Wise Blood

John Huston's hellfire burlesque is one of the great lost films of the 1970s and a movie to stand alongside his Maltese Falcon or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Wise Blood, a virulently comic, grotesquely unforgettable adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's celebrated novel of customized redneck religion and redemption, is as strange and original a movie as Huston has ever made. [17 Mar 1980, p.101]

Tragically, desperately funny: this adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's novel is John Huston's best film for many years.

Brad Dourif shows he was always great in one of John Huston's better later films.

Those moviegoers who have a taste for Wise Blood are not going to cavil about flaws. It is enough to ride the wild imaginative waves of this singular artistic adventure

Wise Blood, an unusual mixture of comedy, tragedy, satire and horror, is an uningratiating but haunting work.

Like O'Connor's other novel, The Violent Bear It Away, and some of her best short stories, Wise blood has a fierce momentum and a savage wit that stand alone in contemporary literature. The movie makes a good try at capturing these elusive elements. But ultimately it loses its balance, and many viewers may wonder whether its rewards are worth all its perversities. [07 Mar 1980, p.19]