A Cry in the Wilderness

Long before the scourges of terrorism, AIDS, etc commandeered the headlines and ruled our fears, plagues and pestilence, floods and fires, criminals trying to break into our houses, and perverts trying to steal our kids were our common shared nightmares. Back in 1974, life was simple. Feeding on the fear of contracting rabies, with the accompanying painful regimen of antidote doses administered by needles as large as telephone poles, the story is of a young boy's test of devotion to his father's instruction, weighed against his angst of losing his father when only he can save him - but should he risk saving him??? A compelling story, especially for its time.

A farmer (George Kennedy) is bitten by a rabid skunk and chains himself up to protect his wife and son before the disease takes over his mind.

This was a tension filled TV movie that I haven't seen since first broadcast. Oscar winner Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke) was in between Airport movies is very good in the lead. Joanna Pettet plays his much younger wife who has to go for help since they are in an isolated area and no telephone. Pettet was one of the prettiest actresses of this era, she was in another very good TV movie called The Weekend Nun two years before this.

The suspense is heightened when we find out about a flash flood warning and she is stuck on the road when her truck breaks down. Lee H. Montgomery plays the son who has to tend with a chained Kennedy, who may go violent and delusional at any moment. There are many 1970s TV movies on Youtube but some are too dark or have out of sync sound. The copy of this one on there is excellent.

On his isolated farm in the wilderness, Sam Hadley (played by George Kennedy) has an unfortunate run-in with a rabid skunk. How Sam and his wife handle the situation is the basis for the story, which is totally not convincing. Sam reacts in ways that defy logic or common sense. Plot devices include hallucinations, a coincidental flood, and menacing hillbillies.

The acting is not bad, but the actors have nothing to work with. The story's premise, in my opinion, is not credible. It relies too much on coincidental timing, improbable behavior, hokey characters, and a predictable outcome. Indeed, without the skunk, there would be no story at all.

The DVD version of this film is 74 minutes, but it seemed more like two hours. I don't wish to be unkind, but the film seemed to me to be a cross between a bad episode of "Green Acres" and a poor remake of the movie "Deliverance". A more interesting film might have resulted if the story had been told from the POV of the skunk. How did the skunk react to the encounter? Was the skunk traumatized? Did the skunk suffer nightmares? What did the skunk learn, and so on.

I'm not clear why "A Cry In The Wilderness" was even made. I suppose when the film aired in 1974, it "might" have had some value as an after school special for kids. But thirty years later, it's barely a cinematic footnote.

Although not a great or particularly special movie, I'm still very ecstatic that I was able to watch "A Cry in the Wilderness". American TV-movies from the 1970's are quite difficult to find here in Europe and I absolutely wanted to see it because I'm a big fan of both lead actor George Kennedy and director Gordon Hessler. It's unnecessary to say that the film is quite flawed... More than half of the screenplay doesn't make sense and the characters do the dumbest things, but at least it's never boring (the film also only lasts barely 75 minutes) and benefices from beautiful locations. Just over one month ago, family man Sam Hedley moved with his foxy wife Delda (way too foxy for him, in fact, check out her bum) and 12-year-old son Gus from busy Chicago to an isolated farm somewhere in Oregon's middle of nowhere. Whilst working on his land, Sam gets bitten by an aggressive little skunk. Two weeks later he reads a medical book in bed and suddenly realizes the skunk was rabid and that the bite gave him rabies. And so Sam immediately does what every other loving family man would do: he chains himself in the bar and draws a forbidden entrance circle on the ground. Sam sends out his wife to seek help in a ramshackle truck and in a god-forsaken area that she doesn't know (always a great idea) and instructs his son not to obey his commands to let him loose. But later that day there suddenly is the threat of an all-destructive flood, and Sam begs Gus to break the chain so that they can evacuate the farm. Now the loyal little boy doesn't know what orders to obey anymore… One thing's for sure, "A Cry in the Wilderness" certainly doesn't promote life in the American countryside! During her desperate journey, poor Delda only encounters crazy old people, perverted hillbillies and extremely unhelpful neighbors. Furthermore there are several unintentionally hilarious and implausible sequences, including a vicious skunk-attack hallucination and Sam's bizarre childhood flashback shot in black and white. But, as said, the film is moderately entertaining and compelling enough as long as you're in an undemanding mood. George Kennedy is a hard-working and unpretentious actor who starred in massively budgeted blockbusters as well as in cheap B- movies or TV-productions. He depicts his character here with the same amount of devotion that he did for "Cool Hand Luke" or "Airport", for example. Gordon Hessler has always been a sadly underrated but extremely skillful director in the horror genre. He started out with a handful of very ambitious fright-tales, like "The Oblong Box" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue", but then from the seventies onwards specialized in less notable TV- work.