The Legend of Hillbilly John (1972)
Directed by John Newland; screenplay by Melvin Levy
Offbeat supernatural film based on stories by Manly Wade Wellman. The stories are true classics of backwoods fantasy, as the wandering balladeer John confronts evil magic in the Appalachians. The author knew and loved the area, and his stories were full of authentic folklore and language. The movie is best described as a well-intended attempt to capture the special flavor of the stories, hampered by an extremely low budget and some inappropriate choices. The episodic plot can be divided in a prologue, three tales, and a coda.
Prologue: The film starts with a character called Mister Marduke (and the reference to the god/demon Marduk is definitely intended) who is a dowser by trade, and who possesses enough magic to change clothing in an instant. He addresses the audience directly, telling us about the Devil, listing His many names (one of which, by the way, is the Army Corps of Engineers) and telling of those who choose to defy Him. John's grandfather chooses to become one such, by singing a defiant song against the Devil while playing a guitar with silver strings. Too bad he made the strings from Kennedy half dollars, which aren't pure silver. He is killed, a fact shown by having the film break! John takes up the task, and Mister Marduke, who is always around as both a helper and a tempter, it seems, shows him where some old Spanish coins, pure silver, are buried.
The First Tale: (Based on the story "The Desrick on Yandro.") John runs into a greedy undertaker whose grandfather made a deal with a witch, in which he was to receive magically created gold in exchange for spending a year in her arms. The grandfather backed out of the deal. He leads the fellow to her "desrick" (a sort of cabin) where the witch, 75 years later, is still a lovely young woman. She offers him the same deal and he accepts. You can tell this will turn out to be a bad idea.
The Second Tale: (Based on the story "O Ugly Bird!") John finds a dead woman under a pile of coal on a strip mine, and is then attacked by a huge, monstrous bird. The creature comes to life through stop-motion animation. Not up to the level of Ray Harryhausen, but not bad. It's definitely ugly, too, which helps. Only the silver strings on his guitar keep him from being killed. It seems that the strip mine is owned by the local warlock, who rules his neighbors with an iron fist. The Ugly Bird is something the warlock produces out of himself, and John has to battle it to save the terrified folks in the area. (In a nice bit of irony, they come to fear him as much as they did the warlock.)
The Third Tale: (Not based on a story, as far as I can tell.) John runs into a bunch of sharecroppers cheated by their oppressor. (Interestingly, the sharecroppers and the oppressor are all African-American, and only the oppressor's lackey is white.) With the help of an elderly sharecropper's African magic, he defeats the bad guy.
Coda: John wanders off to fight more evil. The last scene shows him approaching Washington, D. C. ; make of that what you will.
The individual stories tend to be quite short, with evil defeated very easily. At times the dialogue really captures the feeling of the stories, and is likely to go over the heads of those not familiar with them. The authentic backwoods flavor is mixed with 1970's hippie stuff, which is disconcerting. Overall, it gets an E for Effort.
TCM ran a bunch of John Wayne B-grade Westerns several months ago. His horse was named 'Duke.' I watched a few of them, but the plots were so boring and predictable, 1 or 2 were all I could stand, even given the short 1 hour or so running times.
