Wise Blood

Wise Blood centres on Hazel Motes, a young Southerner who returns home after military service to find his hometown emptied of its people. Adrift and determined to make something of himself, he travels to a nearby city, where street preachers and their trade in salvation provoke him into founding his own congregation: the Church of Truth Without Christ. His preaching draws a circle of misfits and hustlers around him, among them the blind evangelist Asa Hawks and his daughter Sabbath Lily, the zoo worker Enoch Emory, and the rival preacher Hoover Shoates.

John Huston directed the film, the eighteenth of the twenty-two features he made, arriving between The Man Who Would Be King and Love and Bullets. Benedict Fitzgerald and Michael Fitzgerald wrote the screenplay, adapting Flannery O'Connor's novel, and Michael and Kathy Fitzgerald produced. Brad Dourif leads the cast as Hazel Motes, with Dan Shor, Amy Wright, Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty in supporting roles; thirty-six performers are credited in all.

Released in October 1979 and running 106 minutes, the film blends comedy and drama. On IMDb it holds 6.9 out of 10 from around 7,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.4 from a much smaller pool of 114. A critics' rating of 7.4 from 26 reviews places it above the audience scores, suggesting reviewers responded to it more warmly than general viewers did.