White Lightnin'

Jesco White came to cult-audience attention in the 1991 documentary Dancing Outlaw as a boisterous “mountain dancer” whose folksy background also exemplified dire stereotypes of poor-white Appalachia—drugs, alcohol, madness, violence, and bad life choices. This British (!) dramatization from director Dominic Murphy uses Jesco's real-life travails as the launch pad for a hillbilly horror show (think Flannery O'Connor meets Jack Daniels). In lurid detail, White Lightnin' depicts the hapless Jesco (Edward Hogg) as an addict from early childhood, progressing from inhaling gas and lighter fluid to syringe injections. After stints in reform school and mental institutions, Jesco begins a honky-tonk performance circuit with the dance styles he learned from his rough-hewn but revered late father and takes up with a semi-good woman named Cilla (Carrie Fisher). Nonetheless, the antihero repeatedly succumbs to “bad thoughts,” backsliding into the bottle or the needle and embarking on psychotic acts of revenge that may or may not be gory delusions. Shot in stark black-and-white that occasionally morphs to faintly muted color, and punctuated by lo-fi music recordings and hellfire preacher sermons, the film's strength is Hogg's live-wire portrayal of the short-fused destructive protagonist who asks for no sympathy for “the devil in my blood,” just God's forgiveness, if possible. Scenes of graphic torture-murder, injections, and self-mutilation make this fanciful spin on the real-life White's biography a tough watch. Still, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. (C. Cassady)