THIS STUFF’LL KILL YA! (1971)
aka The Devil Wears Clodhoppers
Article 5136 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-22-2016
Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Featuring Jeffrey Allen, Tim Holt, Gloria King
Country: USA
What it is: Moonshiners versus revenuers.

A moonshiner posing as a preacher has to deal with the problems of his trade.

Talk is cheap, and so is Herschell Gordon Lewis. This is just my way of saying that there’s a reason Lewis is known as the “Godfather of Gore” rather than the “Dean of Dialogue”. At least in his gore movies he has something to catch the attention; in this movie, though there are a couple of smidgens of gore (and a serial killer subplot to add what little fantastic content there is to the mix), the emphasis is mostly on long-winded talking, and when it comes to writing dialogue, Lewis has the same ability as Jerry Warren, in that he knows how to write a dialogue scene that will cause you to zone out twenty seconds after it begins because you know nothing of interest is going to be said. Furthermore, the bad sound (par for the course for Lewis) just makes it worse. It certainly doesn’t help that it’s one of those movies with only the barest thread of a plot; it just makes you realize that even if you try to follow the dialogue, it probably won’t lead you anywhere. The end result is one of Lewis’s dullest stretches of celluloid. No, it won’t kill ya, but it may just put you into a deep sleep.