The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virgina (Movie Review)

It all started back in 1992 when Jesco White was the subject of Dancing Outlaw, a documentary directed by Julien Nitzberg about mountain dancing.  Although it was supposed to be about mountain dancing, it quickly became apparent that the subject was infinitely more interesting than the dancing, which is really just bastardized flat-foot tap dancing.  Jesco stole the show with his beer guzzling and drugging and became an infamous cult icon.  We didn’t realize there were more just like him—or maybe we were scared to!

The matriarch of this motley crew is Bertie Mae.  She is the most “normal” one of the family, I suppose.  Due to either age or morality, she is the only one who does not partake in the beer drinking, pot smoking or coke snorting at her 85th birthday party.  (Yes, that’s right-drinking and doing drugs at an 85 year old woman’s birthday party).  Jesco’s sister, Mamie, fills us in on the missing members of the Whites that have all died by gunpoint in feuds of some sort, including her father and mountain dancing legend, D. Ray White.  She also claims to have put bodies in abandoned mine shafts around her home.  Jesco is still there riding the fumes of his “celebrity”, although he dubiously claims to have tired of it.  Sue Bob, the self-proclaimed “sexy one of the family”, is an ex-stripper whose son, Brandon, is now in jail for shooting their uncle.  Kirk, Jesco and Mamie’s niece, is a pregnant pill popper who once stabbed her boyfriend for sleeping with her cousin.  The last of the kinfolk we meet is Mousey who is let out of prison and proceeds to reunite with her husband at his girlfriend’s house.  There are more Whites, but the stories are the same and eventually become painfully redundant.

The scenes that sum up both the family and the film are equally humorous and heartbreaking.  One moment you are laughing at the “Boone County mating call” which is the shaking of a prescription pill bottle and the next you are watching, mouth agape, while Kirk snorts some off of a hospital nightstand hours after giving birth. Hank Williams III, who offers commentary and music to the film, calls them “the true rebel outlaws of the South”.  If outlaw means loser then, yes, the Whites are outlaws.

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia are celebrated or decried depending on who you talk to.  “But at least,” Mamie says proudly, “the world knows who the fuck we are.”  That we do. Now available on Blu-Ray and DVD.