[6]

John Huston tackles Flannery O'Connor's gothic tale of southern evangelism. Wise Blood is a curious movie full of interesting ideas, not the least of which is a paradoxical main character who shuns Jesus while simultaneously torturing himself for some sort of redemption. Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Child's Play) stars as the son of a 'hellfire and brimstone' preacher (Huston in flashbacks) who moves to a new city and tries to start up his own church, "The Church Without Jesus." Preaching on street corners, he easily wins the undying allegiance of a simpleton played by Dan Shor (Tron, Bill and Ted) and makes enemies with rival street preachers (Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty) who only seek to swindle a dollar from faithful onlookers.

The film is most interesting when it’s absurd or unsettling, as in scenes when Shor’s character steals a shrunken corpse to serve as Dourif’s “new Jesus,” or when Dourif blinds himself in the name of redemption. As a whole, it’s somewhat muddled, though. Alex North’s peculiar score hits some sour notes and too much time is spent on a seemingly unrelated subplot involving Shor running around town in a gorilla suit. The last twenty minutes, when Dourif’s landlady discovers he keeps rocks in his boots and wraps his torso in barbed wire, are singularly dreary. It almost feel like another story entirely. In the end, I’m not sure what to make of Wise Blood, but it’s simply too odd and interesting to ignore.