By pure accident, agnostic Razz' (Spencer Williams) gun goes off and
severely injures his wife Martha Ann (Cathryn Caviness), a devout
Christian. Soon, the Doctors give up on her and say from now on it's in
God's hands whether she lives or dies - which calls her church community
to her bedside to sing hymns for hours on end, and even Razz finds to God
and he starts to pray for her like nobody's business. Eventually Martha
Ann is declared dead though, which doesn't stop her hubby from praying
really hard ...
Martha Ann meanwhile finds herself on the way to heaven, but she is
intercepted by the Devil (James B.Jones) and his henchmen Green (Frank
H.McClennan) and Brown (Eddie DeBase), who promise her new cloths and the
like if she accompanies them to the city, where they invite her to a juke
joint, obviously a place of sin if there ever was one.
It's not long though before Martha Ann wants to get back on her way to
heaven, but now the devil's henchmen won't let her ... but at that time,
Martha Ann experiences salvation when Jesus weeps tears of blood - not in
the least because of her still praying hubby - and she is called back to
life ...
This all-black film is the directorial debut of Spencer Williams (of
later Amos 'n Andy-fame) is - like many of his later movies
- a morality play with a very blunt religious message. Produced on a
shoestring and mainly consisting of people singing hymns, there is
actually not much the film has to offer - it only comes to life briefly
when the devil and his helpers try to lure Martha Ann away from the
righteous path -, still it might be interesting as a document of the poor
state all-black cinema was in due to the segregation and what filmmakers
still tried to achieve in spite of that.
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