DCPL Presents: Melton Barker's The Kidnapper's Foil

We’ve been working on a documentary podcast about the filmmaker Melton Barker for quite some time. That’s not ready quite yet, but we do have some Barker-related goodness for you.

Who’s Melton Barker, you ask? That’s a question not many can answer. He was what’s known as an “iterant” filmmaker who was active in the 30s through the 70s. He visited small towns across the United States during that time to make the same film over 200 times with a cast of untrained local children. That film was The Kidnapper’s Foil.

Barker came to Owensboro in 1938. Sadly, like many other versions of The Kidnapper’s Foil, that film has been lost. The script is still available, though! Sarah Jacobs and Wesley Johnson of DCPL got together with a few kids (cast list below) to make a podcast version. This episode is fully comprised of that effort.

Note: We used the original script, but, due to the format, we altered it a bit. There's now a narration to explain some of the elements that didn't translate well.

The Narrator: Wesley Johnson
Kidnapper 1: Gus Lattas
Kidnapper 2: Hank Dotsey
Betty Davis: Kaytlyn Meyer
Dad: Logan Mills
Butch: Samuel Hadden
Jean Davis: Sarah Edge
Young 1-2: Franny Hoffman
Young 3-4: Elizabeth Ford
Boys 1-2: Easton Crisp
Boy 3: Colben Settle
Boys 4-5: Jayln Griffith
Girls 1-2: Lily Boling
Girls 3-4: Rachel Kyle

Additional Writing: Christina Clary, Wesley Johnson

Visit MeltonBarker.org to learn more about his work. Thanks to the folks who run that site for providing some information to us.

Music: "Belgian Waffles" & "Mario" by Underscore Orkestra both appear on their record, Table Dance (Bad Panda Records). The music is licensed under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Check 'em out here; http://www.theunderscoreorkestra.com/.