and dated

[tvspace · 7/10 · 4 December 2015]

This is a very strange film -- disturbing and dark, but shot in an almost unaesthetic made-for-TV movie kind of way. Some of the musical choices, in particular, stand out as dated and goofy -- moments where things seem strange, disjointed and upsetting but are set to rollicking circus music (and not in an ironic way), as if the whole thing is in good fun.

Because I haven't read the source material by Flannery O'Connor I'm unable to pass any judgment on how fully Huston captured the original characters. What I will say, is that as a child of the South in the 70's, there is a wistful documentary-quality to seeing the kind of ragged simplicity and charmingly trashy culture that we all grew up with back then. By comparison I think we have all become extremely self-conscious about a kind of forced cosmopolitanism by now (small batch mustard and all that jazz; beer connoisseurs; locally-sourced beef).

As some other commenters noted, the casual use of the n-word by so many people seems unrealistic and shocking, in that amongst my middle class small-town family and acquaintances, it would never have been used, not out of political correctness per se, but because its use, back then, would have identified you as white trash (ironically enough). But, without meaning to sound disparaging, this story is in some sense about "white trash" so maybe in fact that is how people on the bottom of the social ladder spoke back then. (It's notable that the word isn't used with any meanness, but just out of a century of habit).

This is not, by far, a great movie. But there is some really tremendous acting. Besides the obvious kudos for Brad Dourif, I found the most extraordinary performance to be that given by Amy Wright as Sabbath Lily. Erotic and sweetly screwed up, she provides the most human spark in a movie that is otherwise about some incredibly malignant and lost characters.

For me as a fan of 1970's movies, this is a must-see, but I would advise going in that the film does seem extremely dated at times. Despite that it's interesting and unpredictable and full of dark psychological twists and turns that remind you how much more meaningful drama can be than the latest superhero movie at the cineplex.

I had to ask myself...

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 17 November 2015]

... if I disliked it so much the first time why did I watch it again? I had to look up something about the story from which this film was adapted to get some things straight. Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) is returning from the Korean War in the novel. This is never mentioned in the film. Since this film was made in 1979 and people seemed to be wearing the fashions of the 70's in the film, I assumed Hazel was returning from the Vietnam War. Plus when Hazel returns to his family homestead, finding it abandoned and in ruins, there is a headstone that says 1924 -...and the date of death is deliberately covered with weeds. I assumed this was one of Hazel's elders, so it would make sense that they set the film in the present (the 1970's, not the 1950's). But there is one other thing that really bothered me. I was a teenager in the 1970's in the south, and young people did not throw the N-word around like they did in this film. It was considered very backwards and rude among young people by then, although the older folks were a different story. Now back to the movie.

The film keeps Hazel's motivations a complete mystery, although he seems to be on some kind of spiritual journey. Because the clothes he bought when he was picking civilian clothes make everyone assume he is a preacher, everybody asks him where he preaches and what he believes, so he is constantly saying he doesn't believe in anything. But it gets his mind on the subject. He notices that everywhere there are slogans about religion. A big neon sign flashes "Jesus cures". There is also a big rock with a Bible verse on it. So Hazel decides to start preaching about founding a "Church Without Christ", and strangely enough he gathers a crowd and even a competitor. He becomes fascinated with a blind preacher and moves into the same rooming house as him, but unfortunately the preacher's daughter becomes fascinated with Hazel.

The problem is, Hazel never talks about what he really is after, and on top of that he is completely unlikeable. He never shows a shred of kindness or decency to anybody and may have possibly killed somebody, although that isn't clear, in part because Hazel seems to care so little that he MIGHT have killed this person. He drives away from the scene, unafraid that the guy might be dead and that the police might be after him. The one thing Hazel does believe in? This broken down Edsel that he bought for 250 dollars. He has to jump wire it to start it if it starts at all, water is literally pouring from the radiator, and the tires are bald. He answers everybody who calls it a hunk of junk with "This is a good car!". He has no doubts. He seems as silly and staunch in his belief in this car as he seems to feel others are in their belief in religion. Then one day it is proved that the car is indeed a hunk of junk, and then Hazel's life takes an unexplained turn for the much worse.

If you can take a film with absolutely no likable characters, but that takes an unexpected turn at every junction, I'd recommend it. Just be prepared to be very confused and possibly offended.

People are strange when you're a stranger

[mim-8 · 6/10 · 6 July 2009]

I couldn't make heads or tails of this movie. First of all I think that John Huston is far better actor than he is a director, and apart from "The man who would be king","Asphalt jungle" and "Key Largo" I don't think he made a good movie, but I know he made some bad ones ("The MacKintosh Man", "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean", "The Kremlin Letter"), so I approached "Wise Blood" with caution. I must say it surprised me in many aspects. It is a complex film that in my opinion is trying to show how religiously debased people can bring the apocalypse on themselves, first of all, and how the lack of faith causes inner destruction of human spirit. In showing this, it simultaneously ridicules the world of churches without Christ and false prophets that are the product of people without faith, who, ironically are their major followers. Hazel Motes is a product of this world, he was terrified of the way religion was introduced to his life, (shown by small but memorable scenes with "Jhon" Huston as the preacher, probably Motes' father or grandfather), and coming out of the war, he was even ashamed of being wounded in, he tries to find something else he could cling his beliefs on.

Huston does a surprisingly good job, but the movie goes places it never gets to. The introduction on seedy preaching characters of Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and Hoover Shoates (Ned Beatty), are supposed to bring their colorful nature to front and show different ways religion is used as a scam, but it never goes there really, and the nature of Motes' relationship with his landlady or the outcome of his fling with Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright) is never revealed, although she tied her future with him. Anyhow, this movie is worth seeing, if for nothing else than for great acting and there are plenty, and a few funny scenes as well. Decent.

One of Huston's Best!

[shepardjessica · 9/10 · 13 August 2004]

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!

Meh

[doomedmac · 6/10 · 6 September 2021]

I can sort of see the appeal of this movie, but personally I didn't really like it. Very weird.

Small time morons

[paul2001sw-1 · 5/10 · 24 December 2005]

John Huston's 'Wise Blood' is a straightforwardly weird film. At times, it threatens to become a satire on born-again religion, or a portrait of individual alienation, but it steers away from any consistent course save that of downright oddness. The fact that every one of the movie's central characters appears to be an inbred moron makes it hard to invest any emotion in the story; while the soundtrack at times goes in for comic emphasis, as if to undercut the underlying blackness of the tale. Even the era of the story is hard to place: apparently the 1960s, many of the details seem to come from a much more ancient, almost mythical time. Perhaps the south of America really did inspire such a mordant, Gothic vision at the time Huston made the film; but today, it's a very hard movie to relate to. Any why does Huston mis-spell his own Christian name in the credits?

Believing in nothing is still believing

[ernestsavesxmas · 9/10 · 26 February 2020]

The fantastic 1979 movie Wise Blood was directed by John Huston and stars the great Brad Dourif in a rare leading role. It is based on the debut novel of the master Flannery O'Connor. In Huston's 33rd feature film, Dourif plays Hazel Motes the young veteran of an unnamed war, returning home to a now deserted farm, his family gone. There's nothing for him there but he's very much concerned about his old chifforobe. He can't spell and Huston honors this fact by misspelling his own name in the opening credits, perhaps a meta commentary on the elitism inherent in who gets to tell stories and of what nature.

Hazel takes a train to the big city, sees an address for a lady of the night on the bathroom wall and hops in a cab; he's immediately mistaken for a preacher by the driver, the second time this has happened to him. He's very concerned that people know he is NOT a preacher. Later, he meets a "real" blind preacher, played by the legend Harry Dean Stanton, and the preacher's daughter Sabbath, played by the actress Amy Wright who beckons "I seen you..." A haunting plea that echoes the truth: all religion is founded on myth and the impossible. Hazel rips up the pamphlet she hands him.

A big theme of this film is loneliness, and how it can fully warp the brain if left unchecked. And there perhaps is no lonelier character than the dullard Enoch Emory who gets to deliver the titular line of the movie. He says he "knows things he ain't never learned... can feel his blood beating... Wise blood." Everyone wants to feel the power of god. Believing in nothing is still believing.

In the haunts of these religious quests, we find most of the characters are racist as the day is long. To them it is an undeniable truth. Wayward souls whose own self-hatred has turned outward, uncontrollably searching for some place to put it. And it's always been this way. "I don't have to run away from anything, because I don't believe in anything," Hazel says. His entire existence is a study in cognitive dissonance. He goes on to found the "Holy Church of Christ Without Christ" and begins to preach his nihilistic message to anyone who'll listen. In a 2001 New Yorker piece, Hilton Als wrote "Motes has a grudge against Jesus: he equates Him with sin, or more specifically with the sins that he himself has committed and cannot escape-not in the eyes of his relatives, rotten with fake piety, who believe that only the Lord can wash him clean and are no better than (redacted) who think that the Lord will make them white."

Meanwhile, Enoch, a lowly worker at the local zoo who likes to yell at the apes, is equally consumed with finding meaning, albeit in his own infantile way. Disguised in a comically bad wig, he steals a "new" Jesus at the local museum in the form of the tiny corpse of a shrunken South American Indian, and then becomes obsessed with a King Kong knock-off called Gonga, cutting a line of children to shake his hand (a man in a gorilla suit) and ultimately jacking the costume to use for his own immature pranks. The powerless will look for power in any outlet they can grasp.

Sabbath courts Hazel in one of the film's strongest scenes. They talk over one another as they drive to a secluded woods. She reveals the fraud of her father who is in fact not blind and they make love on the grass. They could find redemption in one another, they could be one another's salvation, but Hazel can't see the forest for the trees. He continues preaching his anti-gospel and is spotted by a grifter (played by Ned Beatty) who thinks he's found a like-minded crook. But Hazel is the REAL thing. When Beatty's character shows up with a hired hand (the great William Hickey) to interrupt one of his roof-of-his-car preaching sessions, Hazel loses it. He tracks down Uncle Lewis and runs him over with his car. That car, a symbol if there ever was one, is then rolled into a lake by a cop. It's rock bottom for our pal Mr. Hazel Motes.

Hazel blinds himself FOR REAL with lye and starts to practice increasingly more bizarre forms of self-harm, including walking with rocks in his shoes, which we learned earlier via flashback he was forced to do in childhood. It's all connected. Eventually, he's wrapping himself in barbed wire. His landlady, a character who I'm sure is more flushed out in the book, becomes his caretaker and is the last human to fail saving him. He says he needs to pay; she says that people have quit doing that kind of stuff. Not Hazel.

Wise Blood isn't quite a perfect film but it has some great performances and strikes a chord in the way that American cinema of the 70s often can. I highly recommend.

Brad Dourif in an outstanding and solid performance!!!

[elo-equipamentos · 7/10 · 5 October 2022]

Be ready to watch a complex and weird movie ever done in my opinion, based on novel this adaptation to the screen as independent presentation with smallest budge goes beyond from the original draft according the screenwriter who spoke in the bonus.

This story consists in a young man soldier Hazel Motes back from the Korean war (Whilst it wasn't quite clear) at his hometown a smallest city USA's southeast, he quickly head to a major city nearby to start a new life, he actually was a grandson of a died preacher (Huston) and starts an own new church of Christ without Christ, along his odd journey he meets a street's blind preacher (Stanton) with his young daughter Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright), also a alone crazy guy Enoch Emory (Dan Shor), all this early meetings unleashes in a countless oddities never imagined by the ordinary people, haunting the audience due the nature of the offering.

Remembering that at releasing time in 1979 it was heavily criticized by mostly of the movie's experts widely in USA, however the picture was slowing gaining proponents along the time reaching now as the cult status somehow, whatsoever it wasn't a bad picture, just unusual even some parts freak, the young Dourif perhaps done his best acting until now, further John Huston made it clearly as challenge for him, although ithis doesn't have his fingerprints as used to be, anyway the outcome is acceptable as independent work!!

Thanks for reading

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First watch: 2022 / Source: DVD / How many: 1 / Rating: 7.5.

Waiting for something or someone to happen

[Ugwamp · 3/10 · 12 May 2019]

I sat patiently waiting for some character I could like doing something to save this film. If you like watching train wrecks and angry people you'll enjoy Wise Blood. It is one scene after another of disturbed people doing disturbing things. At first I felt sorry for the kid trying to befriend Hazel Mote, but even he disappoints later on. Maybe I'm just too simplistic of a film fan or maybe I'm too dense to figure out what Huston was trying to do, but I walked away from this wishing I had chosen to watch something else. I recommend you do the same.