The Legend of Hillbilly John

Ambitious way beyond it's budget, "The Legend of Hillbilly John" does not live up to it's cult movie reputation. A wandering folk singer, Hedges Capers, uses his silver string guitar to defeat the Devil in various forms. The Appalachian setting is interesting, and I would not be surprised if inhabitants of the hollows truly believed the Devil caused their calamities. Superstition or not, the first half of the film holds interest as John sets out with his faithful dog to bring and end to a winged annoyance known as the "Dirty Bird". The claymation creature is eventually slain, not by singing it to death, but by a bash with the guitar. Beyond this the movie drags on to an underwhelming political statement conclusion. - MERK.

Based on a series of stories by American author Manly Wade Wellman, this folk horror/fantasy stars Hedges Capers as John, a ballad singer who wanders the Appalachians battling evil with a magical silver-stringed guitar as his weapon. As John roams the land, he encounters a gold-hungry man who makes a deal with a witch, battles an 'ugly bird' (a shonky stop-motion creature), and defeats a nasty cotton plantation owner who is cheating the black folk toiling in his fields.

I suspect that all of the positive reviews here on IMDb have been written by Appalachians who have a sense of romantic nostalgia about where they live and who are willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that the plot is a scattershot load of old twaddle, with a main character who randomly wanders from scene to scene with no real sense of purpose. Add to the fact that Capers is a terrible actor (this is his one and only movie) and what you have is an often incomprehensible piece of low budget garbage unlikely to appeal to anyone who wears shoes and doesn't have an outhouse.

Amazingly, the cast features some fairly impressive names: Susan Strasberg (The Manitou, Rollercoaster), Denver Pyle (Bonnie and Clyde, The Dukes of Hazzard), Harris Yulin (Scarface, Ghostbusters II) and R. G. Armstrong (Predator, Dick Tracy), with Hoyt Axton (Billy Peltzer's dad in Gremlins) singing one of the songs.

2/10. As bad as the animated ugly bird is, I quite enjoyed it, so the film narrowly escapes getting the lowest possible rating.

This little-known curio is better than I expected. I hadn't heard of the source books (Manly Wade Wellman's "Silver John" pulp fictions) before, because they were presumably mostly a Southern regional phenomenon, but now I'm very curious to check them out. The episodic progress, drawn from a couple of Wellman's stories, chronicles the folksy fantastical adventures of a wandering Appalachian troubadour, which include tangling with the Devil and a Ray Harryhausen-like winged monster. The last and least adventure has John managing to somehow free the oppressed black slaves, a "White Savior" scenario that doesn't play too well now. (It probably didn't in 1972, either).

Offbeat and filled with pleasant music, "Hillbilly John" probably had a hard time finding an audience at the time, as it was so out of step with popular taste of the era, and it's certainly been largely forgotten since. But given a cast of mostly imported Hollywood veterans (Severn Darden, Denver Pyle, Harris Yulin etc.) and a director who'd mostly toiled in network TV, it's surprisingly flavorful and "authentic" feeling within its folkloric context. (Though he worked on a lot of major series, John Newland's best-known works were probably the TV-movie thrillers "Crawlspace" and "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.") Hedges Capers, a handsome young man with a fine voice who never quite hit the bigtime as a recording artist, is appealingly natural in the title role. Sharon Henesy is a weak point as the ingenue, seeming a classic 70s example of casting "somebody's girlfriend" (rather than a talented actor)...but then all she's allowed to do is gaze adoringly at John and hope he'll quit his wanderin' ways, so it's not really her fault she seems superfluous.

Despite its low budget, "Hillbilly John" is fairly well-crafted, although its neglect over the years was reflected in the fact that the YouTube dupe I saw seemed to be from an old VHS tape, and was accordingly low-quality. The nighttime sequences (of which there are many) were very murky. Alas, obscure old indie features like this are highly unlikely to get "restored" to pristine quality, so you take what you can get. Anyway, this is hardly a forgotten classic, but it's an ambitious oddity that is quite enjoyable and merits rediscovery.

It wasn't till quite some time after seeing this movie that I read any of Wellman's stories, but this movie is pretty faithful to them, at least the ones I know (though I don't know if any of the Silver John stories have "Mr. Marduk" or not). I don't know if I know Hedges Capers or the leading actress from anything else, but they were fine in it, and along with them, it's full of great character actors (though I don't think that's the right term for Susan Strasberg) - Denver Pyle, R. G. Armstrong, Severn Darden, Harris Yulin (who, apart from Darden, might have had the best part, and who really seemed to enjoy playing it). Even the political stuff, like the very end (which I won't give away) doesn't seem too forced. That ending could apply to ANY time (certainly including right now), and it would be a shame for people to think of it ENTIRELY as some NIXON JOKE (though I suppose it probably IS thought of as only that). In spite of the listing, I'm certain this movie is from 1972-73.

The stage curtains open ...

Years ago, when I was about 10 or 11 years old (around 1978 or so), my Mom dropped my brother and I off at the local movie theater for a matinee showing of this film. There we sat in the darkened theater, candy and soda in hand, expecting another Walt Disney type movie ... this was anything but. After the movie was done, we walked out of the theater a bit red-faced. It was a story that involved the Devil, a Witch, a pre-historic bird, a magic guitar with silver strings, a boy and his girl who liked to sneak away for a little nookie, and the use of a divining rod. Had my Mom known what we had just watched, she would've been upset to say the least, since our parents did their best to keep us away from such "subjects". When we got into the car and she cheerfully asked how the movie was, we both shrugged it off as "just okay" and hoped she never brought it up again. Truth was, we both loved it and felt like we had just gotten away with something.

We join our hero, simply known as John, in the Appalachian Mountains where he has just finished having sex with his girl, Lily. Of course, in a "G" Rated movie, it is implied, but we got the picture. On the way home, he finds out that his grandfather, also named John, has announced his intention to defy the Devil himself with the use of what he believes to be true silver strings on his guitar. When his grandfather dies, because the strings did not have silver in them after all, he vows to avenge him with his own silver strings. He embarks on a weird journey to seek out the Devil, testing the power of his strings on an ugly bird (just to make sure) before the final showdown.

The film featured folk singer, Hedges Capers (who clearly could NOT act), singing and strumming his guitar throughout the entire story. We were also treated to early sightings of some relatively larger name actors, or actors who would go on to bigger things, such as Denver Pyle, R. G. Armstrong, and Harris Yulin (who outshined them all in his bit role). This film consisted of 4 different stories by pulp fiction author, Manly Wade Wellman, featuring his character, John the Balladeer (otherwise known as Silver John) that were fused together in the movie for the overall story. And, if you've seen this film, it certainly does have that feel to it.

For years, I could never remember the name of this movie, because I wanted to find and revisit it again - and finally, by chance, I stumbled across a copy of it on YouTube. Someone had uploaded a ripped laser disc copy of it to their channel. Smiling from ear to ear, I watched it again tonight for the first time in years, and yeah ... it IS pretty bad. But, it also came with a bunch of sentimentality and memories for me and took me back to a good time as a youth first discovering movies. I had to laugh when I saw what I was so worried about as a kid, but hey ... I was only 10. I would actually recommend this movie, if you can find it. There are a lot worse things you could spend your time doing.