Wise Blood (film)
Wise Blood is a 1979 black-comedy drama film directed by John Huston and starring Brad Dourif, Dan Shor, Amy Wright, Harry Dean Stanton, and Ned Beatty. It is based on the 1952 novel Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor. As a co-production with Germany the film was titled Der Ketzer or Die Weisheit des Blutes when released in Germany, and Le Malin when released in France. Plot Hazel "Haze" Motes (Brad Dourif) is a 22-year-old veteran of an unspecified war and a preacher of the Church of Truth Without Christ, a religious organization of his own creation, which is against any belief in God, an afterlife, sin, or evil. The protagonist comes across various characters such as teenager Sabbath Lilly Hawks, who is madly in love with him; her grandfather Asa Hawks who is a conventional sidewalk preacher, and pretends to be blind; and a local boy, Enoch Emery, who finds a "new" Jesus at the local museum in the form of the tiny corpse of a shrunken South American Indian. Hazel's relationship with Sabbath Lilly goes sour when she takes the tiny corpse that Enoch gave her to pass on to Hazel, and she poses with it in a Madonna and Child manner. Hazel throws the corpse against the wall, and its head out the window. Sabbath Lilly becomes very angry and berates Hazel. Hoover Shoates is a promoter who wants to manage Hazel's career as a prophet. However, Hazel is not enthusiastic, so Shoates finds someone to dress like Hazel and preach in a somewhat similar way. Hazel finds this out, is enraged, and eventually pursues the man out of town and runs him over with his car. Meanwhile, Enoch is fascinated with a local show involving a man in a gorilla suit; Enoch sneaks into the promoters' truck, steals the suit, and wanders around town terrorizing people while wearing the suit. A sheriff stops Hazel on the road and sends Hazel's car rolling into a lake. After this, Hazel deliberately blinds himself with quicklime, a counterpoint to Asa's fake-blinding himself. Hazel's landlady must take care of him, and falls in love with him. However, she is shocked to find he has wound barbed wire around his torso, and has rocks in his shoes. After her proposal of marriage is spurned by Motes, and he leaves, the landlady calls the police and reports him as derelict in paying rent. The police find Motes lying in rubbish in a semi-conscious state. They return him to the house where he is placed on a bed in the landlady's custody. She promises him an easy life, in any part of the house he chooses, with her waiting on him full time. The film ends with the landlady's failed attempts to get a response from the now-completely unresponsive Hazel, who may be dead. The director of the film appears in two fantasy sequences as Hazel's fanatical preacher grandfather. Cast Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes John Huston as Grandfather (initially credited as "Jhon Huston")