The Legend of Hillbilly John

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.

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.

A dark magical fantasy based on several of Manly Wade Wellman's stories about a guitar player who wanders across the rural American Southeast, confronting evil magicians, monsters, and perhaps the Devil himself.

The special effects are of only medium quality, even for 1973, and I can only suggest looking past them to the down-home, country-flavored fairy tale being told, woven together from fireside stories and folk traditions Wellman heard and adapted.

It's always hard to put on film what a poetic writer has described - the charm and mystery of Wellman's beloved Carolinan countryside, the old-fashioned courtesies and customs of the mountain people - and this movie does not quite succeed, perhaps because it did not really try. The magical creatures are put in the foreground, and the setting (Wellman's true love) is made a generic Southern backdrop. John in the book is a devout Christian (more, he might could be a friend of Christ); John in the movie is darkly hinted to be a son of the Devil.

My own enjoyment of this movie was very mixed: I felt frustrated by how often and how far the movie fell short of the books, and tantalized more by what the movie *could* have been than by what it *was*, but I'm glad I didn't miss seeing it.

If you also enjoyed the movie and want to see more of the character, read Wellman's "Silver John" books: "Who Fears the Devil?" (or "John the Balladeer"), "The Old Gods Waken", "After Dark", "The Lost and the Lurking", "The Hanging Stones", and "The Voice of the Mountain". There are also Wellman fan sites on the Web.

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.

Sorry Merk, but Severn Darden played Mr. Marduke. The wandering folksinger (John, no last name ever given in the movies or the stories.) was played by Hedges Capers. And it wasn't "Dirty Bird" but Ugly Bird (from the short story "Oh, Ugly Bird!' by Manley Wade Wellman. Admittedly, the film isn't the greatest, but the stories and books about Silver John are classics by an author with a genuine love for the mountains and their people and of the folk music of the area.