07/01/10 - Preacherman

Preacherman (1971, 87 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067606/

Another Weird Wednesday means its time for another subpar but fun movie. This week (after a couple week's hiatus) I'm treated to Preacherman. It's billed as really really good but that happens every week and I'm just as hesitant as always. Let's see.

The film follows Amos Huxley (Albert T. Viola) as the titular preacher man. Really though, Huxley is just a con artist who exploits his position for all sorts of gain. First it's sex with a blond bimbo named Mary Lou (Ilene Kristen) and then it turns into money from an illegal still on her father's property. The main antagonist is Mary Lou's local love interest, a boy named Clyde (Adam Hesse).

Just like every Weird Wednesday, this film seems to have moments of brilliance mixed among many moments of mediocrity and worse. Somehow, Viola served as main actor, director, and producer of this film, pulling from local North Carolina "talent" to put everything together. Most people actually do a decent job. No one is atrocious in the acting department which is a plus for these movies. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the Viola and Kristen are above average. Viola is far and away the star, managing to completely convey the old grifter vibe mixed with the preacher of yore. He does a great job mixing these stereotypes to create a pretty cool character. Kristen actually shines somewhat as well. Though she's supposed to just be a stupid blond, she actually turns into a character of her own with a bit of personality. I think both of these positives are attributed to Viola's good writing.

The bad parts of the movie though are sometimes the failed comedy. For some reason, whenever Clyde is introduced, he gets these annoying "boing" sound effects that clash with the rest of the movie entirely. I mean, it does work as being goofy and quirky, but the movie actually succeeds enough times to make this actually fail when looking at the whole product. Next, the pacing sometimes fails in my opinion. The movie does follow the standard three act policy but the first and final acts are so short that it pretty much makes the entire movie the second act (Huxley at the still). Because of this, it frequently drags on and on as there really isn't much going on to fill up a whole 87 minutes.

Finally, though, Preacherman is just a fun movie. On that it succeeds pretty well. I imagine everyone had fun making it and it probably turned some profit. Viola manages to get above average work from everyone he's working with and it creates a fun film. Sure it has tons of minor flaws like sloppy camerawork here and there and poor pacing, but when I ask myself if I had fun watching the film, I can't answer but "Yes."

Overall, I gave this film a 4/10. Preacherman is better than the sum of its parts. I think the writing stands out the most for me as Viola crafts fully fleshed out characters via an excellent use of dialogue.