Based on a series of stories by American author Manly Wade Wellman, this folk horror/fantasy stars Hedges Capers as John, a ballad singer who wanders the Appalachians battling evil with a magical silver-stringed guitar as his weapon. As John roams the land, he encounters a gold-hungry man who makes a deal with a witch, battles an 'ugly bird' (a shonky stop-motion creature), and defeats a nasty cotton plantation owner who is cheating the black folk toiling in his fields.
I suspect that all of the positive reviews here on IMDb have been written by Appalachians who have a sense of romantic nostalgia about where they live and who are willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that the plot is a scattershot load of old twaddle, with a main character who randomly wanders from scene to scene with no real sense of purpose. Add to the fact that Capers is a terrible actor (this is his one and only movie) and what you have is an often incomprehensible piece of low budget garbage unlikely to appeal to anyone who wears shoes and doesn't have an outhouse.
Amazingly, the cast features some fairly impressive names: Susan Strasberg (The Manitou, Rollercoaster), Denver Pyle (Bonnie and Clyde, The Dukes of Hazzard), Harris Yulin (Scarface, Ghostbusters II) and R. G. Armstrong (Predator, Dick Tracy), with Hoyt Axton (Billy Peltzer's dad in Gremlins) singing one of the songs.
2/10. As bad as the animated ugly bird is, I quite enjoyed it, so the film narrowly escapes getting the lowest possible rating.