True Adventure: Serpent Cult, early 50s

I came across a True Adventure episode from the 50s called “Serpent Cult” featuring at least one familiar face: Oscar Hutton (sometimes Oskar with a k). I dug through my archive and turned up some photos and a newspaper article.

A Courier-Journal piece describes “the Rev. Oscar Hutton of St. Charles, Va., a native Kentuckian who is credited with teaching snake-handing [sic] to most of the 1,000 or more cultists in this state alone,” and notes that, in his view, no one has ever explained their religion in an impartial way or really tried to tell their side of the story. Hutton is generally said to have helped spark a revival of serpent handling in the 1950s.

The newspaper article from October 1947, “Snake handlers practiced faith despite laws” by Joe Creason for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, might have informed the True Adventure episode. The film features Oskar Hutton and Lee Valentine and clearly frames the serpent handlers as cultists; the fast banjo music leans hard into the familiar hillbilly stereotype.

Lee Valentine was fatally bitten by a snake at the Old Straight Creek Holiness Church on top of Sand Mountain in August 1955. Valentine refused medical help and died a few hours after the bite.

It would have been far more interesting if the editors had left in the original audio from the service, including the music actually used. 

The movie ends with the police breaking up the gathering and confiscating the snakes and, somewhat unexpectedly, still manages to make a case for religious freedom.

A few details suggest this was not the same event described in the newspaper story: Hutton is wearing a different suit, there are no state troopers in sight, and I do not recognize the buildings. It is hard to say for sure, but it is striking how the reporting and research over the decades keeps circling around a relatively small set of protagonists and congregations.

As for the location, I think, given the hints in the movie and this still that shows the Virginia state line it’s save to say it was shot around here.

Here is a newspaper article from August 1955 mentioning Rev. Oscar Hutton and Rev. William Vernon of Keokee, Virginia, who gathered for a memorial service for the late Lee Valentine.