A big-city female doctor returns to her roots in the backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains to bring modern medicine to the local folks in the Appalachia of the 1930s and finds herself at odds with the homespun ways of the resident medicine woman.
Acting
Jane Wyman's delicious villainy as the mountain medicine woman.
Production
Gritty 1930s Appalachia recreated with surprising texture.
Writing
The 'sin eater' concept — wild Appalachian folklore.
Director
Guy Green
Lindsay Wagner
Dr. Meg Laurel
Jane Wyman
Granny Arrowroot
Dorothy McGuire
Effie Webb
Andrew Duggan
Judge Adamson
Gary Lockwood
Harley Moon
Brock Peters
Joe
John Reilly
Thom Laurel
Charles Tyner
Doug Slocomb
James Woods
Sin Eater
Woodrow Parfrey
Messerschmidt
Peggy Walton-Walker
Mrs. Slocomb
Kath Soucie
Becca
Tracey Gold
Laurie Mae Moon
Tom Spratley
The Dentist
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sin eating was a real, rare Welsh/English folk practice brought to Appalachia — the film treats it with surprising anthropological respect.
This was a backdoor pilot that never got picked up; the 145-minute runtime suggests they crammed an entire season into one movie.
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